I tried a lingering £35 lunch at this luxury Edinburgh hotel restaurant
This restaurant is in the middle of the festival action
There are dining rules to follow before any Edinburgh Festival Fringe show.
Don’t eat anything too stinky or soporific. Avoid grub that will make you bloat like Humpty Dumpty, just as you need to fold and wedge yourself into a tiny rickety seat.
Also, do any pre-theatre munching when you can. The queues and crowds mean that you never know where your next meal is coming from. There are always annoyingly organised people who will have booked every restaurant weeks in advance.
If volume is your aim, bag a seat in Italian restaurant Eve, which is in the hoaching-ly busy heart-of-it-all Cowgate and is part of the city’s vast four-year-old, five-star Virgin hotel.
It’s currently offering a Long Italian Lunch. Essentially, this is an eat-all-you-want buffet, for £35pp, and it runs from 12:30pm-3:30pm on Sundays throughout August, and into the autumn too. We were booked to see Graham Norton as he recorded a live Virgin Radio show, right next door at the hotel’s own venue, Greyfriars Hall, so this couldn’t be TOO much of a lingering lunch. He was on at 2pm, so we had 90 minutes to fill our boots.
Other diners were in the same boat. Still, it’d be easy to forget the time, as the jazzy live band, who were doing numbers including The Girl from Ipanema and Georgia on My Mind, made me feel all leisurely, like I was on a cruise ship holiday. Our first food sweep involved the ‘antipasti stations’ that are set up on the mezzanine level.
The pretty floral plates seem quite small, but don’t worry, as they can swap them for fresh versions as you go, and you can revisit this area as many times as you like.
Well, I hope so, as that’s what we did. We only stopped briefly at the bread zone which featured lumps of focaccia, sliced baguette, olive oil, sea-salted bread sticks and other carbs.
As a buffet veteran, I avoided taking anything from here. You don’t want to fill up too quickly. Protein - as far as sating hunger and getting your money’s worth goes - should be your priority.
We concentrated on the seafood. There’s hot smoked salmon, beetroot-y gravadlax, regular smoked salmon, and prawns in a thick and Mr Blobby-hued cayenne-pepper-dusted mayonnaise. Oysters on ice, too. And sheets of Parma ham and salami, all neatly folded like napkins on a long serving platter.
The formaggio is stationed nearby.
“Cheese and fish on the same plate?” said my other half, when observing my spoils. Honestly, you’d think he was the buffet police.
There’s a huge and ripe-looking dolcelatte, and two other cheeses - tallegio and pecorino romano - all prettily displayed, like a still-life painting, along with porcelain artichokes, a shopping basket and painted crockery.
They say that a daily portion of cheese should be matchbox-sized, but I was thinking about the jumbo-sized Zippo lighters, as I happily served myself vast chunks.
Grab your long tongs for the Salad Bar. No labels were visible, so we weren’t quite sure what we were bagging, but most of the options were easily identifiable. There was a huge bowl of quartered tomatoes and mozzarella. Also, a mixture of cooked broccoli and dates, which seemed an unlikely pairing, but was perfectly pleasant. We also discovered a mayo-clad smoky chicken number, with endive leaves; squishy cooked courgette discs in a herby green goddessy dressing, and a rice-based offering with sundried tomatoes and Parmesan.
Take these back to your seat, and wait for the mini hot dishes to do their rounds on trays that are carried by the eager-to-help staff.
We were offered pint-sized portions of cod in passata, pork belly in a blended salsa verde sauce, and mushroom risotto. The mini pizzas - pepperoni or Margherita - were the best of these offerings. Each had a blistered crust and was the size of a chihuahua’s face. I’d probably stick with a couple of those, and the cold goodies. I basically ate my weight in cheese and salmon.
Our hot things got rather neglected, though we did manage to factor in a visit to the carbonara station, where they’re doling out portions of this guanciale-studded dish.
For pudding, there’s a cream-heavy tiramisu and/or a ricotta-filled cannoli topped with chocolate sauce, pistachios and a cherry. We shared both, and checked the time at 1:30pm. Impressive. It’s amazing how much you can eat, when there’s a time limit. Alla Frutta.
Our show was a very enjoyable three hours long, as Norton spoke to guests including Gail Porter, and we were unbothered by rumbles and garlicky breath.
I did feel slightly Humpty Dumpty-ish, but that’s what happens when there’s no portion control.
As far as festival feeding goes, this place does the job.
18-20 Cowgate, Edinburgh (0131-526 4810, eveedinburgh.com)
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