Comfort food with a side order of Adonis

Published on Wednesday 3 May 2006 00:53

Eighty Queen Street bar and restaurant

80 Queen Street, Edinburgh (0131-226 5097)

The Bill

Dinner for two, 46.05, excluding drinks

IT would be fair to say the evening did not start well. I had spent far longer than expected completing my allotted office duties as milk of magnesia monitor and assistant window cleaner's chamois-grab. My dinner guest had already rung twice to enquire after the axles on my roller skates and reminisce about her last square meal, and the taxi driver was certain there would be no problems in the High Street. Ho ho.

It's not that I was less than delighted to discuss the aesthetic problems of the Scottish Parliament building, the athletic problems of Hearts FC or the emetic possibilities of a two-star holiday in Tunisia. Quite the contrary, had the pause at my own front door to uplift that shivering, pale dinner guest not demanded resuscitation skills. The poor woman was not quite dead, but her enthusiasm reserves had certainly been shifted to the hereafter.

Even the taxi driver was silent as I tried to rub life back into my guest's chilled aspirations. (I would have said extremities, but, with Pamella, it has always been her aspirations that were most extreme. The rest of her stays warm and welcoming, but there is always a light snow atop those aspirations.) She had almost revived by the time we reached 80 Queen Street, Edinburgh. But we both suffered a bit of a swoon when we saw the still-in-progress external paint job around those hugely imposing windows, complete with polite signage advising that the operation was not yet complete.

"They are open?" asked Pamella nervously. And I would have to venture that her nerves were as much due to the this is a bar statement quietly asserted by the not-quite-complete exterior.

Pamella still measures what few of us measured at 20. And her steely elegant slender waist is the result of similarly steely self-discipline. A Scottish pub supper is the entertainment option she would tick just before "group embroidery session with the inmates of Peterhead Prison".

But fraternising with Scotland's most glamorous clavicles is not without its advantages. As soon as we confirmed our reservation, Pamella's supple yet insistent body language had acquired for us the very best table - a capacious booth at the corner of the room, a corner pleasantly ornamented by some excellent watercolours of Edinburgh city vistas. Not of the twee, table-mat variety; these were genuinely rather good, even if they did remind me that it must be 15 years since I last ate here. Thai fishcakes as I recall, and sampled during a short proprietorship by (then) Glasgow-based hotelier Ken McCulloch. Well, he has moved his multi-millions to Monaco, Thai fishcakes are now endemic, and the only proper question is why this site has not been the city's failsafe success.

Just a glance from the big money in Charlotte Square, and with full frontage to Queen Street, two storeys on this corner should represent that fabled licence to print money. Yet the imminent ban on smoking led the 2005 owners to sell up. With no courtyard for tobacco addicts, they simply did not believe there was a future here. So Punch Taverns took over last winter.

I must confess I know nothing of Punch Taverns. Neither Pamella nor I was thinking about them as we were given our menus. Both of us were concentrating on the waiter. His skills, of course, certainly not his remarkable youth and beauty. As you must have guessed, these are not attributes which interest middle-aged women.

However, I would have to report that Pamella suddenly blossomed. She smiled beatifically at the young Adonis. She told him, with only a flicker of her tongue to the upper lip - that she was "starving"and ordered mussels to start - in a white wine and garlic broth (4.95) while I chose coconut chilli jumbo shrimp (5.25). As we sat nibbling the napkins - as, truly, neither of had eaten that day - it would be fair to say that all I was expecting was ballast. Two weeks ago, at Cosmo, we had shared a plate of cheese which cost more than these dishes combined, yet had yielded possibly one ounce of cheese. If that's what cheese costs, how could this satisfy our deepest cravings?

Well, let me tell you ... the jumbo shrimp was exactly as described. Huge, fresh and generous - and sealed in a crunchy breadcrumb overcoat, so a plume of steam seared my nostrils at the first bite. It was excellent. Addictive. I resented the small amount I had to give away for tasting. Apparently Pamella felt the same about her fragrant mussels. A variety of Mmmms were served; but these were sotto voce compared to her comments about the day's special, lamb chops (14.95).

And very special they were: four impressive Little-lamb-who-made-thee guilty fresh chops, charred to a delicious crunch on the outside, yet with properly pink - not slippy raw - perfect meat inside. They were draped over a mound of crushed potato with onion and leeks. Pamella looked happier than Dracula after drinking several virgins. I had ordered a sage-stuffed chicken breast (11.95) which arrived sailing on a chunky mushroom-studded cream sauce which lapped a similar mound of mashed potato to Pamella's. It was a huge portion, perhaps a shade over-done; but a really reassuring, "there, there, there," kiss from a careful kitchen where they understand appetite as well as technique. We toyed with two puddings after that - a silky, if gelatinous, panna cotta with raspberries (4.45) and a less successful chocolate mousse (4.50) on a too-sturdy pastry base. But the real truth is, this substantial surprise cost less than 70 including wine - delivered by a company called Demon, according to the waiter. I must declare myself a demon-child convert.