Pickledgreen
158-162 Rose Street,Edinburgh,
EH23JD
0131 220 0477
Price Ratings
£ – inexpensive
££ – mid-price
£££ – expensive
££££ – very expensive
Reviews
A pretty pickle
Review published on 11/01/2010 © Sunday Herald
It’s one think to write a menu, another one to cook it. On paper, Pickledgreen, Edinburgh’s new takeaway-restaurant “deli” says all the right things, employing that “cool” lingua franca now familiar from Innocent Smoothies ads.
It talks of food sourcing: free-range, organic where possible and seasonal, from friendly, small suppliers. Toilets soon to flush with “grey” rain water, LED light bulbs, packaging from bio-plastics and palm leaves, a “sustainability commitment statement”, waste food delivered to the homeless, a “close to paperless office” and the desire to “have our staff grow and mature with us” … how more on-message can you get ?
So, Pickledgreen ought to represent progress. Quite a few restaurants in Scotland now embrace the local/seasonal/green food agenda, but not one has yet gone as far as branding itself as an eco-restaurant, in the spirit of UK pioneers like Barney Haughton at Bordeaux Quay in Bristol. Some establishment had to have a go at this project here and, hopefully, pull it off convincingly. But Pickledgreen doesn’t seem to be it.
I would be tempted to overlook the crude DIY joinery, the depressing lavatories, the prevailing coldness, lack of comfort and hard, noisy acoustics, if the food was up to scratch: but it isn’t. What’s more there may be a disconnect between the sourcing theory and the practice. Apart from featuring seasonal vegetables such as kale and beetroot (along with others, like green beans, which are not), there was nothing else on the menu to differentiate Pickledgreen from thousands of restaurants.
Nothing I ate left me with confidence in the kitchen’s cooking skills. A promising Scandinavian-sounding salad of smoked herring, pickled cucumber and potato was a ordeal. There were bones in the fish, the potato was plainly boiled, stone-cold and of a vapid variety, the leaves standard; the cucumber mouth-muggingly vinegary, the green beans watery. Someone seemed to have forgotten to dress the whole thing. A slight onion and anonymous blue cheese tart came clad in oddly sweetish pastry with a bolt-on salad.
Parsnip tarte tatin was more ghastly proof of how vegetarians and vegans get punished in restaurants. It cost £9 for about half a parsnip, flattened and slightly singed against “puff” pastry which was as airy as a wet face flannel.
Pickledgreen’s self-styled signature dish – slow-roasted pork belly with kale and polenta – dealt a similar body blow to omnivores. This was quite definitely the most ineptly roasted belly pork I have encountered, a square of rubbery skin and unrendered fat that reminded me of those frightening adverts for liposuction.
The creamy polenta tasted as though someone’s hand had slipped with the white pepper, the kale seemed to have been double salted in error. The final irony, however was the “green vinaigrette” which was indistinguishable from the ubiquitous olive-green pasteurised pesto you get in jars. Everything turned up tepid, apart from a side salad (that same undressed line-up again), this time with freezing beetroot.
We proceeded to dessert out of a sense of duty, not with any enthusiasm. Sampling fridge-cold treacle tart with a texture like glue is not an experience I am anxious to repeat. By the time we got to a competent molten-centred chocolate pudding, the damage was already done: I was beyond the forgiveness stage.
With main course prices that just creep into double figures, Pickledgreen looks reasonably cheap but ends up being insidiously expensive, rotten value really, given the lamentable cooking standard. It’s a pity.
Eco chamber is a sound choice for good food
Review published on 07/01/2010 © Sunday Herald
Opening just before the Copenhagen climate summit, Pickledgreen characterises itself as a responsible, eco-friendly restaurant-deli with a series of environmentally and ethically aware initiatives that chef Steve Brown and business partner Mel Cormant hope will become a blueprint for five restaurants across Scotland and the north of England.
Promising to source ingredients locally, organically and free range wherever possible has become virtually mandatory for any new premises seeking to impress. Yet Pickledgreen is also pledging to use energy-efficient induction cookers instead of gas, carefully monitor water use and give food waste to charity for use as fertiliser. They’re also planning to train and employ three homeless people.
All of this is laudable. And while you can expect to hear a raft of similar promises from restaurants pursuing the green pound in the future, the outward signs are that this Edinburgh venture is sincere in its aims.
You can still smell the organic paint a day after opening, a few fixtures need smartening up and upstairs in the dining room, it feels frankly, a little fresh. Our waiter jokes, I pray, that the hot water hasn’t been turned on yet, and in light of their sustainability policies, his colleague probably shouldn’t be offering fresh napkins between courses. Indiscreet and inconsistent as they are though, the staff seem genuinely interested in feedback and their good humour goes a long way to dispelling the cold.
Besides, such quibbling details are doubtless swiftly rectified in a place of such minimal ostentation. There is a Scandinavian, almost Ikea-like vibe to the clean, uncluttered beech wood fittings, with wall mosaics of tessellating right angles, all of which seem unfussy and welcoming rather than affected, suggesting a purity of intention that prepares one for good, uncomplicated dining.
Crucially too, the food speaks for itself, allowing one to dispel any lingering sense of worthiness. Starters are around £5, mains about £10-£12 and there’s a selection of tarts and delicacies on toast for the more casual grazer, the ground floor deli appearing well-stocked with sandwiches and juices for lunchtime trade.
A ham hock terrine looks beautiful and is rich and densely sliceable, served with vibrant strips of pickled carrots and lentils. In lieu of smoked herring, temporarily unavailable, my partner opts for warm sardines, the salty edge well supplemented by a new potato salad and green beans. A rolled goat’s cheese log, served on a granite slate, completes a trio of elegantly presented starters, the arresting flavour of spiced aubergine belying its sludgy grey-brown appearance.
Huge plates and simple, yet artfully arranged main courses foster a fleeting impression of style over largesse, though such concerns are quickly dispelled. Sticky oxtail requires an effort to strip it from the bone, but that’s the nature of the beef and it proves gratifyingly tender with mashed potatoes and apple and beetroot gravy, just right for a biting winter’s day.
Well-cooked roast fillet of hake would benefit from a mustard sauce, as opposed to an isolated spoonful, yet served with a selection of root vegetables it’s otherwise flawless, while a delightfully yielding pink rump of lamb arrives with some delicious lightly roasted parsnips. My dining companions declare themselves full, but I press on greedily with a crumbly chocolate pudding and vanilla ice cream.
Reasonably priced and charmingly idiosyncratic on a street where eateries are generally bog standard or damnably expensive, try Pickledgreen for your sense of eco-karma by all means, but stay and return for the food.