Food fads come and go with pretty much the same life expectancy as may flies.

Today’s #cleaneating fashion is tomorrow’s cronut and nobody wants to be eating kale crisps when it’s all about the ramen burger.

Back in the real world, good ideas have legs and they last while the hippest of trends bloom briefly, wither and then die.

Good ideas last

Cocktail hour is a good idea which has lasted because many of us really appreciate a stiff drink which marks the end of the working day and the beginning of fun o’clock.

The same could be said of afternoon tea. It’s an idea which has lasted a couple of centuries because nobody knows how else to peacefully pass the time when Mother or an aunt decides to drop by. For a fortnight.

Which brings us to Restaurant at The Bonham in Edinburgh’s West End. Part of the chic and sleek boutique Bonham Hotel, the Restaurant instigated the Boozy Snoozy lunches in 2002.

Fourteen years later, the institution is still going strong.

Like many of the best ideas, the Boozy Snoozy lunch is simple. For £94, a table of four can enjoy three courses from the Boozy Snoozy menu along with two bottles of wine or fizz.

Parties with more or less numbers pay £23.50 a head.

For three courses. With a half bottle of wine. In Edinburgh. See what we’re driving at?

You can book here.

Family and friends

Originally, the Snoozy Boozy lunches took place at the weekend when diners may well be tempted to go for a snoozy after the boozy lunch bit.

These days, they are available noon to 3pm, Wednesday to Saturday and 12.30pm to 3pm on Sundays. In a recent development, they are now also available on Thursday evenings to catch the late night shoppers.

They are popular with families and groups of friends, couples and ladies who lunch. They are good for twosome, threesomes and moresomes.

The 5pm Dining blog gave them a spin.

The menu changes regularly. the one we ate from was cleverly balanced.

Dishes like the heritage carrot and apple soup or the pearl barley, parsley and tomato risotto are unlikely to frighten even the most conservative of diners.

On the other hand, there are plenty of complex options that the more adventurous home cook might think twice about.

This blogger is quite happy in the kitchen but I’m not sure I would ever go to the bother of making my own starter of beetroot-cured Shetland salmon gravlax with wasabi cream and compressed sweet and sour apple.

Even though it was deliciously refreshing.

There are modish flourishes to many of the dishes. For example, a dish of lamb shoulder with garden pea purée, violet heritage potato, and broad beans also featured a couple of fashionably charred gem lettuce leaves. Perfect for adding a bitter foil to the sweetness of the lamb.

Dishes like the chicken supreme with herb gnocchi, wild garlic purée, burned corn and chorizo salsa are special enough to feel like a treat.

Careful presentation

If you were served it at a friend’s house for Sunday lunch you would be very honoured. And possibly suspicious they had smuggled a professional chef into the kitchen.

The dishes are also well presented with seed tuile crisps mounted on the duck terrine starters and delicate fresh rasps sitting next honeycomb nougat on the chocolate pavé.

I’m pretty confident that nobody will be spiralising their courgettes in a couple of years.

I’m just as confident that the Snoozy Boozy lunches, and dinners, will be going strong at the Restaurant at The Bonham for a long time to come.