09/03/2007

It must be difficult to book a table at Tony Borthwick’s Plumed Horse, in Leith, these days – due to the wall-to-wall restaurant reviewers. The Scotsman’s George Kerevan is the latest critic to give the newly-located restaurant the once over, and he doesn’t hold back on his distaste, writing that Michelin star ratings can be “positively misleading when it comes to choosing a comfortable restaurant experience…The Plumed Horse is a case in point”. He commends Borthwick for his “bravery” in moving the restaurant to the Capital, but, he writes that the décor is “uninspiring” and the kitchen is “more interested in complicated artifice designed to impress, rather than making the food tasty and appetizing”. A Fois Gras Sundae is “overly rich” and much of the food is “tepid” by the time it reaches the table. He concludes: “Tony Borthwick needs to change his game or fold his apron”.

Also writing in The Scotsman, Adrian Mather is all in a lather about Peckham’s Underground, calling the Edinburgh restaurant one of the “the best lunch options in the area”. This “cosy underground den works absolutely perfectly” for breakfast, lunch or dinner, writes Mather. The Italian sausage tagliatelle “is an absolute joy”, breakfast options are “impressive” and the dessert menu’s “chocolate offerings in particular are an absolute must”. Peckham’s Underground offers “incredibly reasonable prices and friendly staff”, enthuses Mather, and “there are few places in the city...that offer the same kind of service and food for anywhere near the same price”.

Joanna Blythman has the pudding to beat all puddings at country house hotel, Cromlix House. The “stuffy, chintzy place with pretty ordinary food’ has gone, she writes in the Sunday Herald, and there’s a “new mood” about the place – one that is “younger, more relaxed, less conservative and fuddy-duddy”. The menu looks “predictable” and “borderline dull” but chef Steve McCallum is “technically accomplished” and the meals are “faultless”. The dessert “stole the show”, however, with an “outstanding crema Catalana”, which, she writes, is the best pudding she’s eaten this year.

To read our archived Review of the Reviews click here