Dining Out 055: The Palmerston

Lunch in Edinburgh.

Anyone who has ever tolerated the way I behave in a supermarket can attest to the fact that I am a born dilly dallyer (I have lost days of my life to like, deciding on a yoghurt in the East Dulwich M&S). It probably follows, then, that what I really love at a restaurant is being given time.

Something that has united the meals I’ve enjoyed most lately is that while eating them all, I’ve felt like I’ve had time to enjoy myself – even if this is a carefully choreographed illusion on the part of the restaurant (in fact, it’s kind of even more impressive when this is the case). One such meal was at The Palmerston in Edinburgh, where, last weekend, I spent about three hours eating and drinking in a room so airy that you could actually see the rays of light coming in through the windows. I would describe the experience as blissful.

I admittedly am not too familiar with the restaurant “scene” (sorry for saying “scene” that’s embarrassing) in Edinburgh, so my points of reference will mostly still be London-based here. I’d say that the food at The Palmerston probably most accurately comes under the “Modern European” umbrella that you’d also apply to London places like Western’s Laundry and Caravel, though the whole nose-to-tail, in-house butchery thing that they do at The Camberwell Arms is very present there too.

The dining room itself is, as I say, really beautifully light, and decked out in rich, dark wood. It feels like a classy spot and the menu follows suit – meat and fish come with seasonal veg treated real nice; Guinness costs just over a fiver. The point is to enjoy yourself.

Between four, we ordered four starters, three mains and three desserts. To begin came a big plate of lamb’s tongue and bacon salad, tossed among crisp leaves and a burly, mustard-y dressing, as well as three ricotta malfatti – big cheesy gnocchi-esque dumplings on top of a genuinely drinkable garlic sauce – and a fresh, light pickled mackerel salad.

Best of all, however, was one of my favourite things to see on a starters menu: a mini portion of spaghetti. There’s something especially glamorous about twirling your fork through an appetiser portion of spaghetti, I always think, because pasta to start is a bit of a statement of intent. This one came with flaky chunks of cod cheek and a tomato sauce, which was heavy on the herbs – acidic enough to make an impact, light enough to start a meal excellently.

For the main course, there was monkfish with chicken sauce, roasted lamb chops with a thick layer of soft, melted fat on one side, and a ballsy, brash Pat Butcher of a fish stew – hearty with chunks of hake and coley, and a handful of fat little mussels in their shells on top.

The common denominator across all these dishes was generosity: the portions were big and the flavours didn’t scrimp (indeed, the sauces – in particular the anchovy and chilli number that went along with the lamb – stood up to the ultimate test, in that they tasted even better on the big hunks of house bread that we swiped around the plates right at the end). It was good food for a Sunday: bright, tasty, and infinitely more interesting than a roast.

Finally came dessert, for which this place has become well known: we had chocolate marquise (a bit thicker than a mousse, with a cake-y base, made as a sort of terrine and served in slices) with candied clementines, apple crumble tart, and panna cotta with rhubarb and almonds. because if you go to a seasonally-led restaurant in April and you don’t eat poached rhubarb at some point have you even really been to that seasonally-led restaurant??)

All of it had been judged for maximum enjoyment: the marquise basically had the feel of a posh Jaffa Cake, the tart was a crisp, crunchy Frankenstein’s monster of two beloved desserts – the definition of “what’s not to love?” – and while the panna cotta could have been one note and too sweet, chunky almonds gave it proper depth.

In general, the room was so pretty and the food so solidly great that it was kind of impossible not to have a good time. But it was when I ordered a coffee at the end of the meal (unusual for me as a member of the “over 30s whose pathetic bodies enter fight or flight if they drink coffee post-midday” community), just to eke out my time at The Palmerston a little bit more, that I made myself aware of just how much I’d liked it. It was one of those meals that I’m sure, on rainier, more boring Sundays in the future, I’ll wish I could conjure myself back into – spearing mussels from their shells, and curving my spoon around wibbly wobbly panna cotta, in a glass dish glinting in the afternoon light.

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Dining Out is written by Lauren O’Neill and illustrated by Lucy Letherland. Weekly reviews are free to read every Thursday, and you can follow us on Instagram here, but if you’d like to see more, you can subscribe for £5 a month or £50 a year, to get extra content every second Sunday.

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