Urban Angel, 121 Hanover Street, Edinburgh 0131 225 6215

Lunch-Dinner £12-24

Food rating 7.5/10

EDINBURGH is under assault from restaurant chains, the gastronomic expression of social cleansing. Only the most tenacious independents hang on. Naturally the council’s economic development bods are chuffed, hailing this clone attack as a pat on the back from head prefects in distant boardrooms as they busily promote heavily chained St Andrew’s Square as the capital’s new culinary quarter. If it is indeed the stomach of the council’s new 365-day-a-year festival/party miracle, then let’s all move somewhere else fast.

So I’m attracted to Urban Angel because it’s central, and not a chain, with an ethos that favours local and organic food – something no chain offers. I’ve thought of it as a slightly superior cafe with better than average ingredients – the eggs are free-range, it makes its own ricotta – and a finger on the pulse for what’s trending: avocado, naturally, and home-made nut butter on toast topped with berries. But now it stays open in the evening with a different menu.

All-day dining is one thing, a daytime-evening menu handover is another. It requires a change of gear, a shift of mood, and there’s more to that than merely putting candles on the tables. Urban Angel has two rooms and if we’re honest we feel a bit forgotten at times. When the food starts arriving, it’s fine, but otherwise, you have to find the service rather than it finding you.

Urban Angel’s evening menu is hesitant, idiosyncratic, it doesn’t quite hang together as if it isn’t entirely convinced about the evening project, unsure that its customers, who are more used to snacks and light dishes than big meals, can adjust.

Our first plate in what turns out to be an interesting, and mainly rewarding mish-mash, proves to be a winner, super-soft, deftly seared venison carpaccio with its sweet, irony taste under a salad of watercress, spring onion, and matchsticks of green apple. The clean, healthy, juxtaposition of the red meat with the greens primes the appetite.

We think we’ve solved the mystery of the "braised artichoke with vegetable argue & tarragon aioli". Perhaps "argue" is a typo for ragout? Anyway it’s not a ragout, more like skinned blanched tomatoes, turned courgettes, sliced mange touts and green beans, and rather too many chopped spring onions; Urban Angel seems a bit fixated on this last ingredient. The artichoke – its choke removed then opened out like a flower so you can easily get at the heart – obligingly takes the hassle out of this prickly vegetable, but the dish as a whole is too cold, and watery. Tweaked, it might work in the south of France in summer, not Edinburgh in autumn.

The subtly smoked rack of lamb, like the venison, is beautifully French trimmed, immaculately cooked, an excellent piece of meat with sublime fat, and reasonably priced at £12. It comes with more cold raw tomatoes and spring onion. Repeat ingredients again, a further helping of fading summer, when we’re craving autumn warmth. The pulled beef in panko-crumbed croquettes is nice and stewy – actually I’d prefer it just as a stew – but its greasy jacket does work well with the fiery golden beetroot and apple slaw enlivened with cracked coriander and cumin seed. Here’s one salad that sounds worthy but tastes great. Otherwise our enthusiasm increases with the heat of each dish. We lap up our hot breaded flounder with its amiably vinegary curried vegetable remoulade, and the skin-on, handcut chips, flaked with sea salt and chopped tarragon, topped with unctuous aioli, prove a good fit for a grey day.

Unless you count a warmed-up brownie, desserts are all cold. Loch Arthur yogurt makes a panna cotta with the texture of junket: lighter, and more refreshing than the creamy norm. Chocolate mousse lies submerged under a helter-skelter swirl of caramel cream, but it’s pleasant when you bury down to it.

Uncharacteristically low-key at night, Urban Angel may yet build up its nocturnal confidence, cast off summer and put on a winter jersey. I hope it does. We need every indie we’ve got.