 Scotland on Sunday, 5th June 2005
- taken from http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/spectrum.cfm?id=610212005
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First Coast offers something for everyone with a frequently changed menu.
Picture: Cate Gillon. |
Westward ho!
KATIE FERGUSON
A NIGHT out with the girls during the week usually consists of a few cocktails and then dinner somewhere in the Edinburgh city centre. This time, though, we got brave - or maybe the cocktails got stronger - and chose to venture further afield, heading west, as far as Dalry Road anyway, which felt like a real expedition to us.
Our restaurant of choice was First Coast, and, given the name, one might expect a menu packed with fish, fish and more fish. But no - on offer is an even balance of vegetarian, meat, poultry and fish, so there's something for everyone. And unlike so many other restaurants nowadays, First Coast's menu is frequently changed, which is a bonus for regulars.
The first thing that hit us on arriving at our far-flung destination was the warm welcome from the staff, a tone that continued throughout our meal. Although this was our first visit, we were made to feel like regular, valued customers. They certainly didn't make us feel awkward when we questioned them about some of the dishes - rather, they seemed delighted that we were so interested in what they had to offer.
All three of us opted for different starters and main courses. I chose the Thai fishcakes and mango salad, which were delicious and had a great chilli kick. The two cakes were a perfect size and the mango salad helped to cool the spiciness.
My co-diners and partners in tittle-tattle opted for the pan-fried ham hough and gruyère terrine with a parsley sauce, and the marinated squid, soy and sesame salad, which they both insisted on swapping halfway through (luckily my fishcakes stayed safely with me). The waiter declared the ham to be his favourite dish on the menu, and after I tried a mouthful, it was easy to see why. Forget the shiny sliced stuff that ends up in your lunchtime sandwich. This was proper ham hough, with a fabulous gamey taste and not at all salty. And the parsley sauce was apparently worth the price of the starter on its own.
Squid is a dish people often avoid because of a previous bad experience. This, however, tasted the way squid should - it was delicately marinated, rather than cloyingly covered in soy sauce, and had the texture of beautifully done scallops rather than over-cooked inner tubes.
Thoroughly content with our starters and midway through another juicy morsel of gossip, our main courses swiftly arrived, as did a very pleasant second bottle of Etoile Filante Viognier (£13.95) - all the talk was making us very thirsty.
When ordering I was torn between the Aberdeen Angus sirloin (always a treat) and the pan-fried chicken with sweet potato stew, but thankfully (and wisely) I opted for the latter. The chicken was lovely and moist, with a wonderfully crispy skin, and the sweet potatoes were soft and full of flavour.
The oregano and thyme marinated lamb chops with a roast garlic and crème fraîche sauce was so good that the cutlery was dispensed with very early on, and the chop-to-mouth method adopted for maximum enjoyment. I think she left the marrow in the bones, but I couldn't be certain. It's safe to say that they, too, went down very well.
The third main course was a lythe fillet (a white fish, similar to the texture of haddock - we had to ask) served atop mashed potatoes with a light garlic butter sauce. Again, this was a winner. The flesh was firm and held the sauce well. The generosity of spirit that had existed between my co-diners during our starters evaporated. Nobody was getting to share these dishes!
Finally, and purely for research purposes, we attempted dessert. I say attempted not because they didn't look appealing, but because we were already fit to burst. The crème caramel with passion fruit went down well, as did the rhubarb fool, served with a delicious chewy biscuit which made the perfect tool for scooping up the tasty dish. But the outright winner, which had been chosen purely out of curiosity, was the deep-fried jam sandwich. It resembled a cross between a jam doughnut and fritter yet, surprisingly, was not overly oily.
Given our initial hesitation at the thought of deserting the city centre, we all agreed that this hidden gem had been well worth the journey out of our usual comfort zone - and it is a trip we will definitely be making again.
