North Bridge Brasserie

North Bridge, Edinburgh

visited 7/10/09


Right. My listcard has been reactivated and I'm having 2 for 1 around Edinburgh and Glasgow. My first pick is this place which I used to go to occasionally for cocktails, until they served me a bright yellow whisky sour. It's the entrance room of the former, very grand Scotsman newspaper building. Since being converted to a hotel the use of this space has been aesthetically weak. The hotel has broken up and obstructed this Victorian liminal spacee with a central bar and a ridiculous steel staircase right in front of the door. Last year they changed the space to demarcate two distinct areas, which works better given the original mess-up. It's a subdued, spacious area--good for an intense intellectual conversation or a rapt romantic dinner. Most tables have a view of the Balmoral Hotel skyline, which is OK. But on to food.

I had a perfect piece of smoked eel with a very well judged celeriac remoulade and a beetroot puree that balanced the slight oilinees of the eel. A lovely, sensuous dish. Then a piece of roast cod (local, which is bad and non-sustainable but then I don’t have a car) with chorizo. The cod was a few seconds overcooked so it had lost its pearly translucence but hadn’t yet dried out. The chorizo was excellent: light, dry and not fatty, but with an immediate, clean spiciness that didn’t assault the fish. I live near a Spanish deli and I can’t get chorizo as good as that. The sauces were both understated, presumably so they didn’t compete: a rouille and an allegedly bouillabaisse sauce. It would have been much better to stick with one and make the flavour more recognisable.

We both had pudding I tried my companion's very accurate passion fruit baverois with a delicious, hauntingly-floured cardamom ice cream—a lovely dish. I had something descried as a café-crème: a hugely indulgent thing somewhere on the blancmange/mousse spectrum with a dark chocolate sorbet which was a pure and stunning expression of chocolate. Both luxurious and generous desserts.

The wine list has a sizeable markup but there seemed to be a number of decent bottles for around £20. Our unoaky Chilean chardonnay (Vina Mar) was really good—light and lemony on the palate but with real depth.

The waiting staff are knowledgeable and enthusiastic on the edge of pushy. The prices are reasonable, but you may need a side dish and the staff push them. Otherwise the service was excellent

For £60 (including tip and coffee) all this was an extraordinary bargain. Would I come here without the listcard? I want to: they tried to make a good impression and succeeded. But it is all slightly predictable and hotelly, and I think you can eat a more exciting meal in more thoughtful surroundings in Edinburgh. Now I feel guilty as it was really good. Perhaps the pretheatre menu (which they generously proffered on the cusp) is the way to work up to full price