FAMILIARITY can easily breed contempt when it comes to affairs of the palate. At least that's what I've told myself about La Garrigue, a restaurant I have scuttled wistfully past at least two or three times a week for the past six years.
If I only popped in once or twice a year, it's not because I didn't like the place. On the contrary, it remains one of my favourite restaurants. As a youngster I was the sort of child who saved the best until last, and I still try not to eat too ofte
n at restaurants I really like, stockpiling treats for a rainy day. Instead, La Garrigue, which was Les Routiers' top Scottish restaurant in 2007, remains a failsafe stand-by for when I need some gastronomic restitution.
Regular readers of this column will know I've had a couple of unexpectedly disappointing meals of late so it was time for a gratuitous visit to one of Edinburgh's finest French restaurants. Actually, to call chef Jean-Michel Gauffre's establishment 'French' is to give it a far wider remit than it assigns itself. La Garrigue serves only dishes from the Languedoc region, in the south of the country. The province extends from Toulouse in the west, to Montpellier on the coast and then reaches northwards towards the gastronomic heartland of France.
Once thought a culinary desert, the region actually combines much that is good in French cuisine. The hills of the Haut Languedoc provide stunning duck and pork dishes; the rolling plains of the Bas Languedoc have produced a wealth of elaborate fish-based concoctions; and the coastal Côte Languedoc provides fish dishes that draw heavily on the cuisine of the neighbouring Côte d'Azur and of the Catalans. The Spanish and Arabic influences ensure a liberal use of beans and spices such as cinnamon and saffron.
Gauffre is a man who takes food very seriously, and there are virtually no concessions to Scottish tastebuds. One quick look over the menu proves as much: this is authentic cooking from his home region, not some Franco-Scottish halfway house. It is also served in an informal atmosphere, with large windows, stripped floorboards and whitewashed tongue-and-groove giving the whole place a light, airy ambience that is part bistro, part full-blown fine dining.
Virtually all the staff are French too, and while that doesn't bring that certain aloofness we've come to expect from our sorties across the Channel, it does bring an instinctive knowledge about the merits of the dishes on offer. Advice on which dish to choose was freely dispensed, and while we didn't always take it, it was well worth having.
I started with a traditional fish soup, seasoned with saffron and fennel and served with rouille and garlic croutons, while Vicky plumped for a salad of smoked duck breast served with dandelion stems, smoked French back bacon, Roquefort croutons and a soft poached egg. Both were, in their own ways, outstanding. My soup was a rich, deep rust-coloured concoction that Vicky thought was too strong, but which suited me to perfection. Her salad was equally impressive, although the absurdly pungent Roquefort-smothered crouton was an unnecessary addition that stood aside from the dish and threatened to overwhelm the more subtle flavours of the duck, egg and even the bacon.
If my starter was good, my main course was even better. Vicky turned her nose up at my choice of braised cabbage filled with truffle-scented duck farce and foie gras on a bed of slow-cooked onions, a combination Gauffre describes as his favourite winter dish. She instantly admitted she was wrong when it arrived: cabbage may bring back uncomfortable memories of the overcooked stuff of school dinners, but this variety was delicately interwoven around and through the duck farce. And even if the truffles left only the faintest tinge and the foie gras was almost as difficult to divine, it was still an excellent warming dish that was unlike any you'll find elsewhere in Scotland.
Not that Vicky was especially interested in what was on my plate; she was far too busy with her spicy squid, saffron and tomato pie, which came with Camargue rice and a surprisingly sweet bouillabaisse sauce – again, this was utterly unique.
No nation on earth does puddings better than the French, so it was no surprise when we rounded off with two dishes that lived up to the high quality of the food that preceded them. My warm, moist pear-and-aniseed clafouti was so light and succulent that it disappeared in double-quick time, almost as speedily as Vicky's bitter-chocolate mousse with confit oranges.
This was good, solid cooking from a man who knows his trade and who provides food that is authentic and utterly without pretension – the sort of food, in short, that brightens up the coldest Edinburgh day, even for an old curmudgeon like me.
VITAL STATISTICSLa Garrigue 31 Jeffrey Street, Edinburgh
(0131 557 3032;
www.lagarrigue.co.uk)
Out of pocket Two courses £24.50; three courses £29.50 (lunch: two courses £13.50; three courses £15.50)
Rating 8/10
The full article contains 864 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
