Rollo
14 Broughton St, Edinburgh
0131 556 5333
Lunch/Dinner: £18-£28
Food rating: 4/10
“Shopping, eating, drinking, sleeping, the best bars, clubs, restaurants and shops are all in Broughton Street.” I quote from the street’s own website, which continues: “Just minutes from Princes Street ... Broughton Street is the independent spirit of Edinburgh. We are a collection of independent shops, restaurants, pubs and spots to relax.”
Now theoretically, I’m a pushover for any independent traders’ sales pitch. I do already use one shop on this now hyped thoroughfare: Real Foods. But with one notable exception, Fred Berkmiller’s ever reliable, never complacent Escargot Bleu, when it comes to eating out on the street, I drag my feet. I’ll explain why later.
I was more optimistic, however, for recently opened Rollo, which looks like a clone of its mother ship in Stockbridge. When I reviewed it in 2013, I decided that: “Rollo serves up a mixed bag of eclectic offerings, but gets them right much more often than it gets them wrong.” The opening of Rollo mark two shows the same focused business eye for a good location. But the food has gone the wrong way.
Random eclecticism is rampant. It’s a menu for a Bondi beach bar, and big on ingredients that are never likely to be much cop in Scotland, such as mango and red snapper. There’s that southern hemisphere Middle Eastern/Asian/ thing going on that can go so dreadfully wrong, dusted with a weakness for fleeting restaurant fashion: “slaw”, and “pomergranate (sic), et al. Perhaps I missed it, but there wasn’t one ingredient on the menu I could pick out as short-lived and seasonal. The usual staples, such as heaps of rocket, long-lasting pak choi, that you can order on speed dial from any restaurant supplier, are well represented.
First up, gluey croquettes, fried too darkly, described as “zucchinni (sic) fritters”. The pretentious, misspelt use of the Italian word rather than “courgette” can’t mask a greasy fritter, but then, we love them in Scotland, don’t we? A welcome curl of pickled cucumber neutralises their oiliness. Two quenelles of dips (beetroot, cauliflower blue cheese) come on the same plate, competent food processor jobs, no more. Their accompanying mango salsa is belligerently hot with an excess of red onion. Crispy dumplings scarcely fit the description “gyoza”: they’re deep-fried, not half fried/steamed, and their meaty filling is a mulch.
Dishes here typically have longer, more hyphenated names than the most rarefied aristocrat. “Pan-seared tuna fillet-mango chilli-red onion-salsa” is briefer than most but the fish is a disaster, watery, vapid, and bossed mercilessly by the same brutish oniony salsa. Pork belly might have been “slow-roast” for days, the meat is so tough and dry; the crackling leather-like. Its “roast apple jus” is molasses-sweet, like apple juice concentrate.
“Salted caramel chocolate tart” takes me back to school dinner toffee tart with its leaden, pallid pastry. Its “clotted cream ice cream” tastes more like synthetic rum flavouring than anything else. “Raspberry-lime-cheesecake-gingernut crunch” amounts to an un-thrilling posset/syllabub hybrid with a rubbery cap of jelly that smells as authentically fruity as Starburst sweets.
I can remember back to the time when Broughton Street had few catering establishments, lots of pubs, and gems of shops, like James Ritchie & Sons the clockmakers. Now it’s a zone of restless energy. Ever time you blink there’s a new coffee bar, another restaurant, and this momentum seems driven by two things. First, the now incessant, 365-day a year crowds – hen nights, stag nights, proper tourists – who pour into the city and its endless new hotels in search of recreation. (View aside, Princes Street is so chain-dominated that once you’ve filled your shopping bags, you’ve exhausted it, hence the drift to Broughton Street and the Grassmarket in search of something more lively.) The second constituency is younger, reasonably affluent locals who crave buzz and nightlife. But out of the festival, Edinburgh comes a poor second-best to Glasgow in this respect, which is more genuinely animated.
My problem with Broughton Street these days is that I keep having mediocre meals there. I have reached the conclusion that thanks to the reliable through-flow of customers, restaurants here can be pretty average, or worse, yet still survive. Rollo underlines that thought.
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