• First Coast, 99-101 Dalry Road, Edinburgh (0131 313 4404, www.first-coast.co.uk)
Scotland on Sunday, 26th October 2003
- taken from http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/spectrum.cfm?id=1170772003
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"The First Coast: rapidly becoming a regular hangout for the city’s chefs on their nights off."
Picture: IAN RUTHERFORD |
On the crest of a wave
RICHARD BATH
When I got a tip-off that a new restaurant in Edinburgh’s Dalry Road was becoming a regular hangout for the city’s chefs on their nights off, I knew I had to try it for myself. Chefs, after all, are even better judges of a restaurant’s capabilities than us critics.
And so one night last week I found myself in the no-man’s-land between Haymarket and Gorgie, heading for First Coast. Run by the MacRae brothers from Uig in Skye, the whole enterprise is a family affair: Allan takes care of the front-of-house, while Hector does the food. In the six months they’ve been open, the brothers’ decision to serve sensibly priced food in a relaxing environment has won them many admirers. The emphasis is on traditional Scottish cooking with fresh ingredients - locally sourced, where possible.
The small-scale, personal touch is obvious from the start: we asked for recommendations from the menu and Allan himself was more than willing to go through the whole thing with us. He was even perfectly happy to explain why the clams were off the menu: "The only clams we could get were these terrible French bullets. It makes you mad - we send them the finest seafood in the world and in return we get stuff they wouldn’t dream of eating themselves."
That sort of candour to me spells an interest in food - and in discussing food - that boded well for the meal ahead. That promise, as it turned out, was more than fulfilled.
Having looked ahead at the tempting main courses, Sarah decided to ignore the starters on offer and request a simple salad with crème fraîche instead; one duly arrived which more than fitted the bill.
Just to make up for the shortfall in calories, I chose the braised oxtail with mash and gravy. This is an easy dish to get wrong, but here it verged on perfection, the meat literally falling off the bone. It was as tender and succulent as any oxtail I can remember. The accompanying gravy was strong and pungent too. I’ll know where to come on a cold winter’s night when I desperately need warming up.
As our earlier chat with Allan had shown, First Coast cares a lot about its fish, which made it easy for Sarah and me when it came to our main courses. I chose the chowder of coley, smokey bacon and mussels, while Sarah went for the fillet of ling ("the new monkfish", reckons Allan) with a stew of oven-dried tomatoes, peas and potato.
Both dishes were eminently enjoyable, particularly my chowder. Coley is a fish I rarely eat, if only because it hardly ever turns up on the menu, which is a shame: here, it was conspicuously fresh and combined well with the bacon, mussels and bed of potato, all of which was smoothed down by a chowder sauce that tasted as if it had been spiced with a welcome clove of garlic. Sarah’s ling was similarly delicious, the potato and tomato stew making a warming accompaniment to a fillet that was perfectly cooked. Just like my oxtail, this was real winter-warmer food.
A pudding of very good jam roly-poly and custard followed by Irish coffee rounded off what was an excellent meal. The MacRae brothers take their food seriously, and the care and attention to detail tells. More importantly, they want their customers to enjoy the whole experience. Although we had turned up late and then lingered long after all the other diners had packed up and gone home, there was never any effort to push us towards the door.
First Coast is exactly the sort of place you can go and relax and just enjoy the food, not least because the average main course costs around £10. I can see why Edinburgh’s chefs would be happy if it were to remain the best-kept secret in town.
Vital statistics
First Coast, 99 Dalry Road, Edinburgh, 0131 313 4404
Out of pocket
Starters: £2.50-£4.25; main courses: £7-17; Monday to Friday, before 6.30pm: any main course for £6, any two for £10 or any three for £12.50
Sunday Herald, 6th June 2003
- taken from www.sundayherald.com/35036
Coast patrol
Restaurants: Set in a lively Edinburgh neighbourhood, this sleek restaurant's deep-fried jam sandwiches are not to be missed, writes Joanna Blythman
Fancy a deep-fried jam sandwich? No? Shades of the deep-fried Mars bar perhaps? Too close to something that Nigella might whizz up during one of her more manic satin pajama-clad midnight feast sessions? Or is it the thought of the proverbial jeely piece netted from a 20-storey flat, then carefully transported to the chippie for crisping up that finally puts you off?
