Mr EF and I celebrated our anniversary at 21212 in Edinburgh last evening.
The food is really quite unlike anything else we’d tasted before. We’ve become used to having finely judged separate flavours melding together to create a delicious dish, but here the dish is the sum of its ingredients.
The name of the restaurant explains the composition of the menu, you choose between two dishes for the first course, the whole table has the second and so on. Mr EF and I decided to have one of each then swap over: not the easiest thing to do, to give your dish away when you are enjoying it so much! The dish pictured below is described as:
Slow baked baby halibut with an assiette of aubergine, tomato, garlic, a little ragout of apple, pistachio and currants, celery, white asparagus, onion and saffron, very fresh garden chives (look out to the back garden).
I didn’t take to the decor or design. It’s a curious mix of 60s graphics and Georgian elegance, and some of the staff wear peculiar brown pinafores. But hey, does that matter?
The staff are, well, sassy. Very knowledgeable about the dishes and ingredients, much more “forward” than you might be used to in a restaurant. Great at adapting the amount of help (or not) that a guest might want. Refreshing.
The kitchen is open to view. We enjoyed the huddling that seemed to take every so often as up to 6 chefs joined together to assemble the elements of a dish. Every so often we would look up see Paul Kitching languidly leaning on a counter keeping careful eye on the proceedings.
Would we eat there again? Yes. Certainly it is quirky – we loved the cow jugs full of “milk, coconut and porridge” served as a pre-dessert but it is so much more. You really should “Discover the Taste”.