I had a homely Sunday lunch at Edinburgh's most ravishing new restaurant
This venue is a real stunner
Gather round, granny has a story to tell.
I remember, in the days before tourist selfies and matcha lattes, Victoria Street had a three-storey cafe, where they sold flavoured coffees.
As a teenager, I used to meet pals there, and the cavernous space was full of cushioned nooks.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure that this was in the same 250-year-old building that’s been taken over by new ‘modern tavern’ Whirlybird, which is named for sycamore tree seed helicopters.
If you remember the place, let me know, because I’m beginning to think I dreamt it. For the last 28 years, this venue has been a Scottish, French and North African restaurant, Maison Bleue. While it was dark and moody, the Whirlybird team, including owner Ash Bairstow, have lightened the space, with vanilla walls and red accents, blush banquettes, wishbone chairs, ruffled shower cap-style light shades and trip-hop tunes.
This occupies three levels, including a downstairs bar, and 100 covers are spread across various rooms, with the kitchen and toilets up in the eaves. It looks utterly ravishing.
I hoped that the food would match the decor, because the cocktails certainly did. They’ve been created by bar manager Jono McDowell, formerly of Panda & Sons. We had a canary yellow Heather and Honey Fizz (£12.50), with beeswax-glazed Lind & Lime Gin, Port of Leith White Port, lemon and honey, for a chilled hot toddy in glamorous and foamy coupe form.
Our Whirlybird Highball (£12.50), from the chalked-up specials menu, featured Woven Whisky, Lucky Bramble, maple, citrus and sofa, for a fruity and fizzily reviving blast.
They’re obviously going to get an awful lot of tourists here, so chef Lucia Gregusova, formerly of Hawksmoor, seems to have pitched the food list to cater for them, as well as us locals.
My other half went for the haggis and ox cheek (£13) starter. After all, you get hung, drawn and quartered if you don’t serve haggis in an Old Town restaurant.
It was a meaty block that looked slightly anaemic in its pale batter, but tasted hearty, with pale pickled neep on the side, a jug of thin but fragrant mushroomy gravy, and a lush date ketchup.
My whipped crowdie was even better. I could eat a trillion of the speckled pumpkin seed crackers. This amorphous set of three came with a tarn of whipped crowdie, which was topped with pickled radishes and fermented honey. Give me this for lunch every day for the remainder of my life, oh please.
I was glad that we’d walked here up the Royal Mile, as my main course of slow cooked lamb belly main (£22) was a beast of a portion, with about four thick wads of meat, each of which had a melting texture and pleasingly caramelised blackened and crispy fatty edges. They came with whole crushed new potatoes, a beanbag of pureed cauliflower, and dots of an intense green apple harissa. The additional pomegranate seeds were perhaps in homage to the building’s former long-term resident.
We also tried the crispy-skinned pan fried hake (£22), which was slightly less luxurious than it sounded, as it came with a rather thin champagne veloute, as well as asparagus and a couple of rich confit cherry tomatoes. It was a good, simple bistro dish, and they know how to make decent fries (£5) too.
You might think that date and brown butter Madeleines (£8.50) are a slightly lighter option for pudding. But no, this trio are not kitty-paw-sized delicacies, but more like a Great Dane’s heavy clodhoppers, and all flanking a pool of toffee sauce with a blob of ice-cream. I guess this was their twist on sticky toffee pudding, but, as boring as it sounds, I’d rather stick with the more absorbent and original sponge. We preferred the burnt cheesecake (£8.50), which was a sturdy cup-of-tea sort of cake. It was threaded with citrus zest and came with a dollop of vanilla-injected poached rhubarb on the side.
The food here is interesting. It sounds modish, but is generally quite rustic and homely, with whopping portions, and relatively reasonable prices. This is a formula that’s well proven, as exemplified by Maison Bleue, and Howie’s, just up the road. If you’re canny, you can really stick on this honeypot of a busy street.
It’s also worth noting that Whirlybird is open from 9am for coffee and pastries, then they continue until late, for seven days a week. That’s dedication.
I’m sure they will soon have longer queues outside than the Harry Potter place across the road.
Granny approves.
36-38 Victoria Street, Edinburgh (0131-226 1900, www.whirlybirdedinburgh.co.uk)
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.