Needless to say, if it’s high end dining you’re looking for then you generally don’t get it for £10 or less. There is the odd offer available from Edinburgh’s big boy restaurants, most pleasingly the excellent £25 lunch deal at Tom Kitchin’s Michelin-starred Leith restaurant, but they’re few and far between. So, the prospect of paying minimal prices for lunch at Wedgwood is something to savour.
Paul Wedgwood’s High Street restaurant has been open for a few years and attracted a fair amount of praise and awards. The Royal Mile, it must be said, is not the best place to look for a great meal, being increasingly laden down with tartan tat shops, endless branches of coffee or sandwich chains and cafes seemingly existing solely to exploit both tourists and Scottish traditions.
Wedgwood feels a galaxy away from such vulgarity, an oasis of good taste on a world-famous street currently sinking under its low ambitions. It’s quite a small restaurant but elegantly fitted out so as to maximise the space available. Waiting staff are welcoming and ever-attentive, always noticing when glasses need refilling, and the presence of a fish knife when required displays the level of refinement on offer.
While the basic two lunch courses cost £10, there are little extras on offer. £2 seems a small price to pay for the ciabatta to drizzle with olive oil flavoured with pungently roasted garlic. While Mother abstains from the starter, I have the smoked salmon, crème fraiche and anchovy roulade with cucumber salad and beetroot “paint”. The roulade makes for a pleasantly light and cooling dish for a warm summer day and the smear of beetroot paint is of an almost berry-like sweetness, extracting a full flavour from a somewhat maligned vegetable.
Mother is equally impressed with her main course of gnocchi with butternut squash, chanterelle mushrooms, crème fraiche and pesto. The gnocchi has been delicately toasted, thereby giving a crisp outer finish to these occasionally stodgy potato dumplings. My monkfish with pork belly and spinach is, however, a revelation. Easily the best plate of food I have eaten in weeks (and I’ve been eating a lot recently, as my rapidly expanding girth displays), there isn’t enough praise I can heap upon this excellent dish. The monkfish comes in chunky, meaty goujons while the trio of pork belly chunks are little parcels of salty, fatty heaven. Beneath these is the cleanser of wilting spinach, all three components melting into a delicious cider sauce. The only criticism I can give is that, having devoured it, I instantly want more. This is, of course, no criticism at all.
For dessert, Mother goes for the cherry and vanilla smoothie which comes, silky smooth indeed, in a martini glass with pistachio cookies on the side. On a roll from the monkfish, I decide to upgrade and have a third course, taking my total up to £13. Unfortunately, my rhubarb and berry crumble seems to have been somewhat deconstructed. While the rhubarb and berry stew is full of flavour, the crumble element is a rather sad trickle of crumbs to one side of the plate. Some things just shouldn’t be deconstructed, and rhubarb crumble is one of them.
But this little slip-up at the end is swiftly forgotten and I spend the rest of the afternoon raving to everyone I encounter about monkfish and pork belly. Wedgwood is very much a restaurant on an upward curve and it’s debatable how long they’ll be willing to charge such incredible lunch prices. Grab it, with both hands and an open mouth, while you can.