TOWN AND COUNTRY
The Mystery Diner presents a smorgasbord of restaurants for your delectation – two new ones in town, one old favourite in the country
The Mystery Diner visits the capital's Heron and The Palmerston before taking a rural retreat at Turnberry's 1906
Ilike surprises, but it’s not often that I’ve been more astonished than when visiting Heron, a new restaurant on The Shore in Leith. I know the site where Heron has nested. It’s a former bank building and despite being on a corner on the waterfront is one of those notorious problem sites that bedevil restaurantland. For many years it was the Raj, which in my more youthful incarnation was an occasional late-night vindaloo and lager stop-off.
Since then, this lovely big, airy, light space has been home to a succession of doomed ventures, all of whom have rearranged the deckchairs, slapped on a coat of paint and hoped for the best. So when we arrived to find the place mildly spruced up but essentially the same, I grimaced and tried to keep an open mind.
The first inkling that things might be different this time came when general manager Glen Montgomery – formerly head sommelier or general manager at the Michelin-starred trio of Restaurant Andrew Fairlie, Number One at The Balmoral, and Isle of Eriska – came over and started chatting and pouring the restaurant’s Charles Heidsieck NV Brut Reserve, which is apparently the house fizz. If that’s not enough to make any foodie prick up their ears, then they’ve certainly been eating at far more highfalutin’ places than me.
Having grabbed our attention in the best way possible, what followed was a spectacular display of virtuosity from two young chefs who weren’t even born when I had my first curry in this place.
Chefs Tomas Gormley and Sam Yorke are both in their mid-twenties but have been all over the shop, with the Gardeners Cottage, 21212, Restaurant Andrew Fairlie, Castle Terrace and Le Roi Fou all featuring on their collective CVs. It shows too: despite their relative youth, this was an impossibly impressive meal which was so memorable because it was so different, with not a scallop in sight.
Our meal started with unimpeachable simplicity: home-made sourdough bread with oh-my-god-this-is-amazing brown crab butter, plus gordal olives and wonderful charcuterie from my neighbours at West Coast Cured. That set the benchmark, and the starters raised it. The pretty-as-a-picture sweetbreads with celeriac, girolle and sorrel was good enough to qualify as a Death Row appetiser (although ideally I’d like about three times as much), and in its own way the beautifully constructed mackerel, gooseberry, taramasalata and apple dish was equally impressive. Sure
both were lilliputian helpings, but we were absolutely blown away by the quality, innovation, aesthetics and attention to detail.
Our main courses were pretty damned good too, although the meat on both was a little more cooked than I’d ideally like and, yet again, the portion was the sort of size that had me wondering whether there was a chippy located en route home. Yet, honestly, those are tiny gripes: both the duck with honey, lavender and chicory, and the lamb with barberry, aubergine and baby gem were otherwise as flawless as they were memorable.
Pudding was another tour de force in which aesthetics and flavours meshed wonderfully. A dish of strawberries, yoghurt and almonds was light and wistful; the balls of dark chocolate with raspberry were bruisers whose taste sensation was a lumbering broadsword to the strawberry dish’s rapierlike deftness.
And, just like that, it was over. I can, however, provide a few useful pointers for eating at Heron. The first is to remember to specify that you want to sit at one of the window tables, which will give you a wonderful view down the Water of Leith to the Shore and the Firth of Forth.
The second tip is not to look at the bill before handing over your credit card. Our meal was £106 before we added coffee, service, cocktails (go on, you know you want to) or wine.
If you’re the sort of discerning foodie who knows your Liebfraumilch from your Black Tower then the bill will quickly stack up because Mr Montgomery has assembled a stellar cast. Although some are very reasonably priced – the wines by the glass start at £5 – the top-end of the wine list is horribly tempting.
But above all, my main tip for approaching Heron is a simple one: never judge a book by its cover.
‘We were blown away by Heron’s quality, innovation and aesthetics’