Browns Restaurant and Bar
131-133 George Street, Edinburgh (0131-225 4442)
THE Bill
Dinner for two, £50.25, excluding wine IT'S OUT WITH STEWS AND IN with salads. Summer is almost here and it's time to stop hankering
after beef bourguignon, and embrace the green world of eating in a warm climate. Even if it's not that warm. It could also be time to stop frequenting your local couthy restaurant, whose cosy couch has the shape of your rear imprinted on it, and look for somewhere with a brasserie vibe. Such establishments have a bright interior, lively atmosphere, simple, fresh menu and a casual approach to eating that inspires you to hang out for hours, nursing a glass of cold house white.
I was definitely in that frame of mind when I visited Browns, part of a UK-wide chain, which opened in the capital nearly a decade ago. As they'd just launched their seasonal menu I was fantasising about all the glorious foodie things that define summer eating – asparagus, spinach, lamb and bright green broad beans. I was perhaps a little premature.
When my dining partner, Rolf, and I arrived on a sunny Friday evening, the place was already packed with a very mixed crowd. There were the usual designer-clad trendies but there were also plenty of family parties. We were ushered to a table at the back, rather close to a table of elderly ladies.
Still, our vantage point did allow us a good ogle at what the ladies had ordered, and the chicken with prosciutto and taleggio certainly looked tasty. However, Rolf decided to start with the pan-seared black pearl scallops with sprouting greens and a lemon, saffron and cold-pressed English rapeseed oil dressing (£8.50), while I chose the grilled Somerset goats cheese with a dressed fig, hazelnut and mixed leaf salad (£6.75). It sounds delicious – if only it had been.
Although Rolf quite liked his scallops (I thought they were a bit bland and bloated), the unnecessarily large pile of accompanying sprouting shoots was on the turn. The pale brown oxygenated hue that their stems were sporting was the giveaway – even the canary yellow sauce couldn't disguise the mouldering.
My starter was marginally more successful. The heated wheel of cheese was decent, melted almost all the way through. However, the parched salad was in dire need of a dressing. The hazelnuts and figs were pleasantly rustic tasting, but a bit dry on their own. Perhaps if we'd asked for some balsamic vinegar, our salivary glands could have coped.
For my main course, I'd thrown my dieter's handbook in the bin and gone for a 28-day aged ribeye steak with parsley, peppercorn and lemon butter, served with watercress and chips (£14.75). My mouth dropped open when this foodie version of a game of KerPlunk arrived. The steak was wee, but only compared to the absolute embarrassment of frites that it was perched on top of. I could manage only about six of the thousandfold frozen oven chips. Alongside them, the rather gristly steak was overdone, not medium-rare as I'd asked for, and the lone curl of wilted watercress was way past resuscitation.
"This place is just like an overpriced version of Wetherspoons, isn't it?," grumbled an equally disappointed Rolf, hunched over his main course of duck, watermelon and coriander salad with grated carrot, radish and mixed leaves with a plum dressing (£9.50). This less-than-thrilling salad was also browning, with a few hard shavings of duck, some swampy looking watermelon and – most shameful of all – just one measly sprig of coriander.
Only pudding could save the day. In my fantasy a place like this should serve a light sweet, like tarte Tatin, but Browns doesn't. So, I went for the nearest thing – pear and ginger cheesecake (£5), while Rolf plumped for raspberry and chocolate pudding with vanilla ice-cream (£5.75). Good news at last – my dining companion enjoyed his dessert, despite the fact that they'd forgotten to add the dollop of ice-cream as billed. It was extremely rich and tasted overtly of black treacle, but it wasn't bad. My cheesecake was also edible, despite the fact that it was far, far too sweet; so much so that the slivers of pear were undetectable under a cloying blanket of sugary whip. At least the little studs of ginger gave it bite.
Afterwards we felt a little deflated, like someone had taken a pin and stuck it in our brasserie balloon. Still, we had the white wine we'd been looking forward to – a buttery Pinot Grigio Francesco Scritti (£18.50) – and we'd been served efficiently by pleasant staff in bustling surroundings. If only we could be charmed so easily by pub, or should I say, sub, standard grub.
The full article contains 812 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
