When it's good, it's very very good, but...

Alas, poor Bruno.

Sygn

15 Charlotte Lane, Edinburgh (0131-225 6060)

The Bill

Dinner for two, £48.15, excluding drinks

A long and sad silence followed, which was briefly interrupted by the arrival of a Spartan pasta joint called Bisi. But seeing those grand rooms stripped down to bare wood and white walls was like visiting a former duchess in the poorhouse, and the drab menu enhanced that effect, so it has been quite a while since my last visit to this part of town. So long, in fact, that I invited Horatio to accompany me in case I got lost.

Our destination was Sygn - a new bar and restaurant which was voted Style Bar of the Year last November in the Scottish Licensed Trade News Awards. Sygn is so cutting edge in the style stakes that it does not require to put its name on any sign, whatever the spelling. (Names are so over! Just ask that artist chappie who used to be called Prince.) Instead, a fluorescent pink rectangle advertises the desirability of the premises - to those who know that a pink rectangle means Sygn. And that Sygn means right-on. What I hadn't expected Sygn to signify was a restaurant formerly known as Rafaelli.

"What would poor Bruno think of this?" I asked Horatio as we elbowed our way into the neon-slashed gloom of the bar area. "I think he'd send out for several more gravediggers." We had booked a table in the restaurant proper (though there is a bar menu available) because the judges who declared the place style bar of the year were reported to have been "wowed and bowled over by its opulent decor" which they were led to believe was inspired by Paris and New York.

"Which parts of Paris and New York?" giggled Horatio as we quit the angular chic of the cocktail bar for ... another realm entirely. We seemed to have arrived in Planet Spray Paint. Or Kmart's interpretation of King Midas's cloakroom. Wedged amid am-dram crushed velvet curtains, gold-sprayed plasterwork and TK Maxx mirrors, were railway carriage-style high-backed booths, looking grimly penitential, like a row of puritans' tall hats at a Mexican Saint's Day fiesta. It was most strange. But nothing compared to the wine-chilling facility. As the waitress placed the bottle we had ordered on the table, she leaned towards Horatio and seemed to be attempting an assault on his nether regions. It turned out the ice bucket was hidden - commode-style - in a central compartment in the banquette seating. You simply lifted the upholstered lid, et voila! A groper's get-out-of-jail-free ticket, clad in purple plush.

This was a little unsettling, especially as the first page of the menu was headed "solids" but maybe that's a digestive thought too far. So I turned the page to find a list of 12 items labelled "beginnings", after which came "the middle" and - can you guess? Wrong! Before "The End" comes "additions". We used to know them as vegetables, but that was long before the era of the pink rectangle and the ice bucket commode.

The menu is global in its sweep, though with a distinct Asian accent. There were Vietnamese pork ribs, Japanese Gyoza dumplings, five-spice calamari, chilli chicken wings ... or a way of sampling the lot via a shared mezze platter at £16.95. When this arrived, eyes widened, jaws dropped and cheeks reddened at the embarrassing lavishness of the yard-square platter. I swear there was enough food for six. Alongside the calamari, chicken wings, ribs and tempura veg was houmous, beetroot, olives and bread sticks wrapped in Parma ham. Best were some unusual, light and refreshing zucchini puffs - like balls of deep-fried tzatsiki. Otherwise, as is often the case with huge assemblies of fried food, most items were not quite A1. The calamari was a bit chewy, the ribs a bit tough, the chicken wings even tougher. But the overall effect was still astonishing. We truly do eat with our eyes, and on a visual level this was the Bo Derek of starter platters. A clear ten.

The same was true of my main course: king prawn and vegetable noodles (£9.25), which was a Zen masterpiece of presentation - the prawns marching down a narrow white porcelain highway, set at right angles to the noodle bowl, both of them atop a lacquered tray. Only this time, it did taste every bit as good as it looked . Horatio had chosen pan-fried halibut (£12.95), which was crispy skinned but still deliciously moist within. Thai fried rice made a fragrant accompaniment.

If only the chef (or we) had stopped there. But we didn't and he should have been. For pudding we ordered blueberry and white chocolate samosas, with vanilla ice-cream (£4.50). This was molar-rattlingly sweet in the Indian style and not improved by deep frying. A grievous offence to both waistband and palate. A brioche with mascarpone, strawberries and pistachio nuts (also £4.50) looked like something one might whip up for an unexpected guest. "Just spread the cheese on the wedges of bread, Jeremy, slice a few strawberries and we'll call it pudding. Aunt Ethel will never know the difference." Unfortunately we did, and we wouldn't call it pudding.

So Sygn is a strange place indeed. Some of it very good, some of it far too gold, and a lot of it simply weird.