Blueglass
45 Morningside Road,
Edinburgh
(0131-466 7665)
The Bill
Dinner for two, £37.50, excluding drinks I'M QUITE AMAZED TO finally have made it to Blueglass, a new cafe-cum-bistro on the corner of Morningsid
e Road and Church Hill Place. You see, when it was Palmerston's restaurant, I'd made a mental note to visit for dinner sometime, and I'd done the same for its previous incarnation, the Carriage House. Somewhere along the timeline it was Orbis, a Chinese restaurant, but unfortunately that was yet another place doomed to vanish into the culinary ether before I could summon the strength to toddle along the road to sample the chow-mein.
So, sitting in this freshly decorated aqua and crisp white-painted restaurant feels like quite a coup. I almost want to hold on to my seat, in case they try to pack the furniture into a removal van while I'm eating. My sister Louisa and I have popped along to sample their evening bistro selection, as opposed to their daytime cafe selection of margherita pizza, coronation chicken paninis and the like.
From a rather compact menu, junior chose the old-fashioned starter of oxtail soup (£3.50). This isn't exactly out of character. She recently bought a couple of slices of tongue to put in her packed-lunch sandwiches – only to be told by the man behind the supermarket deli counter that she was the only customer under 70 ever to have asked for it.
As I'm a couple of years older, but rather less geriatric at heart, I chose the terrine of duck and bacon with rhubarb and plum chutney (£4.50).
I was expecting some kind of rich and herby concoction but what arrived, sitting alongside leaves of stiff iceberg lettuce, was more akin to a slice of tinned Spam. It didn't taste of much at all, unless you smothered it in the overly syrupy "jam" that accompanied it.
My little sister wasn't overawed by her thin soup either.
"It tastes like one of those packet soups that you add water to," she grumbled, dipping a slice of white baguette into the dark-brown pool.
Thankfully, my main course of pan-fried sea bream on a bed of roast aubergine, peppers and courgette (£10.50) was less like war-time food. The fish was fresh and moist and the long strips of vegetables were fine. The one thing missing was any sort of seasoning. In fact, this was the plainest food I've sampled since my last hospital stay (1983, adenoids out, in case you were worried).
Poor Louisa felt the same about her breaded pork on Napoli spaghetti (£9.50). This was simply a plump escalope perched on top of what looked, and tasted, like the kind of canned pasta in bright-red tomato sauce that students survive on. I'm sure the chef wasn't cynical enough to just open a tin and decant it on to the plate but what's the point in hand-crafting something if the end result isn't quite as nice as something by Mr Heinz? We were crying out for garlic, black pepper or a few chopped onions, at the very least.
Never mind, we were consoled by our bottle of Kleine Zalze Bush Vines Chenin Blanc 2005/06 (£14) and the thought of trying a couple of the five or six varieties of cakes and traybakes, displayed under a glass counter by the till.
Swithering over a naughty-looking carrot cake, I decided to go hell for leather and opted for a thick doorstop of chocolate fudge cake (£4.50), while Louisa ordered a slice of homemade lemon tart (£4.50), both with whipped cream.
By the time our gateaux arrived, it was almost 9pm and the shutters were being pulled down, so we began to feel a bit rushed. The staff (who were lovely) did tell us not to hurry. However, guilt at the thought of them having to stay late made us feel pressured to scoff our rather dry and undevilish cakes as fast as we could, before grudgingly accepting our enforced early night.
Heading home past Morningside's cute little boutiques, my sister and I mulled over our meal at this funny little restaurant. Perhaps we're just being superstitious, but we decided that whoever thought they could take their chances and open a restaurant on this tricky corner must be very brave, although curiously, not quite fearless enough to add some salt to their terrine, garlic to their pasta and dollops of butter icing to their cakes.
Nevertheless, if their day menu is less frugal, or if there's a market for self-denying cuisine in the southside of Edinburgh, they might just survive. Otherwise, there's the ghost of a chance that this eatery will join Palmerston's (which I've heard was very good), the Carriage House and Orbis, and this cursed corner site will soon have a To Let board hanging from its cheerful Blueglass sign.
The full article contains 834 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
