Right plaice for big fish supper
It is Scotland’s largest fish and chip shop, but does size really matter? Features writer BRIAN BEACOM sampled the menu and shares his thoughts ...
EATING fish and chips is a shared experience. Like watching football, It’s A Wonderful Life and shouting at the telly during Question Time, it’s best enjoyed with at least one other person in the picture.
But photographer Gordon Terris and myself found ourselves at the other end of the extreme, dispatched to the former St John’s Church in Edinburgh’s
Old Town, which is now home to Bertie’s Restaurant and Bar, which caters for 300 hungry souls.
In 1838, St John’s once housed a parish school on the lower level and the church on top, and you would anticipate legacy hints of Dickensian workhouses and Oliver Twist and begging bowls.
Yet, will the dark whiff of ecclesiasticism and rickets sit well alongside the newly- opened biggest fish and chip restaurant in all the land?
On entering the 11,000 square feet former house of worship I have to confess there is little evidence of penitent God-fearing spirits or fearful consciences. It’s light and airy and warm, there’s nothing of Victorian stricture abounding at all, and aromas evident suggest little more than soft light batter, lemon juice and just a hint of precisely measured opulence.
But what to order? Certainly not gruel. Owner the Vittoria Group has assumed (rightly) the world is always in the mood for a fish supper – yet not all of the world at the same time. Thus, options include steak pie, burgers and Malaysian curry, or Black Pudding Scotch Eggs, all served up with mash or the curiously named twice-cooked chips (one wonders why one scorching in the deep fat fryer doesn’t do the job).
When you look at the menu you realise any, or all of this, can be accompanied by the likes of sticky toffee pudding or Cranachan pudding, and can be washed down with an Irn-bru Spritz (gingercoloured ginger with prosecco) or the likes of Buckfast with brambles. And the thought dawns that such plattering is likely to produce arteries harder than the Tory rebels’ resolve to remove their leader.
But scroll down the parchment that is the plastic-covered menu and you discover a concession to the enlightenment of healthier eating in the likes of vegan fish and chips. How does this work, you wonder? What substitute can you have for a creature that’s spent its life in a river or on the sea, sauteed in salt, all wriggly and squiggly and fast and muscley for having to avoid eating bits of a cotton wool bud or Tesco bag? It transpires the “fish” is, in fact, aubergine and seaweed, on a batter.
What also grabs at the attention like the fingers of an old-school minster around a truculent schoolboy’s collar is the unrelenting Scottishness about it all. It’s as if Nicola Sturgeon had planned the menu while wearing a tartan bib and sitting underneath a giant portrait of Desperate Dan about to bite into a cow pie (Indeed, the walls of a section of the restaurant are covered in artist Frank Boyle’s cartoons and DC Thomson artwork).
As well as the Irn-bru and fish and chips, haggis and neeps and haggis and spring rolls are on the menu. Edinburgh Rock features alongside deep-battered chocolate bars. And the fish we learn is caught in the “ice cold North Atlantic waters” (Suggesting the Scottish end of the North Atlantic is sometimes warm?). It’s clear the owner has the tourist market stomach in mind. This makes sense. And, of course, this restaurant isn’t a corporate exercise in arterial compassion. It’s about indulgence, about fun, about comfort food that is much needed in a time of confusion and despair.
So what does the nosh taste like? The fish and chips are wondrous. The fish tacos were unusual and exciting and the Scotch eggs well delicious, but the stomachs were full by this time and hamster cheeks were almost called in to pouch a few flavours.
Surprisingly, the Irn-bru and prosecco wasn’t bad at all, although the Buckfast and brambles concoction was as expected, even if you could claim it to offer one of your five-a-day. What offers the greatest surprise, however, is there is a real level of intimacy achieved in an area so vast (There are also private areas that can be booked). Bertie’s is warm and inviting. It’s where you want to be after a day at the shops when your feet feel like you’ve been rehearsing for Strictly for a week with the strict Russian bloke.
What’s also welcoming is the prices, which won’t scare you even a quarter as much as the Budget’s council tax plans (most mains are around a tenner). And the Grassmarket location is perfect.
You may no longer be schooled or worship at the building that was once St John’s but have the cod and double cooked chips and you will be offering a little prayer of thanks.
It’s about indulgence, about fun, about comfort food