Restaurant: The Salisbury Arms

APPARENTLY Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle used to frequent the hostelry now known as The Salisbury Arms in Dalkeith Road.

More recently, students from Edinburgh University would be more familiar with it as The Gold Medal and The Crags, a fairly low-cost, brightly-hued boozer that offered any kind of shot you'd care to imagine.

Now it's finally graduated into something more sophisticated. Gone is the garish dcor, the name and a few of the students to be replaced with a cosy new bar and restaurant.

Reborn as The Salisbury Arms, it also has a bright new kitchen staff led by Michelin-trained former young chef of the year Neil MacKenzie. Neil took that title nine years ago and since then has honed his skills in the bright lights of London. Now heading up the kitchen at the Dalkeith venue, he's come up with a menu packed with classic pub dishes and fine contemporary offerings. Main-menu starters range from 4.75 for chef's French onion and port soup with a Wensleydale cheese crouton to Cornish sardines on toast with a sweet pepper and fennel compot and for those who like their offal, pan-fried lambs' kidneys on ciabatta with mushrooms and a mustard sauce (both 5.95).

For main courses, choose from traditional pub-grub classics to more sophisticated roasted pork fillet and braised pork belly with a light jus, black pudding mash and seasonal vegetables (12.95) and grilled sea bass fillets on saffron potatoes and samphire with a white wine sauce (15.95).

Desserts start at 3.95 for ice cream and homemade cookie.

The Salisbury Arms, 58 Dalkeith Road. Tel: [phone], www.thesalisburyarmsedinburgh.co.uk