GetStuffed FoodDrinkRestaurants
Dom’s Domain One of Edinburgh’s headline restaurants now has a sister establishment in the city centre. Donald Reid listened to the harmonies
> RECENT OPENINGS The best of the new restaurant, café and bar openings in Glasgow and Edinburgh, covered in every issue by The List’s team of independent reviewers
Glasgow
JAMIE’S ITALIAN 1 George Square, City Centre, 0141 404 2690, www.jamieoliver.com, £16 (lunch)/ £20 (dinner) You may think Glasgow does not need another 250- covers-worth of Italian restaurant but the sainted Mr Oliver certainly brings something a bit different. The place is brimming with creativity and the proprietor’s God-like status infuses the place and its fired-up staff. For all the imaginative flair, however, there are some weaknesses in the main dishes, with the ‘homemade’ pasta proving disappointingly ordinary. Still, at these prices it is only a quibble.
TROPEIRO 363 Argyle Street, City Centre, 0141 222 2102, www.tropeiro.co.uk, £9.95 (set lunch) / £21.50 (set dinner) Glasgow’s latest concept diner, Tropeiro, has arrived to extend the summer with an all-you-can-eat-in-your- seat barbecue buffet. Thanks to a traffic-light card system – green, more please; red, I am full – great hunks of hot, sizzling meat keep arriving at the table on giant skewers. To accompany there are salads, olives, chillies, peppers, rice, potatoes and even more meat in the form of Feijoada, a tasty pork and black bean stew, as well as the Caipirinha, a Brazilian cane rum and lime cocktail that makes you forget the grey skies in two slurps.
Edinburgh
C astle Terrace is the difficult second album from The Kitchin. Set up and backed by Tom and Michaela Kitchin, the new place offers a sister restaurant located in the city centre. Many of the original’s appealing attributes, such as the linen-free tables and muted contemporary decor, overlap. Tom Kitchin, however, remains resolutely behind the stoves in Leith, with Edinburgh-born Dominic Jack, who first met Kitchin at Gleneagles Hotel and subsequently worked in various distinguished restaurants in France, in charge of the new kitchen as chef patron. For now, Jack’s menu is clearly inspired by the ethos of The Kitchin, but his ambition and independent profile mean he’s unlikely to remain long in his mentor’s shadow. He offers his classical style to an articulate list of interesting local ingredients, from Newhaven spider crab to Perthshire giroles, serving clean tastes, intriguing textural contrasts and precisely presented dishes. As is frequently the case
with Michelin-starred (or Michelin aspiring) venues, meat dishes are perhaps too rich and intense, whereas seafood and vegetarian options offer better examples of the art and imagination of the kitchen: a tingling, punchy tomato gazpacho with mustard ice- cream or a light, fresh mackerel tartare with apple sorbet being fine examples. + Spending a mouth-watering 15 minutes at the aperitif table watching the busy kitchen – By night, curtains close off any sense of city-centre buzz
CASTLE TERRACE
33/35 Castle Terrace, West End, Edinburgh, 0131 229 1222, www.castleterracrestaurant.com,
Tue–Sat noon–2pm, 6.30–10pm. Closed Sun/Mon Ave. price two-course meal £19.50 (set lunch)/
£35 (dinner)
THE APARTMENT 7–13 Barclay Place, Southside, 0131 228 6456, £11.80 (set lunch) / £20 (dinner) Ten years after first opening and galvanising the contemporary dining scene in Edinburgh, The Apartment has been made over. Aiming to craft an old-school, bohemian Parisien brasserie with a contemporary stamp, owner Malcolm Innes has taken down walls, lifted ceilings and opened up the front. Where once there was sisal and pine, there’s now oak and dark red walls, with low-hanging lamps and slow- turning fans giving the place a conspiratorial, sultry feel. Out too have gone the skewers and beetroot pittas: now it’s rustic, classical food from baked duck egg or salmon and crab rillette to various slow-cooked choices such as braised shin of beef or coq au vin.
19–26 Aug 2010 THE LIST 91