Love food; hate love

Valentine's Day

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To dwell on the merits of Valentine's Day and everlasting love would be both stupidly boring and reasonably naïve: to denounce the whole day as a money-spinning corporate creation would be just as clichéd as the schmoozy shebang itself. Certainly, those big questions tend to be forced into the limelight as February 14 approaches: is our relationship going anywhere? Will I ever get a boyfriend? Does Ann Summers have a return policy on this? For those in relationships, the decision of what to buy, where to go and what to wear pushes stress levels up several notches. But for those not in a relationship, the decision is split between securing a Mr Right-Now for the evening or cursing the smug couples and getting inordinately pissed with your mates.

Thankfully, like Christmas, the social leveller is a willingness by all parties, attached or unattached, to use the holiday as a time to revel in good food and plentiful drink. Whether dining out becomes the foreplay to later bedroom antics or simply the forerunner to a fitful night's sleep, Valentine’s Day is as good an excuse as any made up holiday to indulge. At the corporate end of Edinburgh’s food industry one can expect the usual offerings from George Street: swanky menus, trite muzak and form-obscuring lighting.

Such locations satisfy the oxymoronic demand of Valentine's couples; to embrace the personal and the private whilst happily acknowledging their membership in the privileged club of two. At the other end of the market, there are restauranteurs who refuse to chalk up their boards with Valentine's gushings and instead welcome a proliferation of customers who are decidedly nonplussed about the whole affair. Quite clearly, there is no middle ground when it comes to Valentine's Day: open relationships aside, you are either with someone or you aren’t. With that in mind, this week's Food & Drink offers two very different venues which, while acknowledging the inescapable existence of the holiday, should appease diners on both sides of the lovey-dovey divide.



Picardy Place, 4 Picardy Place

Picardy Place is a victim of circumstances. Since its inception in 2007, the bar/restaurant complex has been wrongly assumed to be either a gay bar, and thus hostile to heterosexual punters, or a members' club, and thus hostile to punters in general. Certainly, the fact that it shares management and location with GHQ, the capital's newest and most upmarket gay nightclub, and is at times guarded by austere looking bouncers, explains why the place is so misunderstood.

Once the obstacle of entering is overcome, and the grand staircase is climbed to the restaurant, one encounters a dark, sumptuous and seductive dining area. There's an awful lot af black: polished black wooden floors, black bar, black velvet chairs and enticing black chaise longues, all of which create an atmosphere of civilised S&M, more burlesque than strip club. Brightened by red and gold ornate wallpaper and with red flowers littering the tables, the restaurant décor steps into a sensual threshold between romantic love and carnal desire. Based on an antiquated but luxurious hotel in Paris, Picardy Place offers something of the French capital's allure to those unwilling to brave the Eurostar. With this image in mind, the restaurant is more than happy to capitalize on the Valentine's celebrations. The perfunctory red roses will be on offer and couples will start the evening with an aperitif or glass of rosé champagne.

At £29.95 for three courses, the meal is hardly a snip, but is still less expensive than the swish interior might suggest. The most indulgent options are a ballotine (that is, a flattened and rolled parcel) of ham hough with sweet pepper relish to start, and a succulent ribeye steak with dauphinoise fondant potatoes, sautéed vegetables and wild mushroom jus for main. There are equally appealing vegetarian options, like the goats cheese and pea tart. The dessert option of strawberry and black pepper cheesecake shows some innovation on the chef's part and gives a playful nod to the room’s colour scheme. Despite the opulent setting, the venue isn't overly-serious, appealing as it does to pleasure-seeking, rather than uptight, customers. Those who haven't swilled enough wine by the end of the meal might be reassured to know that the downstairs bar is open until one. As part of a twosome on Valentine's, Picardy Place lets one flaunt the fact theatrically, if a little ironically.

Coyaba Jamaican Restaurant, 113 Buccleuch Street

The antidote to the decadent romanticism of Picardy Place comes in the guise of Coyaba, a Jamaican restaurant on Buccleuch Street. Coyaba works from the premise that dinnertime is about generously portioned comfort food, sloshings of rum and relaxed surroundings. Paying homage to its Rastafarian roots, the restaurant embraces a red/green/yellow colour scheme which manages to avoid looking like stereotype and instead infuses the place with warmth and a genuine sense that this is not fusion or copycat cuisine but the real thing.

Coyaba is refreshingly unafraid to assault the senses of smell and taste: the dishes use bold, spicy flavours and a homely aroma of recently cooked food pervades the cosy dining room having wafted, one suspects, straight from the Caribbean. A first experience of eating here certainly encourages a willingness to try new things, but for the less adventurous there are the more familiar options of delicately battered coconut prawns and sweet chilli dip and a delicious vegetable coconut curry, deliciously sweetened with butternut pumpkin. Jerk chicken is an obvious but welcome inclusion on the menu, as is the traditional goat curry which uses organic meat and is surprisingly tender. However, the true triumph is the Chicken Ku-Yah, a chicken stew in a tomato, onion and garlic gravy. With a demarara sugar base, the dish is rich and sweet and demands a mopping up of its juices with warm banana bread and a side of plantain chips. Ackee and Saltfish, the national dish of Jamaica, is a prerequisite of any visit: ackee—a yellow fruit oddly reminiscent of scrambled eggs–has a subtle flavour which balances the saltiness of the fish. The use of scotch bonnet peppers, one of the hottest chilies, gives many of the dishes a fiery kick but fails to overpower them.

The food is not cheap but reasonable, at around £12 for main dishes, and the generous portion sizes mean it is unnecessary to go overboard on side dishes. If you can stagger your way to dessert, the rum, raisin and chocolate cake is a satisfying finish to the meal, and a nice compliment to the rum-based cocktails. Enjoyable for couples but perfect for groups of friends, Coyaba is highly recommended as a truly unusual haven in a Valentine's market saturated by European cuisine.

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