Bistro du Vin
11 Bristo Place, Edinburgh
0131 285 1479
Lunch/Dinner £17.95-£55
Food rating: 4/10
THE menu at Bistro du Vin in Edinburgh reads persuasively. A starter of scallop ceviche, marinated in lime juice and pomegranate struck me as appealingly clean and fresh, if forbiddingly pricey at £13.95. "Aromatic Solent squid meatballs" costing half that instantly appealed; only in retrospect did I wonder why an Edinburgh restaurant was highlighting fish from waters around the Isle of Wight. Of course, Hotel du Vin is a UK-wide chain, so put that down to centralised buying.
Bistro du Vin makes good use of culinary words that have inbuilt magic. The mere mention of "hazelnut brioche", for instance, was enough to make me flirt with the idea of choosing the otherwise boring chicken liver paté it came with. "Barbary duck ham"? I wanted to taste that, especially with the words "home-cured" attached. "Heritage tomato" soup was quickly dismissed; I have yet to taste a tomato styled as such that tastes any better than the standard Dutch greenhouse type. But then my eye alighted on the slow-roast Gloucester Old Spot pork belly. Maybe I’d have that? Perverse though it may seem, the best way to stop traditional breeds disappearing is to create a market for them by eating them. And then there was irresistible "salsa verde", another dog-whistle call that triggers a Pavlovian response in me; although would it go with sweet corn and courgette cakes?
On the night, it’s the fixed-price menu that grabs our attention so we flit promiscuously between it and the à la carte. Potted ox tongue – I’m delighted to see this undervalued offal on the menu – is fridge-cold, monotone in its unrelieved meatiness, and its cap of what tastes like semi-liquid duck fat is plain bizarre. The promise of accompanying "sourdough toast" and "home-made salad cream", which had clinched the deal for me, isn’t delivered. The bread is pappy, a pathetic mass-produced attempt at "artisan", and not in the least sour. The salad cream (I can hear you saying, "Told you so!"), tastes like watered down mayonnaise. I’m still hoping that this poor show is unrepresentative, because the squid balls, essentially fragile assemblies of chopped squid flesh, smell and taste fine, although I can’t detect much of the saffron presence mentioned in the menu description in the tomato and saffron sauce, which looks disconcertingly like some half-digested substance.
After a few forkfuls of our main courses, an almost childish sense of disappointment creeps in, and with it the realisation that this experience isn’t going to match expectation. In retrospect, "duck and prosciutto ragout rigatoni bake" should have rung alarm bells. Why mix duck and ham? Is this meant to be a French "ragout" (stew) or an Italian "ragù" (mince meat sauce)? Actually it turns out to be a misconceived British pasta invention: dry rigatoni with shreds of grey duck meat, blobs of chewy cheese, and cured ham grilled stiff as a board.
I know why I ordered the Shorthorn brisket and onion pudding – the lure of suet crust pastry, the rare breed beef – but when I see it looking like a super-sized Tunnock’s teacake under a sauce that’s shinier than cellophane, it doesn’t seem like such a smart choice any more. The pastry is overworked and chewy, the meat sparse, the brown gloop bossily salty. Neither of us can work up any enthusiasm for the "courgettes frites", which waft Eau de Fat Fryer, and have what looks to be gritty polenta flour batter slipping off them.
Service isn’t great here. "What’s the Brillat Savarin cheesecake?” I ask. “Just cheesecake,” replies our waitress witheringly. Turns out it’s named after the eponymous triple cream cheese that’s named after the eponymous French gastronome. It’s blandly inoffensive apart from the rubbery orange jelly, which tastes as much like fresh citrus fruit as the orange cream in a box of Black Magic. It certainly beats the tarte aux pruneaux though. The pastry has a dampness that suggests prolonged refrigeration; it hits the standard you’d expect of a French motorway service station. Overall, not up to scratch for an aspiring boutique hotel chain charging elevated prices.
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