2 George IV Bridge, Edinburgh (0131 226 1888). Meal for two, including wine and service: £125
It is serious food which encourages me to get my kit off. The roast shellfish platter at Ondine was just such a dish. As the glossy, butter-slicked heap of crimson shell and claw, pearly oyster, fat-lipped mussel and clams landed on the table I slipped off my jacket and rolled up my sleeves. It wasn't a conscious decision; my subconscious, the bit that wasn't dealing with my foetid midlife crisis, was in charge. This food was a two-handed job. I needed maximum flexibility. Plus, I'm a bloke who hasn't met a shirt he can't spill sauce down. If it's a really good meal I don't need to take a menu away for reference, I just read my shirt, from the bottom button up. I didn't want to get puddles of the marvellous, hot, parsley-green, dairy-rich dressing on my lovely new jacket.
The £49.50 charged for this – £36 if you go without the lobster, but I bloody wasn't going to – is less of an issue when you see the thing and realise it could quite easily serve two. At first we weren't sure whether to eat it or climb it. We set about the task with the industriousness it deserved.
Ondine, which occupies a first-floor space perched above Victoria Street with wraparound views of some of Edinburgh's finest bits, is shiny and black and silver and wipe-down. There is an oyster bar in the middle and floor-to-ceiling windows and slightly dodgy modern art. If I was being mean I would say it edges towards an Athena-poster aesthetic. Certainly on a Monday lunchtime it had a vaguely corporate air on account of the men in suits downing oysters; my companion pretty much doubled the ovary count.
But it all hums along very nicely. Roy Brett's cooking is simple and classy and in service of some excellent ingredients (it has certification from the Marine Stewardship Council for its sustainable-buying practices). Indeed, the restaurants of Edinburgh big up their local larder more than anywhere else in the UK. Certainly it's hard to imagine a seafood restaurant in the city without cullen skink, that great gut-filling fish soup, on the menu; crowds would gather on the Royal Mile with pitchforks and tartan-pimped tins of shortbread. Here though, it is less a classic soup than something to be eaten with a trowel, a stew of cubed potatoes and smoked fish and just enough cream to fur the arteries. It is served from a terrine and we are offered seconds (which I'm sure happens to everybody; if anybody has missed out on this pleasure they will doubtless tell me).
Ribbons of tempura squid with a bowl of something fish-sauce-heavy to dip them in is the usual cheery victory of the deep-fat fryer. There are diver-caught scallops on the half shell, with lengths of fine pork sausage plonked above them and sticking out. It is a diverting presentation. If you are, like my companion, entirely juvenile, you might say it looks like something phalli-centric an adolescent boy would doodle on his exercise books. I, however, am more than willing to celebrate the artlessness of it. Plus, it was scallop and pig.
A dessert of a meringue filled with custard and served with strands of rhubarb is described as a Pavlova. It is nothing of the sort, but it is very good: soft, chewy, creamy and sharp. A treacle tart is light and citrusy and a great foil to the butter-garlic overload. As is the Albarino from a list with lots by the glass, which bends the knee to the old world. Any wine list with white Riojas on it is fine by me.
And finally, more on my battle for a table at the newly opened London outpost of New York's Balthazar. I have been offered a booking so late it's after my bed time, and one so early, it could count as a late lunch. The management have offered to help, but I have declined. Witness the effort I go to on your behalf.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place. Follow Jay on Twitter@jayrayner1
