Thursday, 30 July 2009

Santini

Conference Square, Edinburgh

I went here a few years ago and was impressed. It is part of the Sheraton, and has that kind of muted, spacious, expensive hotel feel that I quite like, and the cooking was great.

So having recently acquired a List Card (2 for 1 at various places--for every course you get the cheaper free) I booked a table. When we arrived we were informed that "2 for 1" meant 2 courses for the price of the most expensive, which is not what The List says. So, going into the frame of mind when confronted with a budget airline site, we ordered the most expensive starters and a main course only slightly more than that. I didn't really take in the rest of the menu.

I had carpaccio of beef which was perfectly tender but a bit underseasoned, and accompanied by some rather pointless mushrooms, and Parmesan which was BENDY! This is not right! Then a very large chunk of tuna, perfectly seared, but served up with some tasteless airfreighted green beans and a sauce which tasted mostly of the tinned tomatoes on which it was based. What's going on? I know this is Scotland, but it is JULY for crying out loud. What happened to local produce?

With this we had a couple of glasses of excellent Prosecco. The wine list was a bit feeble. Very few Italian wines under £30 and padded out with big producers from Chile and Argentina that you can get in any supermarket in the land. We had a Tocai Friulano (which, fact fans, is a kind of Sauvignon Blanc, only fruitier, which Euro regulations say now has to be called something else), which was very nice, although a surprisingly bad choice for the tuna. We had ordered a green salad which, oddly, was packed with gherkins, so the wine took a bit of a battering. I wasn't overly impressed by Santini this time round. It really is a hotel restaurant: large chunks of good quality protein, but no attention to what it's going to taste like.

In case they tried to make pudding or coffee the cheapest course, we resolved to go for these at the Filmhouse next door and got the bill. Whereupon the maitre d' saw my List Card and rushed up apologising profusely, and took quite a bit off the bill. If we hadn't been deflected in the first place we would have had a different experience (and pudding) and had a better sense of what was on offer. Some of the pastas looked good. But as the card only works once a year at a restaurant, that is it for Santini for the time being.

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