27/04/2007

– Richard Bath, from Scotland on Sunday, loves the atmosphere at Fenwicks, in Newington, Edinburgh, but has mixed views on the food. The menu is “not as cheap as it once was, but still good value and sufficiently eclectic”, writes Bath, and while a starter of char-grilled mushrooms with poached eggs and béarnaise sauce was “majestic” and “fast food at its finest”, Bath is not so enamoured by the smoked chicken ravioli with red-pepper coulis. “It was as bad as my starter was good,” he writes, “a dish best avoided”. Again, for his main course, a spring-vegetable risotto is “wonderfully silky and worth travelling to the Southside for” but the roast breast of duck “had been cooked way past the point at which it could be described as pink”. All in all though, it’s “well above average”.

– George Kerevan from The Scotsman, eats at The Cheese Bar and Deli, in Otago Street, Glasgow – a “well-stocked store with a cosy restaurant space joined on” and the latest venture from the Baby Grand Group. The décor is “youthful and smart” but the “ambience is more living room than Michelin Guide”, writes Kerevan. A starter of Stornaway black pudding with clapshot and apple sauce is “moist and succulent” and he’s impressed by the restaurant’s signature dishes – an extensive range of cheese tasting platters. With an “enterprising” wine list and “fresh well balanced and neatly presented food” Kerevan decides: “if I was a Glasgow University student today, I might live at the Cheese Bar.”

– Joanna Blythman enjoys the sumptuous home baking at Indulge, High Street, Auchterarder. “Never was there an establishment so aptly named than this café”, she writes in The Herald, “ no sooner are you in the door of Indulge than you are presented with a phalanx of cakes, biscuits and bakes. Not a half-hearted line-up either, rather a full-throated chorus celebrating the joys of home baking.” And it’s not just the cakes that has Blythman in raptures, but also “the whole tea/coffee shop experience”. Indulge does “the whole village tea shop bit brilliantly well”, she writes, but it’s also “a capacious and comfortable modern café” and it takes its “savoury food seriously” with an “original, quirky menu which reflects the whim of the kitchen”. It all makes for “very satisfying eating,” concludes Blythman.