Sweet Melinda's

Warrender Park Road, Edinburgh

visited 29/10/08

I don't know why I've never been here before--friends have recommended it and I've often been next door to it at Eddie's Seafood Market--the best fish shop in Edinburgh. Sweet Melinda's gets its fish from Eddies, which should be enough to recommend it.

The room is a lovely mixture of informal tongue and groove with random junk shop pictures, and properly laid tables with good linen. The service is happy and friendly.

People say that this restaurant is like very good home cooking and that seems about right. Out of a very tempting range of starters I had a squid salad, with clean, strong and simple flavourings (lime, soy and something slightly too sweet) that threaten to overwhelm the generous serving of very tender squid. Pretty nice though. Next a halibut steak that was over-steamed and not flavoured with anything very much, accompanied by some parmesan-rich risotto which didn't do much for the halibut. Mains came with a dry (and bad for fish) carrot bake and some roasted new spuds (that had been roasted some time previously). So that wasn't great and a bit of a waste of the very good piece of fish. We had an really excellent Fleurie from the very reasonable wine list.

Pudding was a fantastic chocolate Torte--intense but not cloying as these things can be. Good coffee too.

So I will go again to Sweet Melinda's--it's a lovely place to eat although probably a bit hit and miss. 2 out of 3 was OK for this visit.