Restaurant Martin Wishart

Most people save fine dining for special occasions. I’ll take any excuse.

It was my first time in Edinburgh and that was good enough for me. And I didn’t just do fine dining, I did it in style – no a la carte for me, I'll take the full tasting menu with matching wines thank you very much. At lunchtime. All by myself.

It was certainly an experience, and dining alone was a much more enjoyable experience than you might expect. Obviously, when I say that, I am taking as a prerequisite that you have a keen interest in food and that you, like me, would prioritise a few hours of flavour-filled fun over, say, a new iPod touch or that designer dress you have been coveting.

Martin Wishart is heralded as one of Scotland’s most innovative chefs, bringing Edinburgh its first Michelin star in 2001 and continuing to impress the critics each year with his blend of traditional and modern French cuisine using the finest and freshest Scottish produce. He opened Restaurant Martin Wishart with his wife, Celine, in 1999 and both the restaurant and his reputation have been growing ever since.

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Ondine

I have just returned back from a gut-busting, gastronomic weekend in Edinburgh. It is a testament to how much I ate over the weekend that today I was perfectly happy with some cereal for breakfast and a Be Good to Yourself sandwich from Sainsbury’s for lunch, usually a guilt-induced chore.

The weekend got off to a disappointing start at Ondine. Voted Scottish Restaurant of the Year in the Good Food Guide 2012, I had reasonably high expectations.

The best bit of the meal was the part they can’t really take any credit for – oysters au natural. Well, they have good suppliers, I’ll give them that, and they were fresher than fresh but that kind of goes with the territory – if they weren’t I would’ve spent the weekend glued to a toilet seat, rather than dining in better restaurants.

There were 3 oysters on and I had one of each - a Dorset, a Maldon and a Carlingford. The Dorset was largest so I ate it first, because they are usually my least favourite. I must have had them out of season before because usually the intense creaminess is too overwhelming for me, but this time it was the selling point. If it had even a hint of the metallic bitterness that an off season oyster can have it would have been too much, but this was clean, fresh and bright.

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Dinner by Heston Blumenthal

When Dinner by Heston Blumenthal opened it seemed the whole culinary world was talking of nothing else. Bloggers and critics alike were singing its praises; not even A.A. Gill could find a negative word to say about it. Getting a booking was like a local trying to get a ticket to the 100 metre final at the London Olympics.

Now, almost a year on, the hype has died down but dinner at Dinner is still an improbability. So I opted for a lunch booking and in the end a leisurely lunch (four hours!) was the perfect way to savour the experience. And who better to share it with than the only person I know who loves Heston more than me, Alex – aka Blumenthal’s Biatch. 

I have had a lot of fine meals in my life – but not because my life has been especially privileged by western standards; where other young women might have spent their first earnings on the latest fashion, I spent mine on dining out. This was definitely in the top three meals of my life.

Part of the attraction for me was that it had all the thought, finesse and elegance of a fine dining meal, without the ponce. There were no fancy foams or mousses, the portions were generous, the presentation was carefully considered but never at the expense of taste, and not one of the ingredients was superfluous, each had its proper place. 

Still, there is theatre here – Ashley Palmer Watt’s is Heston’s protégé after all. The signature dish, and probably my favourite, not least because it managed to live up to expectations, was the Meat Fruit,  a chicken liver parfait encased in mandarin jelly and modelled to look like a mandarin. It was astonishingly realistic, even the jelly was textured to look like the skin. A.A. Gill described it as “A perfect mandarin orange that smells like mandarin, even minutely examined it looks like a mandarin, but, cut open, it is immensely fine chicken liver parfait.”

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Two for ten Tuesday at Public House

It is rare that I get round to writing up a casual dinner date in a local restaurant. It is even rarer that I do so the next day, but I just couldn’t believe the amazing value I experienced at Public House last night.

As I said, it was a casual dinner date and so I did not take notes or spend a lot of time making sure I got the right photos, but looking back on the meal this morning I felt it warranted some attention.

I have only recently started using Top Table; as someone who usually knows exactly where I want to eat and who is willing to pay a premium to eat there, I didn’t think the deals would appeal. I was wrong.

Last week I was supposed to be taking someone to dinner in exchange for their worldly wisdom. It had to be easy to get to from Kings Cross and not too expensive, since I haven’t got a lot of money at the moment. I was pondering various cheap and cheerfuls I know in Islington when my friend, Jen, piped up:

“What about Public House? They often have really good deals on Top Table.”

Suspicious.

“Any good?”

“Yeah, I’ve been there a few times. The food’s great and they do nice cocktails, which I suppose is where they make their money.”

Hmm...

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Top shelf and top nosh in Luján de Cuyo

9am is the new wine o’clock.

My personal rule for drinking is that you shouldn’t have an alcoholic beverage before 12pm. Unless, of course, you have been out all night, in which case drinking in the morning is perfectly acceptable. But if you have had a good night’s sleep and woken up feeling fresh, starting to drink before 12 o’clock – beer o’clock – is stretching into alcoholics territory.

Well, on this day I broke the rules. But with good reason.

A trip to Mendoza will inevitably involve a wine tour of some description. Most people tend to go with the cheap and cheerful bike tours of neighbouring Maipú available on almost every corner in the town centre. My sister did one of these tours and she really enjoyed it, as did lots of the people I met along the way, but I had been told that you don’t really get to try that much wine on those tours and certainly not the good stuff. Lonely Planet recommends two companies that offer deluxe wine tours,

“They’re not cheap, but the benefits are obvious – small group sizes … a knowledgeable English-speaking guide … and access to some of the more exclusive (i.e. better quality) vineyards. Winemakers are much more likely to be getting the good stuff down off the top shelf for you on these tours too.”

My Mum had given me £100 for my birthday before I left which I was to save for something special so I decided to splash out on a tour of Luján de Cuyo with Trout and Wine. The tour cost US$165 (£106) which I thought incredibly reasonable given that included a tour and tasting of three top-end wineries as well a 4 course lunch and matching wines with unlimited top ups at a fourth bodega.

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