Café Royal

W Register St, Edinburgh

visited 10/12/09

There is nothing nicer than the bar of the Cafe Royal when you can get a seat in one of the semi-circular booths, and admire the wonderful plasterwork and ceramic murals, and nothing worse at 5.00 on Friday when you can't see the murals for the 5-deep suits and it is, in the words of a friend of mine, a braying hellhole. But I'd never been to the restaurant/oyster bar, partly because, despite all my other excesses, I don't much like oysters.

But on this occasion I seized an oyster-lover and my listcard and sallied forth. The restaurant is really nice--a smaller room partitioned off from the bar, but with its own handsome marble bar and tiling, and proper linen on the tables. The menu is, I imagine, unchanging, and you can choose mainly from oysters and mussels, and smoked fish and meats (or you can have a steak). My companion pronounced his oysters with chilli to be good, and I rather wimped out with some smoked salmon (fine). Then I had one of my favourite dishes: smoked haddock with a poached egg. There was absolutely nothing wrong with this--a generous piece of haddie and perfectly poached egg, with a wisp of spinach lurking somewhere, in a not-too-rich cream sauce. Despite all the fish and steak on the menu, you couldn’t have chips! We had some sweet potatoes instead, but they supply you with lots of bread. Then we had cranachan which for me had too much cream and not enough oatmeal (there are many opportunities to have cream at the Café Royal), and was all blended together like a fool. But you could taste all the different ingredients, so it was OK. We had a really lovely albarino from a reasonably-priced list.

The service was brisk and although it was a bit of a production line it was all very enjoyable in an unfussy way. We went for dinner but I think it would be even better for lunch.