Royal Terrace Gardens, London Road, Edinburgh (0131 558 1221). Meal for two, including wine and service: £80
If I was a cynical bastard, and I do have my moments, I would suggest the Gardener's Cottage is too good to be true; that it was like some little girl with corkscrew blonde hair who always says "please" and "thank you" and smells of strawberries. To be fair, if I was really cynical I'd say the name makes it sound like a sweaty gay hang-out rather than somewhere to head for lunch. Then again it's located in a part of Edinburgh that is so polite and well mannered they probably don't even fart round here, let alone vigorously re-enact the plots of Tom of Finland.
And anyway, I'm not cynical, or at least not that cynical. Still, there is something so perfectly poised about this place you could be forgiven a little doubt. Can it really be this perfect? On balance, I'd say yes. It can. The restaurant is located in a building dating from 1836 that was once the cottage of the gardener. Out front, on either side of the gravel path, are vegetable patches. They are as much a declaration of intent as sources of food. The young team here do not just mouth the litany of seasonal and local; they mean it.
Inside, the two rooms are set with long communal tables, two in one room, one in the other, each seating 10. You come here to be elbow to elbow with your companions. Frankly it's amazing it has found an audience in Edinburgh, a city which doesn't much hold with strangers, let alone being near them. Indeed, two women turned up and tried a number of spots next to other diners before deciding it was just not for them.
Their loss. The food is simple, and very carefully calibrated to bring a modicum of French technique to a clean, British sensibility. The ingredients are allowed their voice. On Sunday there is a little (though not a vast amount of) choice. Most of the time at lunch and dinner it is a set menu for about £25, which they post each day on twitter (@gardenersctg). Themes emerge, in line with the seasons. At the moment there's a lot of roe deer with roast potatoes, and outbreaks of hazelnut and walnut in salads or with tagliatelle. Pearl barley plays the part of risotto rice, and they love their beans, broad or green or otherwise.
All of which makes our Sunday lunch seem pretty typical. With their still warm (slightly under-salted) sourdough bread, there was a buttery kipper pâté with a punch of salt and smoke to knock back the fat. There was a salad of green herbs decorated with violet blooms and dressed with the salt the bread hadn't had, plus a simple plate of crunchy green beans with the ripe, sea-shore kick of chopped winkles. Something advertised as a "shimonita" quiche – this is a type of Japanese spring onion; I had to look it up – was, we were told, made with leeks from the garden because the shimonitas hadn't turned up. In other words, a cheese and onion quiche but, for all the posing, a very respectable one with good, crumbly pastry.
A sensitively roasted grouse came with a mix of beans, kale and chestnut mushrooms; a tranche of hake, on one of their risotto-like messes of pearl barley, came with more peas and beans. And that, short of the ricotta, sage and walnut ravioli which we didn't order, was the entire menu. It is food that feels good for you. The grouse was £22 and the hake a little over half that, but everything else was around a fiver, including dessert which was an afterthought: some crushed raspberries, a hazelnut biscuit, a little chocolate sauce. Recent menus suggest it's par for the course. You may just want to go for the cheese and oat cakes instead, and with it a glass of wine from a short, thoughtful list.
Lunch in the Gardener's Cottage is one of those experiences that stops the world for a while, and we can always do with one of those.
