Café Bohème, Aberdeen - Restaurants in Aberdeen | s1play.com

Bohemian tragedy

Review published on 22/06/2009 © Sunday Herald

I was reading the crime writer Stuart MacBride’s gripping first book, Cold Granite, on the train to Aberdeen recently. (I know, the rest of the world is now on to his latest bestseller, Blind Eye – I’m catching up.) I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to get to my destination.

Firstly, because I’d have to put down the page-turner; secondly, because MacBride’s Aberdeen is a scary place, a city stalked by serial killers, perpetually freezing and raining to boot. And judging by the diet of Jelly Babies and after-work cocktails enjoyed by the detectives, the eating and drinking habits of the population are quite frightening too.

The Aberdeen tourist board can’t be best pleased with Mr MacBride. Mind you, it’s amazing how reading about gory murders can make you want to go to a place. I have been desperate to go to Stockholm and its archipelago ever since reading Steig Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Sick and perverted, I know.

Café Bohème is in that distinctive quarter of Aberdeen, down below Union Street, going towards the docks, which is, how shall I put it, edgy. It seems perpetually deprived of sunlight in that special, cold granite way; and its mightily atmospheric, historic lanes make the closes of Edinburgh’s Old Town seem positively friendly. Nightlife in and around here is, to put it diplomatically, somewhat colourful. Aberdeen is, after all, Scotland’s principal port and ports do offer a rich canvas for writers like MacBride: drugs, people trafficking, fights, prostitution, etcetera.

So it was wonderful to arrive at Café Bohème in Windmill Brae – all warm and comforting, it was like getting a big cuddle from provincial France in the 1950s. Nothing special to look at from outside, it gets much better within. The slope of the brae allows for two levels – three, if you count a further gallery. The stony walls are exposed and hung with modern paintings of food and contented diners. It feels like a restaurant that is loved by both owners and patrons.

Our meal started off promisingly but went downhill thereafter, the nadir being the side vegetables: a lazy, thoughtless combo of mangetout peas cooked olive-green and fried mushrooms. Initially, I was inclined to think the meal would be fine. There was a starter of Roquefort crème brulée, ever so slightly sweet, but basically good and nicely complemented by its rocket and pine kernel salad, if not by a superfluous disc of puff pastry with cherry tomato and rubbery cheese. A ham hock terrine was arguably a bit salty, but I forgave that since I liked both the idea and the execution of its accompanying leek salad, done in the traditional Cuisine Grandmère way (marinaded in a hot mustardy vinaigrette).

I hesitated over ordering the fricassée of scallops, and was right to do so because it confirmed all my fears of ingredients swamped in bland sauce. The scallops had almost no flavour except what they had absorbed from crudely seasoned, lurid orange chorizo. They were cooked with wild garlic leaves and fennel (this is what attracted me to the dish), but these ingredients were drowned out by the bossy chorizo and lost in sauce.

Pork belly in a cider and fennel sauce provided good crackling, but the strands of meat were dry. It came with polenta into which had been mashed black pudding – not an entirely bad idea. The dreaded side veg were the last thing it needed. If ever a dish cried out for the time-honoured French salad of frisée endive, then this was it.

It’s always a bad sign when menus are written in that dated, poncey language of “trios”, “quartets” and the like. Both our desserts were “trilogies” and not one element from the six was up to scratch. The chocolate triumvirate involved something that tasted like a freezer-hard choc ice, an unexceptional chocolate goo served in a shot glass and a minute square of pistachio cake with a larger than life almond flavour. An apple ensemble offered a dull crumble, mean on its promised pecans, a rock hard sorbet and apple chunks on a disc of pastry masquerading as Tarte Tatin.

When eating out is this exciting, I’d rather stay in and read my book.