Joanna Blythman: The Gardener's Cottage, Edinburgh

0131 558 1221

Lunch £16-30 Dinner £35

Food rating 7 and a half/10

ANYONE seeking evidence for the view that our putative local food culture is merely a vehicle for affluent middle classes to demonstrate their taste and refinement would surely find it in The Gardener's Cottage in Edinburgh. As a supporter of farmers' markets, localised small-scale food production, and all forms of guerilla activity that offer alternatives to our insane industrial food system, it pains me to say this. And I'm told that at lunchtime, The Gardener's Cottage is a convivial place to eat. But come the evening, while the food is steady in the main (albeit with lapses of judgement), the front-of-house show takes over, and diners are expected to play applauding audience to self-pleased actors (your waiters).

A set six-course meal is served. "Are you willing to eat everything that's put before you?" was the first question to us, perhaps as much to do with establishing the "we're in control here" dynamic as sorting out alternatives for diners with dietary issues. The tone is self-important, as though diners are novices taking part in a food experiment, and must be tutored through it by all-knowing project leaders.

One waiter seemed determined that I would buy the homemade rhubarb cordial. My dining partner played along, I declined, explaining that I don't enjoy sweet drinks. "I think you might change your mind if you taste it," he told me. How presumptuous, and how wrong: its rhubarb presence was weak, with sugar hogging the foreground.

Pretension gets free rein when waiters present wines hand-picked to accompany each course, declaiming their script like masters of wine addressing an amateur wine tasting group: "Vouvray is a white wine from the Loire region of France, made from Chenin Blanc grapes ... " No need to get the measure of their diners' knowledge before blundering on. I'd wager that if Jancis Robinson visited, she'd be subjected to the set pitch, and I bet she too would be asked at the end of the meal to fill out the pre-printed card, supplied by the Waitrose-sponsored Good Food Guide, with a favourable review. Look, if customers voluntarily post an appreciative review, fine. But placing the pen in their hands? To my mind, that's pushy. I can't think of another restaurant that does it.

You eat at rustic canteen tables here; stingy when you're paying £35 per head. A loud, brash, well-oiled group of six sat right by us, allowing us to witness the resulting clash of egos - front-of-house v customers - as to who could command the most attention.

Food-wise, you get a procession of nice ingredients juxtaposed in a way that's not too demanding of the kitchen's skill base. There was bouncy, crisp-skinned gurnard flanked by clams, mussels, and waxy potato in a fragrant cider sauce; a straightforward liquidised leek and potato soup with a swirl of Tunworth cheese cream, alongside sharply fermented sourdough bread and Arbroath Smokie butter; gloriously fatty cold breast of lamb on interesting leaves and salt-baked beetroot, parsnip, and Jerusalem artichoke.

There was roe deer fillet and shoulder with kale, and a swirl of thick beer sauce; and here, the thinking got ahead of the cooking. Something emollient might have helped out the unsurprisingly dry braised venison shoulder; walnut "pesto", more like vinaigrette, didn't do the job. And the near blackened florets of grilled cauliflower - a brassica spin on burnt toast - felt more like an expression of ideological solidarity with this often under-valued vegetable than anything else.

Beetroot sorbet sent a shiver down my spine. It was adventurous in a bad way. Burnt-tasting rye flour "shortbread" also set the teeth on edge. Further oddities were a flat scone-like thing and the horrid "fermented walnut" that spoiled a plate of mellow Berkswell cheese and friable homemade Bath Olivers. Thankfully, dessert blurred that memory with a better one: buttery warm financier-style sponge with sapid sherry ice cream and blushing pink poached rhubarb.

A restaurant signed up to cherishing seasonal supplies from small producers is speaking my language. Edinburgh's Timberyard, for instance, manages to do so in a voice free from affectation, a lesson The Gardener's Cottage would do well to learn.