The Edinburgh Blog

Haldanes restaurant on Albany St, Edinburgh was my destination for a pre-emptive Christmas dinner last night. The reservation was for 9pm but we arrived just before 8.30 in the heavy Edinburgh rain. This basement restaurant has a bar just as you enter, full of leather sofas, and this is where we has pre-dinner drinks and an opportunity to browse the food and wine menu. They had a large selection of drinks and I settled for a Royal Lochnagar whisky (£4) while my dining partner had a Cosmopolitan cocktail (£5.50).

The restaurant in Haldanes is much like a cosy home, with good space between the tables and a terrific warm and comfy setting for dining. The service was the best I have experienced in Edinburgh; friendly, knowledgeable and efficient. We ordered a bottle of Chablis Durup at £26, from a fair sized wine list and also a bottle of still Gleneagles water (£3.50) for the table.

For starter I had haggis served with turnip (£5.50). This was presented superbly and the best tasting haggis I’ve had so far. My main was rump of Scottish lamb, served in a quite brilliant mushroom sauce and a serving of nice potatoes (£17.95). The lamb was delicious and plentiful. My desert was the show stealer though: Christmas pudding souffle served with Creme Brulee ice cream (£7.75). The taste, texture, presentation and pure brilliance of this desert is impossible to describe. It was quite simply the best desert I have ever tasted! High praise indeed; yet totally deserved.

My dining partner started with a plentiful, and great tasting crab and prawn dish (£10.50). For main she had Highland venision served with a kind of potato bake (£18.25). The serving was generous, but every piece of venison was cooked to perfection and the quality of it was without question. However, disappointingly, the potato was baked a little too long. For desert was a chcocolate terrine served with pieces of orange (£6.75). Like virtually the whole meal, this was superb.

Each desert had a recommended desert wine that we had, and thoroughly enjoyed (£10 per glass).

In terms of a complete meal and enjoyable dining experience I think Haldanes could well be the best I have had in Edinburgh. A trip to this fantastic restaurant is highly recommended. It’s a ‘high end’ restaurant, where everything oozes quality, yet retains like-ability and personality. What a great way to start the build up to Christmas!

In January Haldanes restaurant is moving from Albany Street to Dundas St, and the former home of Keepers restaurant. I really hope they manage to create the same atmosphere and retain the same quality of food and service that they manage so well at Albany St. After this great meal, I will be sure to check its new location out!

Afterwards we hopped in a taxi and arrived at The Dome on George Street. I am happy to report the quality of the inside Christmas decoration every bit matches, in-fact surpasses, the exterior decoration. The center piece of which is a huge Christmas Tree above the central bar pointing towards the stunning domed roof. Lights around the domed roofs edge constantly change colour to give the tree a different shade. Here we drank a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne, at an expensive £56. I would certainly recommend calling in at The Dome for no other reason than to see their Christmas decorations! I have put some photos up below:-

For the end of the night we lowered the standards our evening had set and found ourselves in the £5 to enter Mood nightclub in the Omni Centre :-) I would recommend this place if you are heavily drunk, on the pull or it’s just that time of night and you *need* somewhere to go. The people in here are a mixed bunch, but perhaps dominated by the many teenagers going crazy to cheesy records that they must have heard a few hundred times before. Suffice to say we didn’t last too long here before joining the bulging taxi queue outside for a ride home.