Café Marlayne

The 2013 edition of The List's Eating & Drinking Guide is out now – only £5.95 (+p&p).

This review is taken from the current (2013) edition.

While Café Marlayne’s Antigua Street sibling plies the breakfast-through-dinner café-bistro trade, the Thistle Street branch is its ‘proper’ restaurant. It is bijou in both size and character, with tight tables, mirrored mosaics and a living-room feel, evoking a warm, well-to-do, welcoming cordiality created in part by the proportion of loyal local regulars. A silver Eiffel Tower in the window and some Monet-esque paintings are the only visual French signifiers, while the menu, honed over many years by curator Islay Fraser, deploys Scottish ingredients with French sensibilities. So to start, a piled plate of boudin noir, sautéed potatoes and crispy pancetta is a Scottish breakfast in a parallel life. For mains, seasoned pork belly is rare breed and accompanied by seared scallops, while halibut fillet with rocket is righteous enough to clear your conscience for contemplation of the dessert menu. Universal pleasers such as panna cotta and not-French-in-the-slightest sticky toffee pudding will no doubt tempt the waverer, while the still-hot cover of the coffee brûlée is another indicator of the care and attention that keeps them coming back to Café Marlayne.

• High point: Fine scallops
• Low point: A tight squeeze to the toilets