Bistro Moderne

We went there for Edinburgh restaurant festival, so the price is affordable than usual. It’s £12.5 for two courses or £15 for three during lunch time. Like all the other French restaurant, this one was with decent decoration, with a big mirror and window in it. The waiter there recommended steak sandwich to us, and it was delicious!!! Quite tender and juicy, not too cooked which was hard to chew.

We’d been talking about going to Bistro Moderne for ages and finally booked in for Sunday lunch, tempted by the £25 roast.
The restaurant is bright with a lively atmosphere and we were seated at a table in the back corner (the recessed booth next to the kitchen looked cosy — noted for a future visit!).
We ordered starters and shared the roast chicken as a main. All of the food was excellent; my beef carpaccio starter with delicate and well seasoned and my wife’s pea soup was fresh and smooth. The chicken was served with massive yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, seasonal vegetables and gravy. All of the component parts were delicious and we polished off the lot. We opted for dessert as well with me choosing carrot cake and her having the chocolate mint tart; both were lovely and didn’t last long.
Overall a great lunch and we’ll definitely be back to try some other parts of the menu.

Went to Bistro Moderne on Good Friday. Later booking with me, my 81 year old mother and the teens. So as with many an eatery, the food and the service occupied two different parts of a Venn diagram meeting only sporadically in the sweet spot. So for the technical bit, the Ginger amaretto sour was to die for, I had two just to make sure. For the geeks, saliiza amaretto, maraschino luxardo, lemon juice and fresh ginger. For starters I went for the ham hough Ballontine the quails had gone on hunger strike so had to make do with a poached hens egg. Topped off with foam and a burnt slice of pineapple which was a lovely touch. For mains, but arriving exactly an hour after the starters was my whole plaice, café de Paris butter (nope I don’t know either) samphire (so 2010?) lemon, parsley, capers and helped by green beans with feta gremolata. As for the others, the grannie and muy daughter lived the soft shell crab. Harry was not impressed with his pea soup with egg starter, mostly as he’d not noticed the egg. That’s 14 tear old boys for you, attention span of a… squirrel. Anyway back to the plot. I finished the meal with a rare dessert although by the time we got it, we were In a different times zone. That said the tonka (to those of us over 40 this is a sturdy toy brand) bean crème brûlée with cashew nut praline and a single stewed plum. The only real dessert I do that isn’t cheese, first class. Some nice wine from the Nuy Winery to accompany dessert made up for an average white brand (see what I did there) Spanish white earlier. There you go, food quality 4 verging on5 service 2 hence settled at a 3.

Well in celebrating my 9 year anniversary since beign diagnosed with cancer there was only one place at the front of my mind that I wanted to try. That of course was Mark Greenaways new venture Bistro Moderne.
To start we had a nice glass of champagne, a fitting start to an occassion such as this. For my starter I went for the soft shell crab tempure. As MG has alluded to the bistry allows him to serve up dishes he coudlnt do in a fine dining setting and this is a prime example, big chunks of tasty crab in a light crispy tempura with a delicious dip… happy JD.
For my main I went for the duck. This very intersting dish pairing tender duck with watermelon was a delight. Innovative, indulgent but somehow light this was a really good dish for savouring all of the elements. My dining partners and I shared a selection of the sides, the bag of garlic roast potatos were my favourtie.
Paired with a cracking bottle of red this was a great nigth, with great food and some exceptional service.
Bistro Moderne comes highly JD Recommended!!!

I have to admit that BM was at a disadvantage with regards to my quite high expectations for the place. I’ve loved the Mark Greenaway on Queen street so have been wanting to try this place for a while.
The restaurant was as expected very busy and they must have had a busy day as 4 of the 12 or so items (of which I had wanted two) were unavailable.
We settled for some second choices, which were appetising. The food was excellently presented and the service was impeccable and friendly. In fact I should point out that this review would be a ²⁄₃ if it wasn’t for the staff.
I’d normally try a restaurant twice to make sure it wasn’t an off day, however even if the food was better (or available), I don’t consider it of value (i.e. price paid for experience received).
Would I recommend the restaurant to someone looking for a Sunday lunch? Probably not.
*photo is of the duck.

Fling your hands up in dramatic horror — until yesterday I had never eaten something prepared or designed by Mr Greenaway! His reputation preceded him of course, and so when I came to Bistro Moderne to check out the Sunday roast with Sharon G, I had high expectations.
The location itself is splendid — nestled near St Stephens, it has high ceilings and lots of natural light. We were seated by our enthusiastic waiter in a cosy wood-​panelled alcove, which was lovely, although the table was weeny so we had to do some juggling to fit our dishes and glasses on once everything had arrived.
Greenaway attends mostly to his main restaurant but comes and cooks in person at the bistro on Sundays, when they offer a roast for two at £25. Starters and desserts are both in the region of £7 so it isn’t cheap but as a treat it’s just the ticket.
Our waiter was thrilled when we ordered the chicken. He was excited to tell us that he had witnessed the preparation of one such chicken earlier and it had entailed a piping bag of butter slid under the skin. Om nom nom. Well, it sure was tender and juicy! Gorgeous chicken, and the roast potatoes were perfection too: crispy, fluffy, not too oily… Dream potatoes. The Yorkshire pudding, which is an explosive puff, was a little too crunchy for my tastes but the brassicas (a mix of chopped sprouts and cabbages) and the carrots (including a couple of purple ones — awesome) were sweet and addictive.
For dessert, I chomped on a slice of treacle tart with crème anglaise and a shard of treacle glass. Without wishing to sound too plebeian I think it needed more than just the shallow covering of crème anglaise and a fork would have been helpful to break through the super-​chewy top, but it was delicious all the same.
One to remember for special occasions!

