Priceless
The Leith Glutton
Amos Karahi
A golden age of fine dining
Fhior
36 Broughton Street
0131 477 5000
info@fhior.com
Ah, there it was, stuck on the pin board as a reminder – but we’d totally forgotten. I’m very fond of a restaurant voucher as a birthday gift. No need to find space for that questionable ornament from your auntie. Not another bottle of plonk. No need to return the book to Waterstone’s, availing of that helpful national pretence whereby the staff politely believe that you’ve just misplaced the receipt.
No, a restaurant voucher is a great present. There’s an initial shudder of excitement at opening, followed by months of pleasing anticipation. At least, when you don’t forget about it.
And so there it was, beaming out from underneath a scribbled phone number for a dull but necessary tradesman. Lunch for two at Fhior, it said, and I got restaurant excitement shudder all over again.
I’d been before, some years ago, with friends who generously treated me to a significant birthday meal. We drank a lot, and I remember someone jumping online and mistakenly ordering £50 of moth repellent papers whilst waiting for dessert to arrive. But I can’t remember a single thing we ate.
By contrast, I’ll remember this lunch for a long time. It was utterly superb. We really are living through a golden age of Edinburgh fine dining and Fhior is top-tier.
Chef Scott Smith offers a ten-course tasting menu and, I am pleased to see, an a-la-carte option. Neither are cheap, but cooking of this quality can’t be. Service is flawless, the suppliers are the best in Scotland, and ultimately the diner has to pay for both.
From the snack menu, we share the panisse. This was a highly refined interpretation of the casual Marseille street food. Gram flour was formed into sharp-edged and delicate batons, dusted with wild leeks, and served with an apple BBQ sauce. “It’s our take on KFC,” the cheery Scottish waitress explains, although the reference is lost on this glutton.
Now, I will say something about the butter. It is excellent: pungent, cheesy, fermented and just at the right point between solid and liquid; a veritable triumph of materials science. It sat on a sort of ceramic pebble, as is the vogue these days, and was set apart with a smear of brunost, the fudgy brown Norwegian cheese. Bread and butter like this counts as a course on its own.
To start, we both order wagyu tartare. The Yorkshire beef had excellent flavour, the fat lifted by celeriac and piquant sorrel. The wagyu fat crostini were impressively thin. It simply could not have been presented better. Wagyu has rather become the salted caramel of the meat world: served too frequently, and usually badly, but utterly wonderful in the hands of a great chef. Clearly Scott Smith is one.
Main dishes are a chunky £34 a piece. I have hogget. The lamb is pan-roasted, which I take to mean it was seared on the hob and finished in the oven. It was flawless, with loin as soft as the butter and the most flavourful brisket. A lamb fat courgette was latticed with a paler courgette puree. Astride the dish, in its own bowl, came some confit lamb and silky potatoes - accurately badged as stovies, but wonderfully elevated. “The lamb comes from a family in the Borders where they’ve been farming since the 12th century,” the cheery Canadian waiter said.
I’m not sure whether that claim would stand up to documentary evidence, but the lamb is damn good. I can see why those Border reivers did all that reiving.
Across the table, duck breast nests in a duck ragu with a duck XO sauce. The bird had been flown up from St Bride’s farm in Strathaven, which is surely the best badelynge in Scotland. The flavour was as good a duck as I have tasted.
To finish, there was a strawberry ‘mar-granita’: crushed berries, ice-cream, and salted mezcal frozen ice. Super refreshing. I had a chocolate ganache, gooseberry sorbet, meringue and sprinkles wild rose. It was, reader, as good as it sounds. Two delightful mignardise arrive: a toasted marshmallow on a pine skewer, and a fun little chocolate mushroom which showed advanced patisserie skill.
A word on the wine: it’s a great selection. We drank a bottle of Greek red from the Peloponnese, a region those outside Greece are just waking up to. There are two wine lists, separated by price. The normal list is interesting and sorted by flavour profile: elegant, juicy, intense, medium-bodied and so on. For those with means, the second list offers bottles which have three digits in the price, not two.
Without the voucher, lunch for two including wine would have been £220. We come home and search the pin board for further restaurant vouchers, sadly to no avail.
Hopefully someone’s reading this. ■
Food 9/10
Service 9/10
Hogget with loin and brisket
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The lamb is damned good, I see why those Border reivers did all that reiving
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