Café St Honoré

Thistle Street, Edinburgh

visited 4/6/10

Café St Honoré is a French restaurant that looks like one--it has a bistro feel, although it does proper-restaurant-type food. It has been in Edinburgh for ever, but has recently been taken over by the Atrium (my all-round favourite Edinburgh resto). And it's great. It has a nice feel with tables on two different levels in a room with various nooks. We were served by a proper grown-up waiter and it was all a very satisfying experience. First up for me: crab salad with cucumber. The crab was the freshest I’ve had for ages and there was plenty of it (personally I would have liked something a bit zingier as well as the cucumber, but the dish itself was fine). Then we both had mutton which they managed to produce both rare and tender. The waiter explained that this was through a double cooking process, but it seemed pretty magical to me. The flavour was great. This came with bright green, crunchy but perfectly tender savoy cabbage (which I can never get to come out this green) with very good quality pancetta, and a great dauphinoise, with a carrot puree that was so delicious it must have been more than just carrot (I suspect celeriac). All classic stuff, but you couldn't imagine it being better.

The wine list is quite short and it's hard to find any obvious bargains among the French bottles--we gambled on a beaujolais (from the appropriately-named M. Lardy, given our intake) standing up to the mutton, which it did.

No room for puddings, but they were of a French kind.