][1]The 5pm Dining blog had a fun evening last night at a preview of Aizle, a new restaurant on Edinburgh’s St Leonard’s Street.
Regular blog readers may recall that we wrote about it a couple of weeks back but, for those who missed it, here are the basics.
Aizle is co-owned by husband and wife team Stuart Ralston and Krystal Goff. Stuart cooks while Krystal is front of house and makes a mean cocktail. Try the Sparky Jay – a turbo-charged G ‘n’ T.
They have a background in high end restaurants and bars around the world including stints in New York, Barbados and working with a certain Mr Ramsay.
Unconventional
The idea behind Aizle is to have no menu. Or at least not in a conventional sense.
Instead, diners are presented with a list of potential ingredients and asked to cross off any they don’t like.
Stuart then takes each list and prepares a four course dinner for £35.
Best produce
It makes choosing a bottle of wine slightly tricky although the easy solution is to order by the glass.
It’s a system which has definite benefits. Stuart gets to create dishes with the best produce that his suppliers can provide on the day and adventurous diners get a surprise with every course.
Last night, among other ingredients, the list included Mallaig skate wing, Wye Valley asparagus, sweet cicely, sea lettuce, Yorkshire rhubarb, Inverurie hogget and heritage carrots along with a couple of things that I had to look up.
Congrats if you know what chawanmushi is without Googling it.
Unexpected flavour combos
There is little point describing each dish we ate as tonight’s menu will almost certainly be different.
What we can say is that Stuart’s dishes are beautifully presented; use unexpected flavour combos and feature an eye-opening range of textures.
If your idea of a good meal is meat and two veg then you probably won’t like Aizle. If you enjoy being surprised, intrigued and possibly mystified by every mouthful then book a seat now.
There is nothing else quite like it in Edinburgh. Although if you crossed the Gardener’s Cottage with Paul Kitching’s 21212 then you might come close.
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