The Colonnades at The Signet Library
Where?
Parliament Square, Edinburgh (0131-226 1064, www.thesignetlibrary.co.uk)
Immediately after giving birth, you’re hit with an overwhelming urge for macarons and millefeuille. You demand that the antenatal nurses bring clotted cream, then argue with them over whether the jam goes on the scones first or not.
You’d think that was the case, the way that afternoon tea is punted as the archetypal Mother’s Day treat.
Not all mums have a sweet tooth. Mine – a cheese-loving girl – is a good case in point. To mark tomorrow’s significant date, I let her choose somewhere for us to review and she opted for this place.
It’s operated by Heritage Portfolio and, in its former incarnation, she worked here as a librarian for 11 years.
They’re big on afternoon tea, £40, but also do lunch from Wednesday to Friday, 11am-1:30pm, with two courses for £24, three for £30.
My memory of visiting mum in this place, usually because I needed some money or I’d forgotten my house keys and needed to borrow hers, is the smell of books. Oddly, that’s gone, though the shelves are still stacked.
We were seated at a mirror-topped table, at the other end of the room from where her librarian’s nook used to be.
“Have you seen those cake stands going past?” she said, once we’d got our lunch menus.
“That’s the afternoon tea, but you’re not usually keen on cakes.”
“I am now.”
Mothers. You think you know them. Instead of sugary fancies, she had a delicate portion of twice baked goats cheese soufflé. It was the size of a zimmer frame stub, golden on the outside and served with walnuts, a couple of bits of beetroot, endive, and a starburst of magenta jus. It looked a lot more exciting than it tasted – slightly bland, so she had to deploy their fancy silver cruets.
The gin and dill cured salmon was nicer, with stamps of nori-coated fish, squidged together like a pave, a halved quail egg topped by salmon roe, radish petals and blobs of a creamy mayo.
So was the take on cock-a-leekie, with thumb nail-sized slices of guinea fowl on top of a mixture of leeks and prunes, a salty consommé, and a single chickeny arancini.
Like the starters, there were three main course options and three of us. For the purposes of the review, we should have ordered a different dish each, but nobody wanted to take the hit and go for the veggie option of truffle polenta.
Thus, two of us went for ox cheek pithivier. This was probably the best main, if we’re making assumptions about the polenta. There was a pie like a pin cushion, with a dense beef and cabbage filling, and a lipsticklength bank of piped on mash topped with little cubes of apple and crisps of Jerusalem artichoke.
Sadly, mumsy had got her second bland option. The fish in the gremolata crusted hake was nice enough, but the white bean cassoulet with chorizo was missing the foodie equivalent of a plot, and even three bits of scampi on top and a purée, swirled across the plate like henna on palms, weren’t consolation.
Puddings sound appealing and, like everything else here, look ornate and beautiful. We tried the dark chocolate ganache, which was scooshed onto a sponge base, with bricks of a blood orange jelly, orange zest and a honeycomb ice-cream. The banana tatin featured a Cd-sized disc of caramelised banana pastry, a quenelle of smooth coconut icecream and a pile of brown crumbs. We’re not sure what the billed
“caramelia”, which sounds like the collection of a motoring fan, was.
The poached rhubarb and ginger cheesecake was the only real dud. It was a deconstructed affair, with the focus as a piece of barely cooked fibrous rhubarb, which I couldn’t cut through, so had to lift and gnaw. It came with crumbs (presumably the “frozen shortbread”), gels, mascarpone-ish blobs and a blusher pink rhubarb macaron. I just wanted the cheesecake I’d been promised. Mumso is a woman of few words. She’s good at damning with faint praise though, and she gave this place a resounding “OK”.
Still, now we’re going to go back for the afternoon tea. ■
NEWS BITES
Say cheese
Book your ticket for this year’s Edinburgh Science Festival’s Gastrofest events. These include Where is Your Next Meal Coming From? – a discussion covering food security and how climate change will affect the way we eat, £9, in the Auditorium at the National Museum of Scotland on 4 April at 12:30pm (90 minutes). If you fancy something a bit more lighthearted, join annual favourite Cheeseology, £15 (including samples), covering the science of cheese-making and a tutored tasting, 17 April, 6pm and 8:30pm at the Quaker Studio, Pleasance.