Joanna Blythman's restaurant review: The Wee Restaurant, Edinburgh

Food rating 7½/10

It’s becoming harder to find a true restaurant these days. Cafés have encroached on to their territory, blurring definitions. So many places want you to eat breakfast or brunch all day long. It seems enough to graft variations on eggs, granola, cooked breakfast on to what is essentially a cake and coffee shop. Places that would appear to fit the old description of restaurants increasingly serve up small plates or sharing platters. Main courses, as such, are going out the window. It’s all very well, but when you’ve eaten several dishes that quite often don’t hang together when you apply any coherent organising principle, you’ve often racked up quite a bill, despite the lack of ceremony and informality.

To be honest, I think there’s a lot to be said for a three-course meal, the French prix fixe sort if you're on a budget, à la carte if not. It offers a traditional, well-understood structure with the possibility of built-in balance. Brunch? I’m hungry again by 3.30, and what should I eat then? A proper meal on the other hand, one that includes protein and fat – not just quickly digested carbs – satiates my appetite much longer. I can forget about eating for hours after.

The Wee Restaurant in Edinburgh does an attractive menu du jour: two good courses for £16, three for £20, all the more welcome because it makes a virtue out of sourcing from small local suppliers. But of course, we flit between it and the à la carte menu, which includes some gems that are hard to resist.

So after some nice fresh sourdough with a serious pat of butter and a tapenade that’s exhilaratingly super-charged with anchovy, we discover the sweet, soft, porky, artisanal delights of East Coast Cured’s handmade salami, which is slow-cured and matured in its workshop in Leith. It’s excellent. I’m less taken with the dish as a whole, with spears of griddled asparagus, harissa mayonnaise, a pile of rocket, and mini-mozzarella balls that have been breaded and deep-fried. Why fry mozzarella? You only turn something that should be light and milky into something heavy and chewy. This charcuterie is good enough in its own right to be served for itself, maybe with a few crunchy radishes, or plump olives added. But this is the British habit of not believing that really great ingredients, served simply, will find favour. Our dressed Orkney crab, on the other hand, is a much more focused, convincing dish. Freshness shines out from the white meat; its dressing isn’t too heavy and is brightly flecked with lots of dill. Long, thin, wavy croutons of bravely brittle fried walnut bread make a perfect textural match. The tangle of frisée and cress is welcome. The only bum note is over-peppery rocket.

From the economical menu du jour, smoked pork shoulder with confit onion and Puy lentils represents terrific value for money: two substantial slices of succulent meat that has been griddled. This is a carnivore’s delight – not enough in the way of greens for me – but it’s the sort of thing that would pull in the lunchtime trade in rural France. But why add lardons to the lentils? This is hammy overkill. Also from the menu du jour there’s a decent chunk of crisp-skinned hake on a slightly too mushy and creamy "wild" mushroom risotto. The fungi look to me like cultivated Shitake or button mushrooms, but then in the context of fungi the word "wild" is so often used fancifully; the same goes for all those useless, mysteriously expensive "heritage" tomatoes.

I should have seen it coming, but the bread and butter pudding with Chantilly cream and toffee sauce is way off the sugar equivalent of the Richter scale. And sadly it’s the same story with the chocolate pecan tart and mascarpone ice cream. It too is professionally put together, but it occupies a zone of sweetness that my taste buds have long since deserted. After the pork this would be a stomach sinker, a fall-asleep-at-your-desk job. If only I’d chosen instead Iain Mellis cheese with porridge oatcakes, which charitably, was on the cheaper menu. I’ll know next time.