Roseneath Street is a perfectly formed parade of shop fronts in leafy, pleasant Marchmont. The kind of cosy High Street every mild-mannered, liberal Guardian reader wished they lived on.
There’s an artisan bakery, a bountiful and overflowing grocers, a small designer clothes shop and a couple of pubs, revamped from the grotty dens filled with ill-fated mixtures of students and locals I remember from twenty years ago and reborn as boutique bars for young professionals and yummy mummies. There’s also Eddie’s Seafood Market, a fine and well-known fishmongers, and it is from here that much of the produce that makes up Sweet Melindas menu comes from.
Sweet Melindas clinches the deal on Roseneath Street. It’s the perfect neighbourhood restaurant, the kind of place you’d want to pop into at least once a month just to see how things were getting on. They do both a two-course lunch and pre-theatre menu for £12.50, but tonight I’m off for the main dinner attraction with Mr and Mrs Fraser, a couple of frequent diners here who chide me for my grumbling that it can’t be as good as they say and, actually, £22.50 seems a bit steep for two courses if you ask me.
We go on a Tuesday evening, always BYOB night at Sweet Melindas, shortly after the rampant mayhem of Edinburgh’s multiple festivals has finally come to an end, which might explain the slightly under-populated dining room. However, Mr and Mrs Fraser assure me that this is not the norm and booking in advance is always necessary. Entering Sweet Melindas is like walking into a pleasant parlour room, with dimmed lighting and curtains shut against the rapidly falling darkness outside. Light jazz tinkles away unobtrusively in the background. The black-clad French waiter shows us to the table of our choosing before whisking away our cheap bottles of Co-Op plonk to decant.
Having chosen our starters and mains, we are offered some soda bread with an excellent olive tapenade to whet our appetites. However, only three small pieces of bread between us means there isn’t much to mop up. A minor moan, but a bit more would have been nice. Still, I am eager to taste what comes next. Seafood, much of it from the afore mentioned Eddie’s, is Sweet Melindas speciality, with occasional excursions into game and poultry. Mrs Fraser seems very pleased with her slow roasted duck, sautéed potato and grape salad to start. I also greatly enjoy my grilled sardines with rosemary, garlic and lemon, perfectly charred with plenty of plump flesh, while secretly admitting that you can’t go far wrong with fresh sardines simply cooked. Mr Fraser easily hits the jackpot with his starter of Thai fish cakes with a cabbage salad. Thai fish cakes are too frequently now the star attraction on the menus of under-achieving wannabe gastro-pubs, but these are marvellously crispy on the outside, moist and doughy inside, and marvellously more-ish.
There is a perfect fifteen minute digestion gap between our starter plates being removed and our mains arriving. On tasting, I find Mr Fraser’s roast corn fed chicken supreme with spring onion mash a touch dry, although he assures me it perfectly soaks up the tarragon and Dijon sauce, complemented by wild mushrooms and Stornoway black pudding. Mrs Fraser has the steamed lemon sole and smoked salmon with a chive and smoked haddock risotto. That sounds like a potential fish overload, but the salmon comes rolled inside the lemon sole and placed over the risotto. My main, finally, removes any misgivings I may have had about Sweet Melindas. The dish of grilled sea bass fillets with surf clams and pesto spaghetti is easily worth £22.50 in its own right. Three luscious sea bass fillets and a virtual cascade of juicy clams (not one with its shell still snapped shut) spilling onto the pesto-coated pasta. While eating, I feel transported to a sun-drenched balcony overlooking a pacific beach. Exquisite.
Desserts are extra, around the £6-£8 mark, but our appetites feel sufficiently sated to do without. Mr Fraser and I are both greedy boys, however, and decide to share the cheese platter. It arrives, thankfully having not seen the fridge for a good hour, complete with crisp water biscuits and a spicy apple and plum chutney. I have never been so happy to pay a bill in my life. The service throughout has been friendly but unobtrusive and the food, on the whole, excellent. You could easily walk past Sweet Melindas and scarcely notice it was there. Once visited, though, you’ll want to return to, just to see how things are getting on.
Dinner. Two courses: £22.50