Murray takes not one, but two, visits to the Meikleour Arms in Perthshire in the hope that the food is as delicious as it appears.
This is a tale of two cities with two very different food cultures.
Last weekend, I ate a perfect Saturday lunch in The Palmerston in Edinburgh and, just like my first trip to Kinneuchar Inn in Fife, it instantly felt like coming home.
Everything about this new restaurant was proper — an ever-changing, seasonal and tightly focused menu, great staff, a lovely room and an on-site bakery. And linen napkins!
What brought all these elements together was the superior cooking of chef and co-owner Lloyd Morse, a man who cooks food just the way I like it — assertive, punchy, perfectly balanced and pared down to the absolute essence of the dish.
This place was simply wonderful and I bet the owners can’t believe no one else has really succeeded with such a concept in Edinburgh; reductive, expensive culinary theme parks like Tom Kitchin’s Scran and Scallie gastropub now seem completely outdated in the face of these sharp new kids on the block.
The Palmerston is going to clean up, and rightly so. Going here wasn’t just a great, spontaneous lunch on a Saturday though; really, this crystallised thoughts about eating out that have been in my head for a long time.
One of my frustrations about moving back to Scotland after 40 years in London has been the lack of the kind of restaurants I used to frequent in the capital — St John, the Quality Chop House and Rochelle Canteen being three examples of places offering ace food in glamorous but relaxed surroundings.
My most recent trip to London showed that newer places like Towpath (basically a shack on the Regent’s Canal), and the Laughing Heart in Hackney, continue a constantly changing culinary narrative anchored by great ingredients, gutsy flavours and simple cooking. Dundee lacks this.
Now, obviously I know that comparing Dundee with London or Edinburgh is silly, but I do think it’s amazing that there is such a void here in the city.
Quite simply, there is nowhere to go in Dundee for those nights when you want the informality of a pub coupled with great, simple food.
By that, I don’t mean generic offerings like the now ubiquitous haggis bonbons and scampi and chips, many of which rely on the “chef” opening a container from the freezer rather than the knife drawer.
What I want to eat is what the Palmerston offered for my lunch that Saturday — pickled mackerel, warm potatoes and crème fraiche (£8), a wonderful partridge casoncelli, brodo and new season olive oil (£10), and a roast apple ice cream (£5) that was like eating a delicious frozen apple tart.
Menu
In truth, I could have eaten everything from this menu and when I next go with a group of friends, I intend to. Although the menu changes daily, I’m hoping that the beef mince on dripping toast and mustard leaves (£15) is available because… Well, do you really need a justification?
Why can’t we have this in Dundee? Why is it that consistently good food in this city — with the exception of some good Indian restaurants — so often entails a bus or a taxi ride to Broughty Ferry to the door of Adam Newth at the Tayberry, with an honourable mention for Collinsons and Jute at the DCA?
These places are excellent at what they do so it’s not a criticism to say that there’s a certain formality in what they offer, but where do you go on a Monday night when you’ve got nothing in the fridge and just want a simple one-course supper and you can’t be bothered substituting your Adidas trackpants for something a bit less Rab C?
For me, here in Fife, I have the slightly easier option of making the journey to Kinneuchar, which only galvanises the fact that if these guys can get it so right in a tiny village in the East Neuk with few public transport links, why can’t someone in the fourth biggest city in Scotland at least attempt it?
Salvation of sorts came with the now distant memory of a nice lunch we had on the first day after the first lockdown in what now feels like 1962 (of course, it was only last year).
That day, we’d been driving to Spittalfield in Perthshire to check out the house I used to own. It seems weird to me now but I guess lockdown prompted such oddly nostalgic behaviour.
At the very least, I wanted to see if tomatoes were still grown in the village phone box, but have to admit that a peek through the windows to see if my much-loved range cooker was still firing away wasn’t far from my mind.
Meikleour Arms
Needing lunch en route, I remembered occasional visits to the Meikleour Arms, the closest restaurant to Spittalfield and one which was always a good bet if you didn’t want to risk the spills of my birthplace, Dunkeld.
That day, post lockdown, David and I sat in the garden of the Meikleour, had a very nice, simple lunch, and toasted the fact that we’d survived what seemed at times like a wilful Government cull.
