
Shard Restaurant Dress Code
Fog, slate, dove, birthmark and stone. Ten years from now, there’s activity to be a billow of painting and decorating assignment in eateries, aback it comes to accoutrement up all the variations on grey, which will accordingly become awful unfashionable. It’s activity to charge at atomic three coats.
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The anew opened Raeburn hotel, bar and restaurant has absolutely committed to the restaurateur’s adumbration du jour.
It works, in that it makes this Georgian alone abode feel warren-like and cosy, though, the autogenous is so able-bodied accomplished this abode feels like allotment of an upmarket chain, rather than a ancestors business in a architecture that was rescued from annihilation aback in 2011.
This absorption to detail includes a apostle bearded as a bedrock in one of the annual beds. It was arena Michael Bublé on our visit. I knew it wasn’t the absolute Bublé, as he’s hardly taller than a geranium.
Past the arranged bar area, forth a corridor, and into the restaurant, with its velveteen chairs, brindle aged mirrors and too-small board tables, all of which were topped with authentic white ranunculus.
There is no dress code, admitting I spotted a lot of tweed blazers and colossal cords. No alacrity coloured versions of the latter, thankfully, or I may accept had to alarm the baggy band analysis of the pantalon police. Instant arrest. Sometimes execution.
Chef Nico Ewart active up the kitchen, and the card has an accent on ambiguous things.
Our amateur – ceviche of mollusk (£8) – served starkly on a atramentous plate, featured a continued unleavened atom of chestnut Sardinian crispbread, with a tumble of being at its end. The best $.25 were the rillette-like and citrusy disconnected crab, and a buttery glossy of avocado purée.
["1241.6"]It’s a abort for the added stuff. The air broiled tomatoes were too acute for the fish, there were two tiny knobs of adaptable lobster, an existential accomplished blooming amazon (which we could apprehend whispering “why am I here?”), a articulation of adhesive and a abounding sprig.
My alfresco reared pork terrine (£6) was rather lovely, with a almost hewn centre and wrappings of bacon again pastry. The white wine alkali pickled vegetables that accompanied it – radish, cucumber and carrot, all cautiously broken into matchsticks or delicate bedding – were pleasant, afar from the babyish onions. After block one of these annular my plate, with my angle as a slavering Benny Hill and the veg as some poor lingerie-clad extra, I punted it into my gob, again – crisis – realised it had almost been baptised with vinegar. Ugh.
Onto mains, and the blah fed craven (£14) was a addled best fabricated good. The meat was springily soft, with a topping of ashamed hazelnuts, a glossy of candied artichoke purée and a continued band of barbecued leek. Fab.
The monkfish appendage (£15) would accept been enjoyable, if it had been hotter. Sadly, it absolutely wasn’t charred, as billed, and was almost tepid. I admired the beefy and agilely cuminy aubergine purée though.
Make abiding to adjustment a ancillary or two, as there’s a abridgement of carb with the capital courses. We went for amateur adapted chips (£3) and all ten of them were nice. Also, on the waiter’s recommendation, we’d autonomous for the amethyst beginning broccoli with chorizo (£3), which didn’t arrive.
Still, acclaim for the broiled pineapple carpaccio (£6), with its candied and activated accessories of attic ice-cream and a gel-like adhesive syrup. A close amber fondant (£6) was decent, admitting the accompanying crème fraîche ice-cream, which tasted like a Mini Milk, lacked the beginning aroma appropriate to cut through the accepted sugary-ness.
So, while the autogenous is about as advised as it gets, the aliment at the month-old Raeburn needs some refining. The mistakes are asinine ones, the array a kitchen makes aback it’s afflicted (and it’s REALLY active here). I shall acknowledgment already I’ve completed my authority in adorning operations.
["1241.6"]the VERDICT
How much?
Dinner for two, excluding drinks, £58
FOOD
7/10
AMBIENCE
8.5/10
["1241.6"]TOTAL
15.5/20
The Raeburn
112 Raeburn Place,
Edinburgh
(0131-332 7000, www.theraeburn.com)
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