| THE
SCOTSMAN |
SATURDAY,
OCTOBER 1, 2005
|
A
lovely spot for a brief encounter
GEORGE KEREVAN
A
Room in the West End
26 William Street, Edinburgh (0131-226 1036)
The Bill
Lunch for three,
£38.85, excluding drinks
LAWYERS: you can't
live with them and you certainly can't die without them. My real beef
with lawyers is their capacity to wreck a town's restaurant culture.
Lawyers eat out
a lot: to woo clients, to placate clients when they've charged too much,
and to get pissed after they have finished some big "settlement"
(lawyer speak for signing all the legal bumf). So the capacity of the
legal profession to ruin local eating out is significant - and I'm not
just referring to hogging all the best tables.
For most of the
last decade I've had to visit Washington DC a couple of times a year.
DC is the lawyers' town par excellence and it has the restaurants to
prove it. The business of DC is corporate lobbying which you do in places
like The Prime Rib on K Street. Here the ritual is for the waitress
- the only woman visible - to arrive with a cart on which are heaped
huge slabs of raw beef. These look as if Damien Hirst has just sawn
through an Angus bull and deposited a bleeding slice, two inches thick,
on your plate. Macho-like, you compete to see who will pick the biggest,
which is then charred to order. The bill is a serious fraction of the
GDP of a small African country.
Edinburgh isn't
quite as bad yet but restaurant bills here are still piratical. And,
Washington-style, there is absolutely no correlation between price and
quality. So full marks to A Room in the West End for deliberately trying
to combine good food with economy. And what better way to road test
the Room than by taking two lawyers to lunch? (Admittedly they were
female, brilliant and passionate about eating.)
The Room is a popular
bistro in William Street, deep in the heart of Edinburgh lawyer territory.
It has been hiding under Teuchters Bar since 2001, and specialises in
what it likes to call "modern" Scottish cuisine. It is the
creation of Peter Knight and John Tindal, who also operate the similar
A Room in the Town in Howe Street.
The décor
is a classless, cheap and cheerful grunge: no hint of George Street
sophistication here. But I reckon that's the whole aim - nobody will
be put off coming in. The Blonde One (she's read too much AA Gill) admitted
to having been before - it's a Mecca for the after-work crowd.
For lunch you can
pay for dishes individually or have two courses for £10.95 or
three for £12.95. The starters (all £3.65) appeared gratifyingly
soon. My wild mushroom, lentil and goats cheese tartlet was tasty. The
Blonde's salmon escalope was perfectly cooked. The Dark One declared
the chorizo in her chorizo and prawn salad the juiciest ever.
For mains (each
£7.95) the Dark One had grilled barracuda, which is a tropical
fish and definitely not Scottish, unless global warming is happening
faster than I thought. But full marks for enterprise. Barracuda is a
white, flaky, oily fish akin to tuna. We thought it overcooked. It is
better steamed or baked, as it breaks up easily. Helpful hint: in South
Africa they pan fry it with roast bananas and serve with chips.
The Blonde was also
in experimental mood, selecting the chicken with haggis pancake. I wasn't
convinced but she maintained it wasn't as stodgy as one might have imagined.
I thought my pork chop was a wee bit underdone, but getting pork just
right between jaw-tiring and dried-out paper is never easy.
We were just tucking
in when an unexpected and substantial bowl of vegetables arrived, properly
al dente.
We all had puds
(£3.95 each) which turned out to be the best part about the meal.
My peach, pear and raspberry crumble was suitably gooey. The Dark One,
who is addicted to amaretto, had a thick wedge of white chocolate and
amaretto cheesecake, which was declared "glorious". The Blonde
plumped for traditional trifle - always a test and it passed with flying
colours, thanks to a generous sherry allocation.
The Room has a BYOB
arrangement, so you can drink more than one bottle of wine and not worry
that the bill will break your credit card (though they do charge corkage).
If you phone ahead to Oddbins and have a crate of wine delivered to
the restaurant, they promise to chill it and have it ready on the table
when you arrive. We were less focused, so resorted to the Room's own
wine list - modest but very acceptable. We had a crisp Sancerre and
pleasant Fleurie, each for under £20.
Verdict: definitely
go for starters and dessert. Ask if there is a lawyer in the house and
you can probably make your will or buy a house at the same time.
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