Restaurateurs, though, must really resent February 14, in the same way that turkeys resent Christmas. Their status is uncertain for 364 nights a year, then dawns the magic day and suddenly they feel like they’ve won Celebrity Big Brother — until the next day, when bales of tumbleweed return to blow across deserted dining rooms.
For restaurant owners, every Valentine’s Day must be a poignant and painful reminder of why they wanted to enter the vexatious business of catering in the first place. When they apply for their business start-up grants, restaurateurs no doubt nurture happy visions of running popular and busy little places. They assume the job involves nothing more taxing than occasionally recommending vintage clarets and having their pictures taken with celebrity diners. Life, they imagine, will be one big giddy whirl of organic beef and Blitz spirit.
Then it’s time to wake up and smell the Bisto. Problems begin to bubble away on the hob of annoyance: the waiting staff who can’t tell a prawn cocktail from a former cabinet minister, temperamental chefs, unreliable suppliers, environmental health inspectors, food critics, corked wine and obstreperous customers who want a free meal because their fork was dirty. However, all these worries pale against diners who don’t want to come. Every empty table is coloured red and has a minus sign hovering over it.
Then February 14 rolls around again and everywhere is packed with men from whose wallets moths escape when they pay the bill and women who believe they might give it one more try with Gavin. Just remember on Tuesday that the busy restaurant in which you are sitting is precisely the kind the owner had in mind when they put the sign above the door. In a way, this is quite a sad thought.
If God, though, had designed the perfect date restaurant, the ultimate Valentine’s Day destination, he would have created somewhere not wildly dissimilar to the Witchery, one of Edinburgh’s blue-riband, tourist-guide fixtures for more than a quarter-century, the restaurant where James Thomson OBE, the owner of Prestonfield House, cut the sharpest, savviest teeth in Scottish hospitality.
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It’s a gothic bridal suite of a restaurant, a sepulchral basement underworld where Christopher Lee might appear at any moment for a bloody mary and a rare steak. Dark to the extent that pit helmets might be wise, the Witchery exudes a pitch-perfect campy classiness. It’s a ludicrous spoof on Edinburgh’s heritage of catacomb spookiness, but it’s also effortlessly tasteful. Every flickering lick of candlelight speaks of weird, intense romance and whispered secrets.
Once the gloaming is negotiated, the Witchery is quick to execute its old black magic. It pretty much patented the wild-harvest formula in the 1970s and 1980s, reviving traditional Scottish produce with a silky, well-travelled surety. Seafood and crustaceans dart through the menu. The scallops with carrot purée were a startling re-engineering of an overfamiliar ingredient, a combination of salt and sweet starch as arresting as Heston Blumenthal’s bacon ice cream.
The signature dish here is a tartare of Scotch beef, a melting, seductive heap of beefy crumbs bound with capers. The mains were roast loin of Perthshire venison with black pudding, as dark and bloody as a medieval torturer’s heart, and a ravioli of duck confit that was precise, restrained and topped with foie gras so deliquescent it was barely a solid.
The starters were an average £8, the mains £20 — serious prices, but the skill, discrimination and confidence used in their preparation make the Witchery more than competitive at this level. Delightful service and an unrivalled atmosphere ensure the Royal Mile favourite retains its rank at the very pinnacle of Scotland’s restaurants. Admittedly, there’s a certain caution in the selection of dishes, but when you’re sited so close to Edinburgh Castle it would be madness to risk confusing the Americans.
Scheduling complications meant I was dining with a stunt Other Person. She was deeply charming, but her stand-in status lent a certain ambiguity to my attempts at replicating a traditional Valentine dinner. When I asked why she insisted on putting wet towels on the radiator she just stared blankly. Neither could she explain why she kept switching the television off at the mains rather than use the stand-by function. I told her she just didn’t understand me and that I needed more space.
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It seemed the kindest thing to do.
Rating: The Witchery
Food 4/5
Atmosphere 5/5
Service 4/5
Value 3/5
Overall 4/5
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The Witchery, Castlehill, The Royal Mile, Edinburgh, 0131 225 5613. Dinner for two with wine £130