Eating out in Edinburgh, Café Malayne

So as it happens, I have a very hard working boyfriend, who was given  £75 to blow on a meal as a “Thank You’” for all of his hard work. Brilliant!  It took us forever to decide where to go, and a few months later settled on Café Marlayne, Thistle Street in Edinburgh.

We’ve been to the café Marlayne at the top of Leith walk twice before for lunch, and the food was pretty good (the service comically bad, but that was just down to one waiter on a verrry off day!), so we looked at the evening menu, and ding dong! It looked incrediable!

We rolled up on Thursday evening, to the restaurant, despite the tiny size of the room there was a definite buzz about the place. Quickly we were seen to our table and greeted with a bowl of delicious sliced baguette- which was very welcome as we were both starving!

On to the food!

For a starter I had Fresh Crab with Mango, Avocado, Corriander Salsa & Lime Mayonnaise, which cost £5.10.  It came out in a tower with the mayonnaise drizzled in a zigzag across the plate beneath the tower of crab, avocado and mango. The starter was light, had a sharp-fresh taste and was just the thing I needed to get excited for the rest of the meal.

The one and only thing that let the starter down was how much better my boyfriend’s starter was! He had a dish of pigeon breast and bacon, on a bed of rocket. I was eager to try it, and it didn’t disappoint! It looked marvelous and tasted even better.  The portion size was very generous, especially for a starter (could easily pass for a light lunch).  Everything on the plate complimented each other perfectly, and it’s something I would love to eat a full portion of.  Think this starter cost about £5.00

For the main meal we both decided on the same dish: Gressingham Duck Breast on a bed of spinach.  The main meals come with a plate of vegetables (broccoli, carrots and potatoes- which was the perfect portion side to compliment the Duck) The Duck was cooked to perfection, and melted in the mouth. We were both very impressed with it and it was easily worth the £15 we paid for it. There were two very clean plates when we were finished!

The best bit- dessert!

I chose Key lime pie (one of my favourites!), which I knew I was a fan of as I’ve had it before at the other café Marlayne. It’s beautifully sharp, and creamy with lime zest throughout and I cant sing enough praise its way! The base was made using ginger snaps, and keeping in line with the rest of the meal looked beautiful!

Louis (the boyfriend) opted for white and dark chocolate Almond torte, which again was beautiful and equally as delicious, but I think was a bit too heavy to have a full slice after so much food.  Both desert’s came in at £4.50 and are worth every penny!

I would love to go back there and eat everything all over again! The service was brilliant, and there are no complaints from me in the slightest. The whole meal came in at £71.00 which included all of that food, a bottle of wine and two beers which seems pretty reasonable for an evening meal that tasted so good.

A very easy 10/10

Eating out in Edinburgh.

Amore Dogs, Edinburgh.

Went out for dinner last night to Amore Dogs. It’s a lovely little place on hanover street which is decorated by pictures and statues of dogs. Dream! We’ve been there before with boyfriends mum and sister for lunch and it was pretty well priced and tasty so we headed back for round two.

Nothing really sounded appealing for starters, just garlic breads for a fiver- bugger that! So we got some bread as the past hour we both spent a lot of time moaning about how hungry we were (me especially). The bread was actually so tasty, so warm inside and nice and crisp on the outside. It got severed without any butter, which is a bit odd, and when I asked the waitress if we could get some she gave us a tiny amount on a plate and seemed really pissed off that she was having to do it. The joker!

Anyway, after a little bit of a wait, on came our main. We both decided on the same dish (I was toying with the idea of black olive potato dumplings with roast cherry tomatoes and prawns), which was a seafood linguine in a tomato sauce, and boy, it was pretty yummy. It came out we both thought it looked like there was not a lot in there. In fairness, they didn’t go to town with adding in many seafood bits. The muscles tasted amazing and decorated the bowl nicely. There were these little octopus things which were kind of cute so I felt a bit guilty eating them (soon got over it mind). But you did have to rummage through the linguine to find other fishy bits, in fact, I think I only had one bit that was some fish, no idea what. 

Overall it was really tasty and second round of bread to soak up all the sauce and juices worked as a treat. My biggest complaint would be that I didn’t see the waitress smile once, until she realised she received a tip (annoyed bf tipped her as she totally didn’t deserve it, and I think people should earn them, but whatever). I don’t know if I would go back to that restaurant as the company has two other dog themed restaurants on George and Rose street with different menus that I would like to check out.  I would give the food 6.5/10 and the service a 3/10

Taken from my old blog.