Iglu, Edinburgh - Restaurants in Edinburgh | s1play.com

Wild at heart

Review published on 13/03/2006 © Sunday Herald

The English notion of the ‘gastropub’ doesn’t seem to have germinated in Scotland. The Scots traditionally keep food and drink separate so, if we are honest, the idea that a pub might be more than a drinking den is somewhat alien. Your typical Scottish pub chef’s strategy for whisking up a gastronomic meal is to ring suppliers such as Brake, or 3663, and order up the catering trade’s equivalent of supermarket ready meals, so don’t assume your steak pie, or Thai green curry, or roast beef with Yorkshire pudding was made on the premises.

Iglu bar in Edinburgh, however, is different. Its first-floor dining room is a self-styled ‘ethical eaterie’ that aims to ‘lead the way for a more sustainable and ecologically sound way of eating’. On the menu, owner Charlie Cornelius expounds his philosophy of sourcing wild, organic, humanely reared, local and seasonal food, detailing the provenance of his materials.

Wild boar, for instance, comes from a reforestation project in Glen Affric, where the porkers are doing their bit to regenerate the Caledonian forest by rooting away on the forest floor. Not only is the customer treated to the provenance of the ingredients, but also to the pedigree of the chefs. Present incumbents have connections with Darina Allen’s Ballymaloe Cook School, in County Cork, and Michelin-applauded restaurants in London.

There is a youthful naiveté about the menu at Iglu – a sprinkling of spelling mistakes doesn’t help – but its heart seems to be in the right place. A star symbol denotes ingredients that are non-organic but they seem rather random. Why, you might wonder, are the potatoes (spelled ‘potatos’) not organic? Organic spuds are easy to find. The pine nuts, on the other hand, are organic – a tougher item to track down.

There is something amateurish about the set-up too, a quality that can be endearing but which, in this case, wasn’t. The kitchen’s extractor systems seem wholly inadequate for the task. The dining room filled with oily smoke. We emerged smelling pan-fried and had to either wash or air our clothes the next day. Service was slow, although the restaurant was half empty, a consequence of having only one chef struggling away in the acrid kitchen.

That said, the food wasn’t at all bad. There was nothing to fault about an expertly seared sirloin steak with herb butter. Organic pork had been beaten out flat and topped with sage leaves and thin smoked venison in the manner of an Italian saltimbocca. It was ably cooked and terribly tasty, although its flavours were nearly obliterated by a heavy-handed, sweet, sticky gravy.

The gravy on the whole roasted wood pigeon was blacker and stickier still, almost a Marmite consistency, but the bird was tender and full of free-ranging flavours, so much more interesting than all those bloody boned-out breasts that many chefs inflict on us. I like gnawing away on bones. The only other complaint with this dish was that its sautéd ‘potato cake’ turned out to be just a ring of bashed-up fried spuds, not a true potato cake in the Irish sense as the menu description suggested. Seasonal organic vegetables were interestingly stir-fried. You wanted to eat them.

Puddings had a lot going for them. The organic baked chocolate delight, a sort of free-form soufflé made with Green & Black’s dark stuff, was delicious, although my enthusiasm for this brand has waned, now it is owned by Cadbury’s. Organic pears were a tad cold, but nevertheless pleasant poached in chestnut liqueur, and an organic Bramley apple crumble was up to superior home-made standard. Iglu has a good choice of affordable wines by the glass and friendly service. It’s a well-intentioned establishment with rough edges that gets a lot right.