I still can't quite believe I said yes, being someone who naturally gravitates towards the lighter sort of dessert and whose nostalgia for kitsch Scottish food curiosities -- Edinburgh Rock, Tunnocks Teacakes, Lees Macaroons and so on -- is nil. But then my first choice -- the rhubarb fool -- was off, and the two courses already consumed at First Coast had imbued me with a rather reckless, unusually trusting attitude towards the kitchen. Add to that the conspiratorial way our waitress introduced it, a variation on 'sounds crap but wait until you taste it ... and actually it's not bread, but brioche'. I was intrigued enough to order it and pleasantly surprised too.
With it's crusty golden exterior over a yeasty, well-aerated dough, it tasted like the beignets you get in France or Italy just before Lent. It had been filled with a truly zingy raspberry jam with enough up-front fruitiness to cut the fat. A scoop of ice-cream peppered with vanilla grains complemented it nicely.
For the record, a deep-fried jam sandwich can be a very appetising proposition, though it may be prudent to demand written testimonials from anyone offering you one. First Coast is one of a clutch of restaurants popping up on the most city central part of Dalry Road where, presumably, rents and rates begin to be affordable to restaurateurs without corporate backers. This neighbourhood goes from strength to strength. Thanks to the high density of overseas students with flats here, it's taking on a really cosmopolitan, stimulatingly mixed character, a part of Edinburgh that isn't dull white and conventional. Its lively, inner city and refreshingly diverse. With different architecture, you could be in London.
First Coast is clearly design-conscious with sleek wood, sea and coast colours and clever lighting. Surveying the menu I predicted passable trendy bistro grub but I had to revise that when the Thai chicken salad turned up. Thai everything is everywhere at the moment -- from supermarket deli counter to bad pub -- and rarely well done. But this luscious chicken had been poached to order and was still warm and moist, soaking up an authentic dressing of lime juice, fish sauce, fresh chilli and lemongrass.
The fragrance was intoxicating. The other starter, another modern restaurant clichŽ -- the goat's cheese tart -- had pastry that was perfectly sandy and short and a filling of patiently sweated sweet onions bound more by cheese than the egg. So many commercial goat's cheeses are either boringly bland or harshly aggressive. With its deep, rounded mature flavour, this one had genuine character. Ling featured among daily specials. Good to see a restaurant doing its bit to take the pressure off diminishing wild fish stocks by putting less favoured, more available fish on the menu.
The fish has some of the qualities of monkfish, most notably, that muscular firmness. It sat on a carpet of fried jacket potatoes and slightly sour-sweet aubergines, further moistened by a red pepper sauce with a smoked paprika character about it. This was a bold treatment and visually appealing too, only diminished by a rogue vinegary element in the aubergines. But the lamb was the pice de rŽsistance though, generous slices of a French-style roast gigot that had been pierced and stuffed with slivers of garlic and rosemary. No last-minute assembly here, this was cuisine bourgeoise, with the garlicky pan juices of the classic Sunday lunch roast, not at all like restaurant cooking -- and I mean that as a compliment. With a steamy pile of creamy, almost purŽed mash, orange and pungent from the inclusion of crispily fried chorizo, this really was a lick-the-plate job.
First Coast is the sort of neighbourhood restaurant we all need, offering skillful cooking and intelligent selection of ingredients at moderate prices. To anyone still unconvinced by the jam sandwich, I'd suggest the crme caramel, a paragon of shivering silkiness.
06 July 2003
Sunday Herald - 6th July 2003 - taken from www.sundayherald.com/35036 | 
