Joanna Blythman review: Field Grill House, Edinburgh

Looking back in retrospect at my visit to the new Field Grill House in the capital’s Stockbridge, I now see that my proclivity for this crisp, oleaginous taste experience was particularly rampant that night. An alternative way of looking at my uncannily consistent selection is that crumbs and crunch loom large on this menu. It is, let me stress, perfectly possible to construct a meal of options here that don’t tout this mouth-pleasing texture, but when you read the descriptions, you might just find yourself selecting dishes that tick the box.

Can you hear, for instance, the rustle of promise in the word “rissole”, the reality stuffed with emollient ham hock and crowned with a poached egg gilded in a luxuriant Béarnaise sauce? What pleased me about this protein and fat-rich line-up (apart from the impeccably poached egg and the up-front tarragon presence in the sauce), was the tensile crushed breadcrumb coating on the meaty-dense rissole that so efficiently contained the meat, yet cracked open so obligingly. And can you spot the possibilities in this description: “goats’ cheese panna cotta, walnut crumb, truffled honey, apple, goats’ cheese beignet”? Not just one CC opportunity, but two? The actuality did not disappoint. Can you imagine the contrast of the deeply cheesy, smooth panna cotta with the cleanly fried “beignet” (a word that was merely a fraudulent French front for Japanese-style Panko crumbs), the latter oozing molten cheese, side by side with crisp fresh green apples, crumbled walnut, all united by the bosky sweetness of the honey?

And clock the CC possibilities in this main course proposition: “roast cod, chorizo crust, confit leeks, crispy prawn balls, chilli jam”. Faced with that description, I temporarily lifted my chorizo embargo (it’s just too overbearing a flavour most of the time) but may now rethink it, for here was a flamenco-like lick of smoked paprika tempered by crushed CC adding life to firm athletic fish. And although there were not one but three prawn balls, their contents – full-tasting prawns and ample lemon zest – stood up well to their CC armoury. Beetroot and feta cannelloni was definitely the best vegetarian main course I have tasted in quite some time. The beetroot, roasted or baked perhaps, had the deep umami savouriness you find in an intense sauce made with really ripe tomatoes, and it melded effortlessly with the liquified creamy cheese, fresh pasta, and slightly medicinal edge of the nut-brown sage and onion butter. Also on this plate – how could I forget? – was a CC ball of something I take to be nuts, possibly walnuts again, and to improve the shining hour, a handful of handmade root vegetable crisps, a further foil for the slippery, smooth pasta.

Only at dessert did the CC theme go into abeyance, but this doesn’t mean the kitchen takes its eye off the ball. Desserts are sumptuous at Field Grill House, texturally, its all satin and silk and velvet. So there was a preserved lemon parfait, essentially ice cream, inside an alabaster-like structure of thin, chewy white chocolate fudge, encircled with fresh raspberries, and topped with a magenta pink sorbet of raspberry gin, plated up like planets in the solar system. A glossy chocolate and coffee délice was more grounded and temporal in appearance, the richness of its stiff, yet still liquid core mitigated by a cool milky ice cream.

From outside, there’s nothing much to distinguish the Field Grill from hundreds of other restaurants, and it still feels a bit squeakily new. But crispy-crumbed or otherwise, there’s a lot of carefully prepared and thoughtfully produced food to be had here.