Restaurant Martin Wishart

In the years since he opened in Leith in 1999, Martin Wishart has certainly spread his wings. There is now a restaurant on Loch Lomond, Cameron House (see entry), as well as a cookery school. It's been a career of travel too, taking in stints in the United States, Australia and around Europe, but it is to here, the self-named restaurant on the approach road into the Leith redevelopment area, that the compass needle inevitably returns. This place has been able to lay serious claim for some years now to being not just Edinburgh's but Scotland's finest, an accolade that sits pleasantly at odds with its un-ostentatiousness. The décor is defiantly muted in its beige and wood surfaces. It's run with consummate professionalism though, with the kind of service approach that doesn't believe in intruding extraneously, but is fully clued-up as to what the kitchen is about. And what it's about is a style of localised Scottish food inflected with modern French technique, built around combinations of ingredients that are capable of inducing those moments of serendipity that an entire generation of UK practitioners is currently striving for, but which few achieve with this degree of precision. It's perhaps too easy to say it's worth splashing out on one of the six-course tasting menus, but these are the kinds of dishes that make you want to try as many of them as possible. An opener might be Kilbannan langoustines with parsnip and white chocolate in melted smoked butter, or Loch Ryan native oysters, the traditional sharpening accompaniments to which are recast here as green apple and sauerkraut, with some Aquitaine caviar for good measure. Main courses go up a gear for combinations that deepen the intensity of impeccable principal materials, whether Puy lentils, apple, beetroot and black pudding sauce with a roast loin and blood-enriched civet of mountain hare, or a voguish pairing of squab pigeon and foie gras, served with a celeriac and potato galette on truffle cream. And then just when you could be forgiven for expecting something avant-garde like a Jerusalem artichoke for pudding, desserts veer towards a more classical line, with pistachio soufflé, tarte Tatin with vanilla ice cream, or an assiette of the all important rhubarb, presented in the variegated guises of madeleine, cannelloni, macaroon and sorbet. The picture is completed by a formidably fine wine list that encompasses an excellent choice by the glass, opening with an Austrian Grüner Veltliner and a Chilean Carmenère.