It’s not the most gripping of discussions but it’s startling the first time you hear it. It’s as if you have half of the BBC education unit looking over your shoulder. Perhaps, thanks to osmosis, you will emerge speaking fluent Italian. But if your Italian’s already up to scratch, you’ll know Centotre refers to the number 103, a former Bank of Scotland branch with all the glorious plasterwork and fancy cornicing you would expect from one of the George Street palaces.
I can’t say it lends itself well to a cosy restaurant experience. Sensibly they have resisted installing a false ceiling or covering the fine terrazzo floor but the resultant acoustics resemble a chimps’ tea party playing the Anvil Chorus in the Grand Canyon.
This isn’t just any old Italian restaurant. It’s an Italian restaurant run by a Contini. In the game of Edinburgh word association lacrosse, this leads to Valvona & Crolla. Indeed Victor Contini is one of the brothers who helped run the place for 20 years. They say there’s no animosity, but while Centotre confirmed, nae celebrated the link, when I phoned V&C for the phone number the woman at the end of the line denied any connection before I even had the words out of my mouth.
In best V&C tradition, Centotre is more than just a restaurant. It’s also a bar and deli selling cheeses, bread and wines “flown fresh from Milan”. Certainly the ingredients flew onto the table in good condition. Witness an antipasti platter laid with flawless, creamy marbles of buffalo mozzarella, chewy salty parma ham and particularly good grilled red peppers among the courgettes and aubergine.
Most of the cooking takes place somewhere in the vaults, from where it is whisked to ground level by a dumb waiter. The chief exception is a pizza chef who works in full view while discussing orders with the kitchen through a high-tech head set. The pizzas certainly seem worth the effort. The one
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I tried had a great moist crust and came with fior di latte cheese (mozzarella-like but even milder) and chillied-up Italian greens, the ensemble knitted together with a tangle of Parma ham strands, rocket and parmesan.
The pasta route was also worth taking. I had a little plate of orecchiette mingled with an intense porcini cream sauce, coins of spicy sausage and wild mushrooms.
The fish of the day was lemon sole under a parmesan cream sauce which seemed oddly short of cheese. But then parmesan can do that to you. Start grating the stuff into a sauce and the blizzard can last half an hour before there’s any discernible flavour benefit. Mostly though, the main courses relied on the nifty grill work. Comparisons would be iniquitous, of course, but I do remember having one of the best steaks of my life in V&C’s little back-room restaurant. My half pound rib-eye at Centotre had the same juiciness and outstanding texture without as much flavour. But perhaps that’s because nobody had flooded it with fine aged balsamic vinegar as they did in Elm Row.
This place is so new they still have the good luck cards up and the multinational brigade of waitresses is a bit unsure of what goes into some of the dishes. One was certainly confused by the cheese selection until Victor Contini whipped a cloth off the cabinet in the deli section and served up a winning plate of taleggio, pecorino, a fantastic gorgonzola and a rich full salty provolone which will live long on my tongue.
Unsurprisingly, there was gelato including a strawberry number which came with the usual over-embellishment of cream and twirly wafer sticks. A fiver seemed a bit steep for that but then the prices at the otherwise excellent Centotre soon mount up; £7 for the antipasta, £16.95 for a good but not startling veal chop. At least you only need to spend a penny for your Italian lessons.
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Centotre, 103 George Street, Edinburgh, 0131 225 1550. About £29 for three courses without wine