Saffy's Cafe Bar & Brasserie, Ayr - Restaurants in Ayr | s1play.com

Middle of the Road

Review published on 20/05/2009 © Sunday Herald

What passes through the mind of a chef when composing a menu? Putting on dishes that will prove popular, ingredient costs that allow for a decent gross profit margin, being realistic about dishes that the kitchen can handle under pressure... just some of the practical considerations. Then there are the strategic decisions about what sort of image you want to project. Do you want to come over as a sparky restaurant that marches to its own tune, or do you prefer to follow the pack, never asking diners to step outside their comfort zone? Either way, there's one thing that would seem to be a universal requirement: variety.

This doesn't necessarily mean having a menu the size of a book. You can have two pages devoted to pizza alone, another two to pasta or steaks, but each dish is just a variation on the other. I'm talking about a qualitative, not quantitative, choice, a menu that exploits the full palate of tastes and sensations - rich and spicy, clean and fresh, raw and slow-cooked, crunchy and smooth, comforting and challenging, and so on.

Looking at the regular menu at Saffy's, the café brasserie in Ayr, I felt a wave of familiarity wash over me. It was predictable, perfectly OK, but nothing to get excited about. So I turned my attention hopefully to the daily specials menu, featuring eight starters and nine main courses, only to find myself struggling again to make a choice.

Then I realised that the problem was repetition.

Chicken, which I won't eat unless it's guaranteed free-range, appeared no fewer than six times. Salmon, which I avoid unless I'm convinced it isn't farmed, cropped up twice, as did chorizo and duck. Linguini featured three times, as if there was no other noodle known to man. Couscous was represented twice( a radical choice of “fragrant couscous salad” or “zingy couscous salad”) but was eclipsed by guacamole and mustard, which each turned up thrice.

Having eliminated the ”must-avoid” items, our choice shrank alarmingly and we still ended up with one repetition. Crumbly black pudding, made into a crisp fritter and served with a juicy apple salad and a mellow fruity chutney, made a perfectly nice starter but didn't really add much to a main course of pork belly. The latter did need a bit of help. The cooking goal should be to render most of the fat, get the skin to crackle, and produce tender strands of meat. This hadn't happened and any contrasting textures that might have been achieved would have been ruined anyway by being covered in a creamy wholegrain mustard sauce. Served with mashed potatoes, the dish seemed fatty, stodgy and dull.

Ubiquitous seabass - there's tonnes of farmed stuff from Turkey and Greece around - was perfectly competently grilled.

The linguini underneath, studded with a few crayfish, some lemon zest and lots of cream, was most unexciting. The menu promised chilli and basil but, if present, these aromatics made no impact on the taste of this dish.

Judged in retrospect against this homogenous backdrop, the neat starter of smoked haddock under a quilt of Welsh rarebit with its refreshing tomato salad seemed positively revolutionary.

Pork belly apart, the cooking at Saffy's seemed pretty steady and the desserts didn't let the side down. Once again, they were just a bit boring and predictable: creme brulee, the inevitable sticky toffee and Bailey's jobs.

True, these are standard kit on many menus, but usually there is one option that is slightly less commonplace, just a little bit more thrilling. Here, a rather top-heavy rhubarb crumble was the most memorable item.

The timidity and play safe-ness of Saffy's menu surprised me. Arriving in Ayr on a sunny Saturday race day, the town seem positively charged and animated. Glamorous, bronzed beauties tottered around in killer heels and revealing dresses, fluttering false eyelashes. The beach and promenade were stiff with excitable people, energised by what felt like the arrival of summer. A stretch limo, with a gaggle of giggly girls leaning out its windows, projecting a giant plastic phallus, toured round the centre.

Put it this way, Ayr doesn't seem to be buttoned up and dully conformist, so maybe it's time to loosen the food stays and enliven its restaurants. I have still to have a meal there that excites me.