The Vintners Rooms, Edinburgh - Restaurants in Edinburgh | s1play.com

The Vintners Rooms

Review published on 21/01/2004 © Sunday Herald

It's great to see an old favourite come good. The Vintners Rooms is back on form. For those not familiar with the locale, it's a restaurant in the merchants' rooms which once traded claret from France.

The original room itself, beautifully proportioned and corniced, is lit only by candles in the evening. It qualifies as one of the most romantic restaurants anywhere. The larger dining area is another deeply atmospheric spot with its well-seasoned wood panelling and crackling fire.

The new proprietors, Laure Pagés and Patrice Ginestière, natives of the Lozère area of Languedoc Rousillon, have made it even more pleasing by putting in a long, sweeping zinc bar top.

The Vintners Rooms deserve a good chef, and with Ginestière, I was, for once, speechless.

I'm getting hungry just thinking about my starter of stuffed quail with Puy lentils. My dining partner didn't think it sounded that sexy, but believe me, he was begging for some once he'd tasted a titbit. The bird was given the French "ballotine" treatment, boned out and stuffed with a pretty, moist, faintly tarragon-scented forcemeat. It was served cold, sliced into rounds. The lentils were still firm, their mealiness offset by a minuscule mirepoix-sized diced of carrot, onion, parsley and chervil and a lemony olive oil dressing. Still he wasn't suffering, what with his starter of risotto nero and roasted prawns. The rice oozed its mellow grey squid inkiness to just the right degree. The prawns won an "essence of excellence in matters crustacean" badge. Around the rice sat a little pool of pinkness that had the depth you find in the best Mediterranean fish soups.

I have been ambivalent about venison. Now I adore it, if it is cooked as Ginestière's was. It looked like a raggedy rare steak, only with a coarse grain, as if it would be tough. But it offered no resistance whatsoever. Its dark chocolate sauce was a feat of alchemy. It managed to taste a bit like the deep-cured flavours you get in good charcuterie plus the fruitiness of raisins, but there was a definite black pepper presence and a whiff of juniper.

Then there was the veal, which tasted more like the older veal/young beef Italians call "vitellone". That is to say, it wasn't white and it had flavour. It came topped with tiny fried chanterelles and a peasanty gratin of floury potatoes cooked in meat stock, rather than the ubiquitous cream, extravagantly seasoned with thyme.

Food like this merits fine wine. Happily, the Vintners Rooms retains its relationship with Raeburn Fine Wines which has put together a thoughtful and unpredictable list, with a welcome Old World bias. Mark-ups are not greedy and for once, there's a really decent selection of half bottles, such as our exceptional De Forville Barbaresco.

One the pudding front, there's more documentary evidence of a chef at ease with every skill ever catalogued by Escoffier or Carème. Sorbets that taste of fruit, not sugar, silky chocolate mousse neither too dark nor to bland, airy Genoise sponge, admirably friable tuilles, mint-perfumed satiny crème anglaise and buttery featherlight puff pastry that collapses obligingly. I could go on, but you get the idea.

© Sunday Herald