Food & drink BRAVO, BELLISSIMO

The Mystery Diner and his guests find that an Italian restaurant in Edinburgh’s Old Town is a flamboyantly enjoyable surprise package

The Mystery Diner heads to Mono, and it ticked all the right boxes

Last year I was asked if I’d be willing to donate the chance to accompany me on a review as a charity auction prize. As it was for a particularly good cause, I agreed.

While mildly nerveracking, life’s about meeting new people and, besides, there’s something magical about unveiling a hidden gem to local foodies. So when Keith and Lisa got in touch to say they’d won the lot, I scratched my head and wondered where on earth to go, especially as Lisa has a shellfish allergy.

I plumped for Mono, an Italian restaurant in the Old Town that seems to be a secret to even the hungriest of Edinburghers. The brainchild of Joseph Crolla, scion of the famous gastronomic clan, I went when it opened three years ago and have sent friends there since (to universal acclaim) but hadn’t been back since that first dalliance. Time to re-enter the fray.

Mono’s USP is that it’s the only Italian fine dining restaurant in Edinburgh (notwithstanding the presence of other more couthy operations, like the inestimable Locanda de Gusti). The decor is tastefully contemporary, and the food as bonny as a Botticelli, as we found out when the first dish arrived.

This was a triptych of amuse bouches – a ball of arancini with smoked cheese, saffron and rosemary mayo; a small but gorgeous bowl of smoked salmon topped with an egg yolk emulsion and hollandaise sauce, and finally a Jerusalem artichoke and gorgonzola flan with truffled pecorino cheese.

This turned out to be a taste of things to come. We decided to have the taster menu with paired wines and over the next three hours a remarkable display of culinary theatrics from head chef Andrea Pruneri unfolded before us. Even listing the small but invariably perfectly formed starters and mains makes my mouth water: mackerel with radish, horseradish and kefir; lamb sweetbreads with capers and saffron; beef in beetroot; a superb dish of hake with mussels, hispi and citrus butter; a disk of saddle of venison, with celeriac, gorgonzola, bramble and hazelnut.

And if that wasn’t enough, even pudding-averse Keith was forced to admit that the three dishes which rounded off the evening were top of the range. These started with an outrageous parmesan mousse around an apple sorbet with fregola pasta and d’espelette chilli – you either love this or loathe it, but I loved it – followed by an apple-themed dish that included pine nuts and cinnamon, rounding off with a disk of nutella beneath a vanilla brioche.

All of the above was served with a well-balanced selection of paired Italian wines with something for everyone: I adored the strident Il Seggio (2016) - Poggio al Tesoro, while Lisa enthused over the Kabir Moscato from Sicily.

This wasn’t absolute perfection – the venison was a little too well-cooked, and the nutella disc was slightly cloying – but it took energy to find fault. Throw in unobtrusive but efficient service and a view straight into the open-plan kitchen and you have a meal to savour. The paired wines made it ferociously expensive, but factor in some excellent company – Keith and Lisa turned out to be kindred spirits – and it was all worthwhile. We’ll be back.