from Bryan (61%) on February 20th, 2008 (6 months ago)

Channings, Channings Hotel, EH4 1EZ, Edinburgh

Nice food, poor service.

We arrived early to take advantage of the cocktail bar and the enthusiastic waiter was more than keen to help. I ordered a Manhattan (perfect; straight up); my partner didn't know what to have but went with the waiter's recommendation of a Mojito. He came back 10 minutes later to say he had no Vermouth so no Manhattan and no mint so no Mojito. We had a raspberry thing instead as it was on the specials board so presumed they had the ingredients. It was quite nice.

We were taken through to the conservatory by another waiter who quickly realised we were completely freezing and found us another table next to the fire - good that.

I ordered the warm salad of squab with beetroot and a port sauce, followed by pheasant with wild mushroom risotto. My partner had duck and pistachio terrine followed by Sea Bream in (I think) a lemon sauce with tagliatelle. And a bottle of Cotes du Rhone and some sparkling water.

Neither the water or bread arrived before our starter and they were a little mean with the bread.

My squab was nice but they was a little too much going on and it was a bit too rich. The terrine was good but was a very small portion. It looked like it belonged on the tasting menu which they also offer (£48 per head without wine; £68 with wine).

My pheasant was excellent and the risotto cooked perfectly. The Sea Bream was dull and I think slightly overcooked. Both portions were a little small but generally I prefer that to being given too much.

For dessert I had the chocolate fondant with chilli ice-cream. The fondant was beautiful but the ice cream had clearly been sat on the plate waiting as it was half-melted away. The other dessert was a banana tarte tatin or something equally unlikely. It was quite nice though and bizarrely massive - easily the size of the starter and main combined.

Now to the service. We had the enthusiastic chap for almost all the evening and he did a number of things wrong. Too slow in some ways, too quick in others and completely incorrect in some of his decisions.

Too slow to bring our water, our bread and to clear our tables (it wasn't busy) our starter, main and dessert. Too fast to bring us the dessert menu. He also attempted to clear our table while holding a pile of teetering plates he just cleared from another table. Given that we had already seen him drop a pile that evening, this didn't fill us with confidence. he also spoke loudly with another diner cum pal of his about where he'd found 'the balls' to get engaged that weekend. I'm not a snob but if you're trying to do white tablecloth-fine-dining with tasting menus then you really don't want to be hearing that sort of thing. We skipped coffee as we hadn't seen him for about 15 minutes and went to the bar to pay.

The bill was £95 or would have been if they hadn't given us the cocktails gratis (or forgotten about them).

Decent food but certainly not a fine dining experience.

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