If only we’d known what was to come, I’d have sunk three bottles from their excellent wine list (Claire, the co-owner, is French) and moved into one of their tastefully designed rooms, bolting the door behind me for a year.
This next visit, specifically for the purposes of this review, came with high expectations from the hotel/restaurant’s website, which was bounteous with mentions of local provenance, seasonality, home cooking and general bonhomie. This seemed like my kind of place.
However, our visit on a balmy Monday night showed the problems we all face in hospitality right now — clearly, for those providing it, but also for those partaking of it. I don’t think it’s fair to dwell on what proved to be a difficult night for this kitchen, and my subsequent visit a few days later proved that the problems we encountered on the Monday were anomalies.
I wouldn’t be doing my job if I said that this first visit was perfect. As was proved by my follow-up visit later that week, the staff and service here are mainly very good.
The waitress assigned to my table that second day was just fantastic; she’s from the Basque country and, as I had a house in France, not so far from the Spanish border, we had so much to talk about that I barely even read my Courier.
She defines everything that’s good about the hospitality industry in that she noted I was dining alone, was quite comfortable doing so and yet, at times, was very happy to talk to someone.
That first night though, we’d encountered someone who was either having an off night or really needs to realise that hospitality often means being hospitable.
I raise this — as I did later with the owner — not to cause anyone any trouble but, for better or for worse, waiting tables means that, to some degree, you’re putting on a show.
You’re part of the theatre of eating out and are very much responsible for fulfilling people’s heightened expectations, raised by how they’ve decided to spend their leisure time and their hard-earned money.
The lack of attention from this staff member became like a game, and one I intended not to lose.
After ignoring us for as long as possible, he happened to catch my eye as he cleared the next table and so he couldn’t really avoid the fact that we might want to order.
We’d waited around 25 minutes to do so, a fact that concerned me as we only had the table for 90 minutes. That he chose to ask what we’d like to eat as he cleaned the next table, not even bothering to come closer to ours, made me all the more determined to out-snoot him, a fact I’m not proud of but, you know, needs must when the belly rumbles.
The food
My starter of Meikleour Estate game platter (£7.50) was very good, using local meats. The terrine was especially tasty.
David’s salad paysanne (£7.50) was simple and fine, although his vegetarian version meant that the few remaining ingredients had to sing more for his supper and I’m not sure their tune was loud enough.
My main course of roast hake fillet with new potatoes, lemon, herbs and summer leaves (£17.95) was good but I felt the fish was a little overcooked.
David’s twice-baked cheese soufflé with leek fondue (£13.95/£7.50 for the starter size) was basically two overcooked soufflés plonked on top of each other to make it a main course.
Had they been light enough, they would have capsized, but they remained defiantly stable. A mistake to send these out from the kitchen and, in all fairness, one that the restaurant did recognise later and apologise for.
Now the happier news! Something about this place frustrated me; I had a nagging feeling that it was much better than the desultory experience we’d had on that Monday night and decided it would be fair to give them a second chance.
My lunch a few days later couldn’t have been more different. As I mentioned, the service was completely charming and the food was just what I’d hoped for from here — great home cooking, using many of the fine ingredients found locally.
My starter of black pudding, pork belly and crispy soft-boiled egg (£7.50) came with a delicious courgette and pine nut chutney and was excellent, the pork belly melting and unctuous.
My main course of steak and ale pie (£15.95) was just as good; local beef braised down into melting tenderness, coupled with mushrooms and a rich, thick gravy, this was a textbook pie. The chard served with it was perfectly cooked.
The verdict
This is what this kitchen can do when not suffering whatever glitches caused the problems on my previous visit. This is the service the charming owners of the Meikleour Arms want to provide, and largely do.
This room — I prefer the bar to the barn — is just what you want from a restaurant with rooms, built on a resolutely French principle of celebration, of amity, of bon accord.
Until Dundee has its own version of this very pretty restaurant with rooms, I think a lot more trips to Perthshire will be in order, especially if you couple a nice lunch here with seeing the spectacular autumn glory of the Meikleour beech hedge.
Info
The Meikleour Arms
Meikleour PH2 6EB
01250 883 206
www.meikleourarms.co.uk
Score
Food = 3/5
Service = 4/5
Surroundings = 4/5