The décor fit the bill: modern, clean and French. When we rolled in at 6:45 we were the first guests to arrive. The multitude of wait staff milling around the restaurant was a bit off-​putting. They need to figure out how to be available without being conspicuous. There were a number of chalkboards on the wall with selections from the menu on them, but I found them difficult to read from my seat because there was always an idle waiter standing in the way.
I started with the cod tempura with tartar sauce from the bar snack menu. The cod was wonderfully fresh and hot, just as it should be. I was a bit confused by the tartar sauce, it was foamy but otherwise unremarkable. Only when it was mostly finished did I discover small vegetable chunks that had sunk to the bottom.
For my main I had the duck breast. The dish was a bit of a disappointment, somehow the pieces didn’t seem to add up to more than their parts. It was served in a small ceramic dish and included delicious celeriac, salsify and neck sausage. It also included pieces of watermelon, which I failed to see the point of. The duck itself was okay, but I didn’t taste the «caramelization» that the menu had promised. The duck had been precut into pieces that were too large to eat, but I found it difficult to cut them up further with the provided table knife in the confines of the stylized serving terrine.
As a side I ordered green beans with feta and gremolata. I also sampled my companion’s wilted greens with toasted almonds. Both were fresh, delicious and somehow novel!
They had a small selection of bottled beers. This is a bistro, you are expected to be drinking wine. When I flagged down one of the pacing staff to order some wine it just happened to be the sommelier, who was quick with a nice recommendation to pair with my duck.
For dessert I had the bread and butter pudding. It was pleasant, but not worth much further comment.
I came in with high expectations, based on the Mark Greenaway name and prices. The food was okay, but fell short of my anticipation. If only everything could has been as good as the sides. I was there on the second night it was officially open, so I hope that they will improve and I can give an update with better results.

So, a new restaurant just opened up in our neighborhood. It got a bit of hype, with the name Mark Greenaway attached to it, which made us all the more interested to check it out. It’s a bit like Christmas when a promising new local eatery opens up; as much as we love good restaurants, we love good restaurants within a 10-​minute walk of our flat exponentially more.
The bistro itself is attractively done. High ceilings, plenty of room between tables, sleek but with a personality that works in the space. Service was generally OK but there was a bit of awkwardness to it. Plenty of staff were standing about and sometimes they didn’t seem sure about what they were there to do. One of the waiters had a wee b.o. problem going on (it’s never pleasant to catch a whiff of someone walking by your table).
Drinks: The wines by the glass struck me as about average for restaurants around here, in both price and quality. There were some good beers, only by the bottle. The cocktail menu was short but had some interesting items on it (must give one a try when I go back).
Food: The pumpkin soup with chestnuts was tasty but not quite warm. The tempura cod (ordered off the bar bites menu) was light and flavorful — probably my favorite dish of the evening. The sides of wilted greens with almonds and green beans with feta were both very well done (oh how I love a well-​prepared veggie!). For dessert we split a bread and butter pudding which was not bad but also not as good as I had hoped (granted I had hoped for a lot).
At the end of the day, this review is a 3-​star instead of a 4-​star because the price/​quality ratio just didn’t hold up. In this price range I expect something a little special, something above and beyond your friendly neighborhood gastropub. It just wasn’t there. Yet. Maybe next time. After all, they’ve only been open two days. (There’s a school of thought that says you should go easy on a restaurant that just opened. Nonsense. If I’m expected to deliver my full end of the bargain as a paying customer, then I expect you to deliver a fully-​formed dining experience. If you’re not ready for prime time, offer discounted preview nights while you work out the kinks.)
My brain has a hard time resisting the urge to compare Bistro Moderne with Scran & Scallie. For the second time this year, a celebrity chef (and by this I mean «I know the names of exactly two chefs in the Edinburgh area, Tom Kitchin and Mark Greenaway, so clearly they must both count as celebrities») has opened a down-​market concept restaurant in our little neighborhood. Both restaurants are in the same price range, and despite their differing basic forms (pub vs. bistro), their subtle dabs of burlap and tartan make them feel stylistically connected. There are some menu similarities as well. The hake is my go-​to dish at S&S; BM’s hake, while good, just didn’t quite measure up. S&S’s sides are probably as good as BM’s and come in larger portion sizes for the same price. Every dessert I’ve tried at S&S has made me stand up and take notice; BM’s bread and butter pudding left my mouth only mildly amused.
I do realize this comparison is unfair — S&S has had at least a dozen chances to dazzle me, whereas my entire impression of BM is based on one visit. We’ll see what happens to my impressions over time. I hope for the day when I can write a new review of Bistro Moderne where a comparison with Scran & Scallie doesn’t even come to mind, when Bistro Moderne comes into its own. I’m a culinary optimist.