Grazing by Mark Greenaway, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Princes Street, Edinburgh EH1 2AB (0131 222 8857). Starters £9.50-£11; mains £25-£29; desserts £9.50; wines from £25
Repetition leads, inevitably, to expectation. I have sat at so many tables, being told so often that this particular establishment has a whole small sharing plate thing going on, as if they’d decided to make wheels round rather than irritatingly square, that I now assume this is what a restaurant meal is: a parade of small things, which diners must fight over passive-aggressively, in a desperate attempt to get an equal cut.
With this week’s restaurant the clue was in the name. It’s called Grazing by Mark Greenaway and comes complete with a mission statement wrapped around the menu. It declares that “the grazing concept has been a long-held ambition” of the chef, which leads me to mutter under my breath about aiming low. We are invited to “relax, unwind and graze”. But hang on: what’s this? The menu lists arcane things called “starters” and “main courses”. The only dishes specifically designed for sharing are, going by their price tag, ginormous. A shepherd’s pie is £32. Roast monkfish is £58.
Obviously you could order anything you like, demand they all be delivered at once, and then go snout down in them, sans cutlery, like a ruminant hitting the cud. That would be a form of grazing. It would also be extremely unattractive. Instead, I suggest you ignore all the marketing guff and recognise this place for what it is: a serious, sweetly traditional restaurant, serving very clever but still gutsy food, at significant prices, in laid-back surroundings. If you need somewhere to celebrate an impending graduation in Edinburgh, book here.
It would be unfair to describe Greenaway as a little-known chef. He’s had his awards and his TV appearances, and published a cook book. But in Edinburgh his name has sometimes been overshadowed by those of Tom Kitchin and Martin Wishart. It shouldn’t be so. Recently, Greenaway moved out of his eponymous restaurant to this set of interlocking spaces off the ground-floor atrium of the Waldorf Astoria Caledonian. As with so many hotel restaurants it’s a walk to get to the action, through two other huge dining rooms, which could be filled, but aren’t. Think of it as a way of getting your Fitbit steps in, to mitigate the heft of what is to come. The third space is full of solid tables, the obligatory outbreak of tartan and lots of dark wood.
Those deep shades are matched by the still-warm treacle and stout sourdough, the colour of an old leather sofa, with “duck skin” butter. It’s bread and butter, but engineered for the Marvel Universe. It’s full of deep, lusty caramel tones and the butter takes to it, as if to a welcoming lover’s bed. It’s superpowered and so irresistible I eventually have to get it taken away. The menu writing pulls the under-utilised trick of not telling you everything. Compressed discs of deeply piggy ham hock (or “hough”, as here) served at room temperature, do indeed come with the advertised fried quail’s egg and a fanned slice of dehydrated pineapple, the sharpness of which does bring something to the plate. But what makes it is the sizeable dollop of a foamy pea mousse. It turns the dish into a giggly take on pea and ham soup. The cleverness does not overwhelm its more obvious appeal, which is just how fun it is to eat.
Another starter of a fried duck egg, laid at the bottom of a dish like a picnic rug, is covered with fragments of warm confit duck, slices of duck “ham” and unexpected dollops of a bright parsley mayo. To show willing we order a third starter of a still-warm crumpet, heaped with curls of cured trout and with salmon roe. In the middle is yet another egg, this time poached. The repeated eggs in these starters was not intentional on our part, but as each one was perfectly cooked, the yolk ready to run in all the right directions, I’m not going to complain.
The simplest of the dishes is a square of pork belly, slowly rendered over half a day, with crackling like glass, a “toffee apple” sauce, a few greens and a big welcoming pillow of mash. It’s meat and two veg that’s had a facial, its nails done and a full blow-dry. It is drop-dead gorgeous. Even so, it is overshadowed by a sensitively cooked hake fillet, the skin crisped and given a spritz of acidity. Alongside is a shellfish boudin, wrapped in a roll of striped and silky pasta. The whole dish is brought together by a ripe bisque that tastes of the best of shells that have been roasted down to their essence, then lifted from their sticking place by a glug of booze. Simmer all that, strain, reduce again, then bolster with cream. And hurrah: a sauce that puts the headrush into lush.
Even the two side dishes deserve note: golden rustling pieces of “Kentucky-fried” cauliflower (the filthy bastards) and the pop of fresh peas and little gem lettuce bound by a bacony cream sauce. After all that take the hotel-length trudge to the loos. You’ll need the exercise. Because trust me: here, you won’t graze. You’ll trough.
A mixed plate of desserts provides the only head scratcher. A halved doughnut is decorated with bits of fresh strawberry and dollops of white and dark chocolate mousse, and simply isn’t as nice as a freshly made, filled doughnut would have been. Fluffy, diminutive buttermilk pancakes, served warm with syrup, are much better. But the winner is a brown sugar cheesecake with a florentine base. We sigh and fight each other for the last scraps even though we are completely stuffed. With an espresso comes expertly tempered salted caramel mini-chocolate bars.
This is smart, ambitious but not overwrought food, made by a kitchen which is more interested in your pleasure than showing off. Which, at just north of a tenner for starters, and nearly £30 for mains, is as it should be. (There’s also a bunch of pricey steaks plus a list of cheaper “classics” clearly aimed at those staying at the hotel for longer.) Service was cheery. It was delivered by a chap who told us he’d arrived from Budapest a few months ago and liked it here because the people in Edinburgh were very friendly. We didn’t ask him for any of this information, but he volunteered it quickly by way of a greeting. He was a delightful ornament, to what became a stupendous meal.
News bites
Henry Scott’s restaurant in Bath is another great place where the chef is more than happy to put his name above the door, and with good reason. It is a very lovely, small independent, knocking out extremely pleasing food. Try the confit chicken ravioli with garlic purée and broccoli tops to start, followed by the roast duck with savoy cabbage and roast fig. Finish with a warm chocolate tart with Szechuan custard. There’s also an entirely vegan menu (henrysrestaurantbath.com).
With so many restaurants closing for dismal reasons, it’s worth celebrating one shutting up shop just because the time has come. After 18 years, Peter Gordon and Michael McGrath’s Providores and Tapa Room in London’s Marylebone will serve its last diners in July. In a statement the owners said they wanted to ‘travel and relax after working our socks off’ and that they were ‘going out on a high’.
Pret a Manger, which has just swallowed up the 94-strong rival Eat group has announced plans to turn ‘as many as possible’ of the new acquisitions, into vegetarian-only branches. Until now Pret had trialled the vegetarian-only model at just four sites.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
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