Valvona and Crolla, Edinburgh - Restaurants in Edinburgh | s1play.com

Valvona and Crolla

Review published on 02/02/2004 © Sunday Herald

Valvona and Crolla is one of our biggest cultural assets. Everyone knows that it's Scotland's top Italian food emporium, but when notable foodies come up from London, they confirm that it's also better than any of the equivalent names in London. Italian friends from Turin recently dropped by for a look out of interest. They emerged four hours later after a long lunch, content and well-fed, swearing that if V&C was in their home city, it would be a roaring success. In world terms, forget Balducci's in Manhattan or even Peck in Milan - Valvona and Crolla is better.

There's the shop of course, with so many wonderful foods to waylay you, but the caffe bar is the icing on the cake. The food is quite unlike any other restaurant in Scotland. I can still remember several outstanding dishes sampled over the last two or three years. Lanark Blue lamb, slow-roasted, so it fell apart tenderly, served in its own slightly saffron-scented juices. Every time I see halibut on the menu, (it comes pan-fried in butter, I think, in the lightest of batters), I cannot resist the prospect of parting that pearly flesh from its diamond-shaped central bone. The crespelle - light crepes filled with ricotta and spinach coated with a satiny white sauce and Fontina - are addictive. The seasons feature too. One summer, I caught the fleeting treat of deep-fried courgette flowers in clean, rustling batter with impeccable salsa verde. In winter, think Abruzzi peasant dishes like runny polenta, topped with tomato sauce and spicy sausage.

And the desserts - where does one begin? With the treacle tart, perhaps, a glorious sticky, chewy crumb sat in sandy, crumbly crust? But then there's the polenta cake, the crunchy almond fruit tart, the Sicilian pan di Spagna al limone, one good thing after another, memorable because they are patently so freshly made from ingredients of the highest quality, employed with unstinting generosity.

The Contini family don't go in for chefs, but for a team of predominantly women cooks, drawn from an extended Italian-Scottish community. The cooking is sure and steady, and on some days, really sensational. You might wait a while for certain dishes. I don't mind - somebody's cooking it freshly for me, not just finishing it off from some suspended, half-cooked state.

The atmosphere is just like the food. The caffe bar is a comfortable, unpretentious place to be, but don't mistake that for casualness. You are being given the best, just with no fussing. If you ever think that some prices are on the high side, remember that this is the quality you're being given automatically.

After the festive season's food orgy, the straciatella soup was just what I needed, a gorgeous chicken broth to revive a jaded system, flecked with the classic mixture of egg white, parsley and parmigiano Reggiano. We shared the mixed antipasti; milky mozzarella di bufala, yielding roasted courgettes and aubergines, tasty olives and generous quantities of fine salumi, notably V&C's own excellent fennel-scented Fonteluna sausage. After that, polpette (meatballs) with an appealingly soft bouncy texture and mellow flavour came with al dente rigatoni in an exemplary tomato sugo. And pursuing that comfort food line, the mozzarella in carrozza was just the job, egg-dipped bread, stuffed with melting cheese and fried in butter, served with a deep-green, garlicky parsley salsa to give it an edge.

Wine buffs know that V&C has the best Italian wine list in the UK. What fewer people appreciate is that when you eat in the caffe bar, you can order any wine in the shop and pay only a nominal £4 corkage. An unprecedented bargain not to be missed.