Iris

Iris - Eating out in Edinburgh

For the last week we were in Edinburgh, my lovely boyfriend treated me to dinner. I had the task of picking where to go, and thought I would search what Thistle Street had to offer. Thistle Street is a road running between George Street and Victoria Street and is packed with lots of lovely restaurants.

Eyeing up the menu, this definitely seemed like the best choice.  If you want to go there I would definitely recommend making reservations. We watched couple after couple walk in and ask for a table, and told to come back two hours later if they wanted a seat. Very popular!

For starters I opted for Pork Belly. The pork itself was in strips, lying on a small bed of salad. I think I received a fairly generous helping. It had a honey glaze, and looked lovely. The boyfriend had a smoked duck salad starter. He wasn’t particularly impressed with it, as there was very little duck on the dish.

The main meals were a lot better. I had roasted duck with raspberries and drambule. And oh my! It was so good. The duck was perfect. Very pink, and I was impressed with just how well duck and raspberries go together. The perfect combo. The boyfriend had a rack of lamb, rare again and cooked to perfection. We were very happy with the meat, the side however were a total let down, and I feel they kind of ruined the meal. Normally you would expect to be served a bowl of extra vegetables or something in addition of the meal. Not at Iris though. You have to buy sides as you literally only receive the meat. This wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if the sides actually go with the dished, but they weren’t brilliant options. We decided that the sweet potato fries would be best, they did the trick, but I’m sure that Iris could come up with a lot more flattering sides.

After some deliciously tender meat it was time to fill the sweet pocket. I opted for Chocolate Key lime Pie. It was so good! I’m always a sucker for key lime pie, and the addition of chocolate made it too tough to refuse. It was wonderful. A raspberry sauce and icing sugar decorated the plate to make the whole thing look even better.

What I think:

The food was really, really good. The mains cost about £13 for the Duck, £17 for the lamb (bill totalled at £68 with drinks), which is what you expect to pay on Thistle Street. Desserts were good and pretty cheap.  When the waiting staff deliver the bill you are also given an envelope that goes to an Edinburgh charity for the homeless, which I think is a very nice touch. They could probably do with having more than two staff serving, as sometimes we were left for a while longer than we should have been to be asked about desserts/ serve desserts, but they were both very pleasant. I would recommend this place, but I would be tempted to check it out on lunchtime as you can get a three-course meal for 14.99. Barry bargain! Like I said at the very start, you need to make a reservation too. It’s so busy. Would recommend and give a 7.5/10 

Eating out in Edinburgh

Eating out in Edinburgh

A sea foodie dream.

LA FAVORITA

The best thing about Edinburgh has to be the big collection of amazing restaurant’s dotted across the city. On Saturday night The Boyfriend and I jumped into the car and set off to Leith Walk- an affordable part of town with restaurants, take-outs and worldwide food stores to suit all the corners of the Earth.

La Favorita is an Italian restaurant, with incredible food and very attentive, friendly staff.  They make homemade desserts, handmade pizzas, and have an impressive array of pastas, meat & fish dishes, and risottos.

The menu is rather large, with an assortment of mouth-watering dishes throughout. The portions themselves are rather large; lucky for us we had a table where we could see a lot of dishes going out and realized that bruschetta, as a starter would work best between the two of us. So glad we did that as there is no way I could have managed a whole dish for just a starter! But oh my! It was wonderful. A beautiful selection of seafood on white bread accompanied with a little salad and some olives.

Gluten Free King Prawn & Scallop Pizza.

 Due to the huge menu the boyfriend and I spent ages to make a decision on our main meal, and still hadn’t decided what to have until we had finished the starter, ooops! After a lot of dithering between pizza- pasta, pizza- pasta we decided to treat ourselves to huge pizzas.  Again, there was a huge selection that all sounded delicious! Boyfriend chose a pizza with slices of steak on it (I kid you not!). It looked sensational! He was even asked how he would like the steak cooked, very impressed!  I went for a ‘blue mare’ (I think that was it’s name!) gluten free pizza, which was covered in mozzarella, king prawns and scallops. It was wonderful! There was a lemony zest to the pizza that gave it a lovely fresh feeling. The gluten free base was not anything I had tried before, but something that did really interest me. It didn’t have as much crunch as a regular pizza base, but I think overall the taste from it was better. The pizzas were huge too, I was shocked at how much pizza I could get for £11-£12! 

Close up of Boyfriends steaky pizza!

Overall this has to be one of my favorite restaurants in Edinburgh, and one of the most affordable! The meal that left us absolutely stuffed came in at under £30. Pretty good value when you also factor in the fact that we got out left over pizza (in my case half of it!) put into a pizza box for the next days lunch! I can’t wait to return and try their pasta dishes, I had a look at some other people were eating and they looked so good! Another thing I am desperate to try are there desserts! They all looked so authentic and delicious! But If I could only manage half of my main I don’t think there was any real chance of a dessert! I was very impressed by everything here, the restaurant was clean, had a vibrant buzz about the place and the staff were so nice, Super friendly, and smiley and not in a way that seemed false at all. The service was fast, polite and it felt like a treat to be there! All over 10/10! 

Eating out in Edinburgh- Café Cassis

Eating out in Edinburgh- Café Cassis

The last weekend I went out for lunch with The Boyfriends family to celebrate his Mum and Sister’s birthday. Wooo! We headed to, Café Cassis, (part of The Salisbury Hotel) A French restaurant in the Newington area of Edinburgh.

The restaurant offers a very nicely priced lunch menu, with the option of having specials on a board. We all opted for the lunch menu, which offers two courses £8.95 with the option to add on £1.95 for a dessert.

I opted for a bowl of Moules marinière with cream, garlic and parsley, in a delicious sauce, served with a few baskets of bread for the table to share.  I was so happy with this starter. Having the bread also meant I could soak up all of the juices to leave a clean bowl! The portion size was pretty generous, especially for a starter, and to my delight I didn’t have to throw any muscles away as they were all opened, woo wooo!

For my main course I had, beef bourguignon, which looked like a small portion when it came out, but it was deceptive as it was actually the perfect portion size! The meat was wonderful, very tender, and the whole dish had plenty of flavour.

For dessert I chose Homemade nougat ice cream terrine served with crème anglaise and

Raspberry coulis. It wasn’t the most impressive looking desert, but it tasted good and was a lovely way to finish the meal.

What I think: The service was excellent. We had one waitress to take all of our orders, and two waitresses to serve everything, so food came out very swiftly! The quality was wonderful throughout and I don’t think there is anyway you expect more, especially with such a small price tag on the set meal. The restaurant itself looked for clean and fresh. I expect I will go back for more. All things considered I don’t think I can give it any less than 9/10 (an upgrade on desserts and it would be a very easy 10).

Restaurant website:  http://www.cafecassis.co.uk/index.html