The previous restaurant on the site failed, So, how did a new eaterie there become one good enough to win a Michelin star?

But what makes a high-end establishment like Castle Terrace Restaurant that bit better, good enough to win the most coveted of awards? And while culinary success is certain, how can commercial viability be assured when others have fallen by the wayside at the same spot? For chef patron Dominic Jack the key is consistency.

“Every day, every dish has to be consistently as perfect as you can get it,” he says as he prepares for lunch, with more than 50 covers due. “It is just as important on Tuesday lunch (as Saturday evening), anything that leaves the kitchen has to be constantly the same.”

Having all the tables taken is not unusual, he says, and the Michelin star can only help that continue in the future. The consistency needed to keep people coming starts when the food is sourced: sustainable, fresh, local and seasonal are all important factors when deciding what is going into his kitchen.

He says: “It is very expensive, good produce. Instead of getting farmed fish, you get wild fish, for example. Farmed fish would be a quarter of the price, but there are so many in a tank it is not the same as a fish that gets to live its own life out at sea.” Keeping the food as natural as possible is the aim: “If you are cooking sea bass, you want it to taste of sea bass. You don’t want to add lots of flavours, you should have three flavours, maximum.”

It is always the same team of nearly 30 employees who work in the restaurant, five days a week. Their ability to communicate with each other ensures different dishes are ready at the same time.

“Because the meat is going to take ten minutes to cook but the fish is only going to take six minutes everyone is constantly speaking to each other. There is a guy just cooking the vegetables to garnish it and timings have all got to be spot-on. It is OK if we’re doing one table but, if we are doing five or six tables at the same time, it does get a bit hot.”

Before the plates leave the kitchen, the presentation needs to be as top-notch as the food. Jack says he is exacting in his style: “I’m a bit arty-farty. Taste is the most important thing, but I like to get it to look nice as well.”

Garnishes can often appear as fiddly as the main meal. One made by Dominic involves using salsify three different ways. Braising it, roasting it and winding it round a stick before deep frying. “It is not going to change anything in the flavour (of the dish) it is just going to give it a little garnish. I want people to say, ‘How did they manage to do that?’”

Seasonality is important to Jack, with one of his favourite autumn dishes being hare à la royale. It takes 24 hours to prepare and 30 hours to cook, but what if no-one orders it? “People will,” says Philippe Nublat, the food and beverage director of the restaurant who makes sure the front of house is as good as the food to provide an all-round dining “experience”.

Do diners paying top price really want to be fussed over at every step of the way? Philippe believes in the adage that the “customer is king”. That means they adapt their service to different diners. He believes that paying customers shouldn’t have to do anything.

“We are here to deliver the service, starting from taking the orders to pouring their drinks, serving their food, clearing their table, being there when they need us and stepping back a bit when they don’t want us to be at the table.” But, he adds: “We get customers who tell us they are happy to pour their wine; you have to respect the customers’ wish.”

The days when top-class restaurants adopted a snooty attitude are gone, says Nublat. “I don’t think that works any more, you need to adapt yourself to your customers and make sure they get the best and most enjoyable experience possible.”

The lack of snootiness even includes what type of wine is drunk. The head sommelier will recommend wines to go with food, but that doesn’t necessarily mean white wine with fish. Nublat says: “Every customer is different, every palate is different. We get guests who tell us they don’t like white wine, or red wine, and after that is our job to make sure we match as much as possible the food with the wine.” For example, a lighter red wine with fish might contain a grape such as pinot noir.

The restaurant aims to look at every detail. Table mats are used rather than cloths because they are more “relaxing” and although the space between pieces of cutlery is not measured, they are lined up in straight lines any sergeant-major would be proud of. The balance between formality and a relaxed atmosphere includes all the staff learning about the provenance of the food. Philippe says that for waiting staff their job is far more than “carrying a plate from the kitchen to the table”.

He says: “We are very proud of the product that we bring to the table. Scotland has some of the best produce to offer. We get a lot of questions from the customers. Nowadays customers want to be more and involved about what is on the plate. There is a big awareness of food in Scotland.”

So far so good. Top-rate food and quality service. But can the costs involved in providing this be afforded during an economic crisis? The previous restaurant on the site, Abstract, closed after less than three years with some claiming it was in the wrong part of Edinburgh. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay even predicted the downfall of Abstract after featuring its sister restaurant in Inverness on his Kitchen Nightmares TV series

Jack – who has old friend and fellow Michelin star holder, Tom Kitchin, as a business partner – is adamant the doom-mongers are wrong: “I think this site is fantastic. It is central – there are not that many restaurants in this part of town. I am very, very careful I make my margins. Every day we know how much we have to make to survive.”

With such attention detail it could be possible to have a lot of food waste, something any business has to avoid. For the Castle Terrace Restaurant anything chopped off ingredients during preparation is re-used, whether it is in staff meals, soups or garnishes.

Jack says: “We waste nothing, that’s vital, what to do with the offcuts. If you start putting stuff like that in the bin you will go out of business, without a doubt.”

Martin Wishart, who earned the first-ever Michelin star in Edinburgh at his eponymous restaurant, last weekend said there are not enough diners in the city to sustain any more high-quality establishments. He said the number of Michelin stars in the capital had reached saturation point.

Jack has a different vision for Edinburgh. He says: “I spent eight years in Paris – there are over 200 one-star Michelins. It is a destination; people go to Paris to eat, why can’t Edinburgh be the same?

“There is enough demand for it as well. We have some guests who come from England.” But what makes a Michelin-starred restaurant attract people from far and wide?

“They come to a place like here because they feel they are going to get a good meal, something they couldn’t do in their own house.”

Tom Kitchin’s wife, Michaela, is a director of the restaurant and helped design the decor, ripping out dark wooden panelling and replacing it with patterned French wallpaper. Allowing diners to relax was important to her: “I want it to be really welcoming and open and it was really just for people to step and say it was a rather nice place. What we are really trying to do is create some fantastic food but the service side of things is equally important, to match up with the whole experience.”