Restaurant Review: The Bonham

January is far too busy a month for my liking - still I should be able to avoid a few weeks without dining out now ... Dinner with friends, postponed from early December, resulted in a meal at the Bonham last weekend.

Wine List

A pretty good selection - we tried a lovely crisp sancerre and a meaty ribera del duero. Both were good and also pretty good value.

Food

Truly excellent food. The amouse bouche was a butternut squash soup with vanilla froth. This was followed by delicious mushroom soup (*2), chicken and foi gras terrine, and seared scallops. For main course, we had chicken and venison - again delicious, but more on this later. Dessert was a mixed affair, with everything from banana tart, to trio of chocolate, and a cheese board - once again we all thoroughly enjoyed the food.

Overall Rating

Decent wine and excellent food with good company made for a very enjoyable night out. But here's the rub: wild horses would not drag me back for a second visit. The reason?? I almost had to get a magnifying glass out to see my main course. The venison was, at £23, the most expensive main available - and 3 of us selected it. Imagine our disappointment when we were presented with two very small slices of meat and a similarly small amount of potatoes and vegetables. Now whilst I appreciate that some restaurants like to serve smaller portions ("pictures on plates" as my father would call them), this was ridiculous. I quite like smaller portions, as it allows me to eat 3 courses, but my starter and dessert were both much larger than my main - surely that can't be right? The fact that the main was so delicious just served to underline the fact that there wasn't much of it at all.

Great food, but the smallest main course I've ever seen means that I won't be rushing back.

Restaurant Review: Forth Floor, Harvey Nichols

Harvey Nichols Forth Floor Restaurant is an award winning restaurant with a great wine list. Better still, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, all wine in the main restaurant is half price, making for a much less expensive night out, and an opportunity to try something special without breaking the bank.

Wine List

What can I say? From a fantastic range of champagnes in half bottles (perfect to share over your starter) to expensive burgundy and a wide variety in between: the wine list is very good indeed. I sometimes feel that the shop prices are slightly more expensive than your other high street wine shops, but this is Harvey Nicks, and they do manage to get wine that you will struggle to find elsewhere (unless you buy online). Take the shop prices into the restaurant, and bargains leap out from every page.

Food

An amouse bouche of goats cheese ravioli started the night - delicious. Not knowing this, I had ordered goats cheese with roasted black figs and onion filo crisps for my starter - but I can never eat too much goats cheese, so I wasn't too disappointed. My partner had hot smoked salmon and avocado purée. Main course, with a great (but not too expensive!) burgundy, was roast chump of lamb with caramelised beetroot, chestnuts, fondant potato: the chestnuts went extremely well, and the lamb was perfectly cooked. Although full, I managed to eat some Apple cheesecake - perhaps the weakest course of the three, but nonetheless very nice.

Overall Rating

I've been to the Forth Floor twice now, and really enjoyed both evenings. The food is very good indeed, the wine list excellent, and the service impeccable. My only complaint is that the restaurant itself is a bit cold - so wear something warm!

Tuesdays and Thursdays offer exceptional value for money.

The Sun Inn, Eskbank: Restaurant Review

The Sun Inn proclaims itself to be Edinburgh's newest gourmet pub. Situated on the A7 near Newtongrange the building, next to Newbattle viaduct, is a landmark I remember from childhood journeys up to the city. It has recently changed ownership, and friends in Newtongrange suggested we go for a meal having read favourable reviews. We booked for a Saturday night and the restaurant was full.

Accommodation

Rooms are advertised from £60 but this appears to be for single rooms, according to the website; doubles look to be about £85 which for Edinburgh probably isn't that bad.

Wine List

An interesting list with a pretty good selection for a pub. They have a nice grüner veltliner but the red we wanted(a NZ Pinot Noir) had sold out over New Year. In the end we settled for a valpolicella which was drinkable. We could have gone for the odd 'trophy' wine - Cristal champagne or Corton Charlemagne for instance. I think it was this that put me off slightly: I don't want to pay £150 upwards for a bottle of wine in a pub, no matter how much of a gourmet pub it's trying to be. Leave that to established top-end restaurants, and perhaps spend the money instead expanding the wine list to include a few more choices.

Food

Very good pub food. The website gives a good idea of what's on offer, and the seafood we tried was excellent. For starters we tasted queen scallops, pate, smoked fish croquettes and langoustines: all were good. The mains consisted of perfectly cooked, good quality sirloin steaks with home made chips and a peppercorn sauce, and game casserole (complete with authentic shot) with barley lentils - both delicious and well cooked. For dessert we tasted a magnificent crème brûlée and a nice, but slightly less inspiring, sticky toffee pudding,

Overall Rating

Food: Excellent pub food - certainly a better selection that the Champany Inn Chop and Ale House, and I enjoyed my dinner here far more than lunch at Champany. Gourmet? Perhaps not quite. Wine list: Trying too hard. Price: pretty good - three 3 course meals, one 2 course meal and 2 bottles of wine worked out at £30 a head (not including tip) - not too shabby at all. Lunch prices are even cheaper.

If I lived in Newtongrange I would certainly go there often. Booking advised for dinner at least.

New Year Walks

A new year, and a new resolution - to work less and get out walking more. The aim - to be able to enjoy a week of walking at the start of May. Now it's been a while, so we are starting small - no Munros for a few weeks yet.

First up then was a stroll over Salisbury crags on New Years day (we were up too late to attempt anything further afield). Arthurs Seat itself was way too busy so we contented ourselves with wandering round the smaller hills.

St Anthony's Chapel

Why climb Arthurs seat on a day like this?

The sun did come out briefly, but there was quite a cold wind blowing, and the swans on St Margarets' Loch were certainly feeling the chill!

Swan on thin ice

The next day consisted of a very muddy struggle through Roslin Glen - not entirely satisfying, so search of something a bit more challenging we headed to the Ochils the day after.

A 10 mile walk over some nice rolling hills, through forests and across open (and slightly snowy) moorland on a circular route around Glen Sherrup. The weather was perfect - freezing (literally) and hardly a cloud in the sky; the views were unexpectedly phenomenal, taking in Ben Lomond, Ben Ledi, Stuc a Chroin and Ben Vorlich, and even Stob Binnein and Ben More far in the distance. A great day out was rounded off with the sight of 3 dippers in the River Devon as we returned to the car.

Ben Vorlich and Stuc a Chroin

Great views!

All Photographs © BrokenMountain 2008