I'm always on the lookout for Friday night restaurants. They fulfil a very specific sort of need. By Friday, I'm tired. Our domestic food store has probably run out and I can't work up any enthusiasm for subjecting myself to a Ready Steady Cook-style challenge.
It was the chips at Home Bistro that did it, "hand-cut chips with garlic mayo" to be precise. Just to put you in the picture, I almost never eat chips and never cook them at home. Home Bistro's chips are big, squashy in the middle and rustle like taffeta on the outside. A side order costs £2.25. Make it two side orders. One is just not enough.
I strayed on to the chips by way of an accompaniment to a main course, chicken paillard, that's thin, marinated char-grilled chicken which was served on top of a respectable Caesar salad; crunchy cos lettuce, silvery marinated anchovies and rugged croutons. As an ensemble, it was great Friday night food. Across the table, the calves liver managed to fit the bill too. It was pink, not too thick and flanked with crisp bacon, wilted spinach and a straightforward mash.
The main courses were better than either the starters or the desserts. Grilled halloumi cheese on salad needed something more to enliven it than chilli oil. Some gobstobber cherry tomatoes, something crunchy like fennel perhaps or something juicy like grapes would have done the trick. A leek and potato soup, liquidised with the skins left on for added flavour was comforting, if not revolutionary.
There was a homespun bread and butter pudding that would have benefited from more dried fruit but was nevertheless extremely edible. Trifle - how nice to see this forgotten dessert on a menu - failed to hit the spot. I come from the "no jelly in trifle" camp, even if the fruit is fresh peach (as at Home Bistro) not tinned.
Home Bistro is a small-scale, low-budget operation, kitted out cheaply but with an eye for style. The wine list makes up for its limitations by being cheap. You'll be able to live with the bill.
THE SCOTSMAN, Monday 26 November 2007, on the seventh edition of Scotland the Best ‘a 450 page guide to the last word in good living and eating by author and events supremo PETER IRVINE’ listing Home Bistro in Edinburgh’s top ten restaurants. “Comfort food heaven in tiny and, yes, homely bistro on South Side near University. Rowland Thomson and Richard Logan’s formula of simple, reassuring modern and traditional British grub. Home-made everything. Beginning to win the recognition it deserves; you may have to book. Great value and precious simplicity. Lunch Monday-Friday, dinner Tuesday-Saturday.”
Home Bistro
Partially inspired by Manhattan bistros (though not directly by Greenwich Village
namesake on Cornelia Street), Home provides some tasty, affordable and freshly prepared
comfort food in a south side Edinburgh district with more explicitly pitched competition.
You might stroll by Home without noticing it . Inside, the decor is almost equally
understated. The changing menu offers dishes such as steak and eggs, homemade cod
and salmon fish fingers or chicken paillard with warmed potato salad. To the degree
possible, chef/ partner Richard Logan makes everything fresh: from orange marmalade
on the grilled around a strawberry pavlova -to baked bread. Unlicensed when it opened,
Home now offers a modest wine list from NobleGrape merchants, such as a Clamouse
Coteaux du Languedoc house red at just under £11.
BARRY SHELBY, THE LIST
