Trendy beer and food joint hits right spot at festival after burger disaster

We had just ordered two beers and a couple of burgers and paid the bill up front when the bar server broke the news.

The wait for the food would be an hour.

“Is that going to be OK?” he asked, as he tore the receipt off the card reader, the epitome of a chancer.

There are other ways to waste an hour, and your money, in the capital in August but at least we can pretend to be cultured with most of them.

Waiting an hour for a burger isn’t a show but, if the staff at Salt Horse on Blackfriars Street in Edinburgh submit it next year, then they might at least manage to hoodwink a few folk into staying and buying more of those craft beers they make a big deal about.

We asked for a refund and boosted, with hopes low of finding anywhere in this neck of the city – or anywhere – that could accommodat e the need for passable grub and a swift shandy in between a show about a university professor’s student girlfriend stealing a Salvador Dali (If You’re Feeling Sinister) and a comedian who discovered he’d been fathered by a sperm donor who had sired 1000 other children (Simon Evans).

Cowgate was heav ing , Edinburgh being a steroid version of itself with not only the final weekend of the Fringe but the rugby on too. So seeing a woman standing upright on the back of a horse followed by hordes of kilt-wearing rugger fans seemed entirely normal as we took our seats in OX184, a big barn of a place spread over two floors.

It’s one of those exposed industrial concrete joints, where the air conditioning pipes and extractor fans and absolute lack of aesthetic adornment is considered cool.

We’ll no doubt wonder what this was all about in a few short years.

Both beer and food were with us surprisingly quickly, considering one of the orders was a medium- cooked fillet steak and the place was going like the carousel on Princess Street.

The ground f loor has a bier halle feel, with huge benches accommodating bigger parties working through the formidable beer menu, ordering huge glass jugs of beer (known as growlers).

Upstairs, smaller groups congregated in secluded booths separated from the open-plan kitchen by drapes straight from Stevie Nicks’s dressing room.

Despite the size of the place and the crowd, the atmosphere never rose above buzzing – a rare find in the Cowgate on a Saturday night any time of the year, let a lone during the Fringe.

And the best bit? We were in and out in an hour, fed, watered and ready for Saturday night at the festival – without having to ask for a refund.