30/11/24

Princes Street, Edinburgh

In the ten years since we bought our Edinburgh flat, we’ve been slowly working our way through the city’s impressive roster of fine-dining establishments. Number One, situated next to Waverley Station in the basement of the iconic Balmoral Hotel, has long been on our radar and tonight, at last, it’s time to sample its delights.

And delightful they are.

We opt for the seven-course tasting menu. We tend to prefer this to a traditional à la carte three-course meal, mainly because it pushes us out of our comfort zones and makes us try new things – or reassess old ones. Take celeriac, for example. I’d never choose it. But it shows up this evening in the fifth course, and it turns out I like it very much indeed when its been mashed and deep fried into a little bonbon of perfection.

How many synonyms are there for delicious’? Because there’s no other way to describe the plates of… deliciousness we’re presented with. We start with canapés, tiny mouthfuls of loveliness: one duck liver, one cullen skink and one truffle choux. These are followed by a small loaf of freshly-baked linseed sourdough bread and butter, an irresistible mix.

The first course is Ullapool brown crab, a light, delicate concoction of crab custard, topped with crab claws and toasted almonds. It’s silky and airy and utterly, um… delicious.

Next up is Pittenweem lobster, which is perhaps my favourite course. We’re not required to mess about with nutcrackers (or chainsaws, for that matter) because it’s all been done for us: one neatly extracted claw and tail apiece, as well as a gyoza-style dumpling and a bisque. All the joy of a lobster without any of the hard work.

The partridge, from Gleneagles Estate, is another triumph. This comes with leek and fennel, and is stuffed with some kind of bacony-pork concoction that works really well with the more subtly-flavoured game.

Shetland halibut is next to appear, and it’s cooked to melt-in-the-mouth perfection, topped with Oscietra caviar and sitting in a pool of more-ish beurre blanc. This is Philip’s favourite fish and he’s not disappointed. That’s right: it’s delicious.

The final savoury course is Hopetoun Estate roe deer, the saddle served medium rare (we’re given the option to select a preference here, but we trust head chef Mathew Sherry and his team to know how long the meat needs cooking for). There’s also an intensely earthy sausage and the aforementioned game-changing celeriac.

We decide against the optional cheese course at this juncture, because there are still two puddings to go and we’re getting pretty full. Instead, we head straight to the exquisitely-presented Balmoral honey dessert, with honeycomb and a yoghurt ice cream. It’s superb.

The last item on the menu is a pumpkin soufflé, as light as air, with a sliver of gingerbread buried inside. The accompanying pumpkinseed praline is a revelation, and the super-sweet ganache topping adds that extra oomph to make the whole thing pop.

We order decaf coffees to finish off, which come with a selection of petit fours, of which the sea buckthorn meringue tart and peanut butter macaron are the standouts.

And then, a mere three hours after our arrival, we head back out into the Edinburgh night and begin our short walk home.

In a nutshell: deliciously delicious.

5 stars

Susan Singfield