Restaurant review: Broadsheet Bistro, Fraser Suites, 12-26 St Giles Street, Edinburgh

THE BROADSHEET Bistro has taken on a space which appears to have had an identity crisis in the past.

When the Fraser Suites serviced apartments opened in 2009, this ground floor area was occupied by a restaurant called Rucola. I reviewed it, and it was a right stinker.

Then, in early 2010, along came Steven Adair, from the Glasshouse at Eskmills, who raised the standards. However, he’s now been usurped by head chef Steven Thompson, formerly of Edinburgh restaurants The Witchery and The Tower.

The newest menu offers smart food in the evening and unpretentious bistro grub in the afternoon. If you want to visit, then get along tout-suite. It’s shapeshifted so many times over the last couple of years that I wouldn’t be surprised if it metamorphosed into a pretzel outlet, or a Mexican eatery, overnight.

The decor is quite odd, with oppressive vertically-striped wallpaper, and it’s on two levels, so you can feel a little disconnected from the front of house staff if you’re on the lower mezzanine.

Still, they’ve done what they can with the long, narrow space, which is part of a 19th-century building that used to be the HQ of the first regional UK newspaper, the Edinburgh Courant (hence the Broadsheet Bistro moniker). Three of us visited for lunch, on a Saturday.

As there isn’t a starter menu, we thought we’d share a couple of dishes from the Large Salads, and Snacks and Light Bites sections – the confit salmon salad (£8.50) from the former, and the hummus and pitta bread (£2.50) from the latter. Both of our choices were good. If the spongy texture and green hue doesn’t remind you of Fungus the Bogeyman, then the zingy strips of pickled cucumber flesh were a clever addition to our salad, and worked well alongside gobbets of wet flaked fish. The other, more pedestrian, ingredients in this salad – strips of pepper and miscellaneous leaves – weren’t thrilling, but, overall, it was fine.

One of my dining partners is a whizz when it comes to whipping up homemade hummus, and he gave the thumbs up to Fraser Suites’ version. It was lemony, smooth and accompanied by isosceles of warm pitta bread, which had been drizzled with olive oil. Good nibbles.

For mains, I settled on the roast chicken breast with sweet potato salad (£12.50). This consisted of a beautifully springy piece of poultry, which had crispy, well-seasoned skin. It came with unexpectedly al-dente (but not unpleasantly so) shards of sweet potato, a pile of rocket leaves and a herby sunblush tomato dressing that was as orange as Keith Harris’s Cuddles.

The Broadsheet fish pie (£13.95), with its crown of potato peaks, was a very good spokesperson for its genre. Served in an oval oven dish, it was piping hot, creamy and contained feathery sprigs of dill, chopped leek and parsley, meaty mussels, salmon and haddock.

The third dish at our table was confit duck (£12.95). This meaty piece of chestnut-coloured leg was sinking onto a beanbag of slick mash, drizzled with a dark pan jus that contained a hint of truffle oil.

However, because of these rich elements, the accompanying red cabbage, which was overloaded with cloying and Christmassy redcurrant jelly, made this option a little too heavy overall.

Serving suggestion: eat half and scrape the rest into one’s handbag for later.

For puddings, we chose three of their selection of five crowdpleasers.

The naughtiest of these was the chocolate and orange biscuit cake (£4.50). This consisted of shortcake struts and macerated orange segments, both of which were encased in a dense cocoa-rich parfait.

Next up was a vanilla cheesecake (£4.50) featuring a thick and downy layer of a not-too-sweet mascarpone mixture, as well as a pool of toffee and lemon sauce. The only dud, then, was a lumpy and runny forest fruits créme brûlée (£4.50), with a caramelised lid that was so thick it would’ve tested even Bugs Bunny’s incisors.

Still, I think this place is beginning to find an identity. It started out as a rubbish restaurant with striped wallpaper, and now it’s a very pleasant restaurant (with, unfortunately, the same striped wallpaper).

• Broadsheet Bistro

Fraser Suites, 12-26 St Giles Street, Edinburgh (0131-221 7200, www.fraserhospitality.com)

How much?

Lunch for three, without drinks, £63.90