Grain Store Restaurant, Edinburgh

...my impression of the Grain Store was favourable enough. It is a pleasant restaurant in an interesting location in a beautiful city - hard to go wrong! I would have liked a wider selection of food, but other than that there isn't much I would change.
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We visited this restaurant, in the heart of Edinburgh's Old Town, on Sunday evening for dinner. It was fairly quiet, with a lot of empty tables, but this did not detract from the experience.

LOCATION

The restaurant is upstairs, above a shop, and has wooden floors, solid wooden tables, and candles in iron holders to add some atmosphere. The waitresses were friendly and the food arrived within a reasonable time. We were seated away from the windows, and found it to be uncomfortably warm, but it was a very hot weekend and I know this is not usual for Edinburgh so presumably it is not worth the investment of providing air conditioning. The candles probably didn't help, either!

MENU

The menu is quite small, but there is a choice of a fixed-price dinner (£15.50 for starter + main course) or a more expensive a la carte menu which averaged about £20 for a main course alone. Each menu had a choice of about four starters and four main courses. Being quite a fussy eater, I did find this difficult, but I managed to find something palatable for both courses.

When the food arrived, it was very tasty, although the side dish of mixed vegetables and roast potatoes was quite small and I would have liked the choice of mashed or boiled potatoes too. The wine that we received was not exactly what we ordered, but came up on the bill at the same price so I assume the wine list had some substitutions on it. We did not complain or mention this to the waitress so I don't know what would have been done if we had been really keen on the first choice.

Incidentally, when we ordered a second bottle of white wine, the bottle of red that she brought down was almost uncorked before I spotted the mistake. Our cheese board for afters was quite small, with only a limited selection of cheeses and some plain crackers, which I found disappointing. But, nothing went wrong enough to spoil the meal for us.

OPINION

Overall, my impression of the Grain Store was favourable enough. It is a pleasant restaurant in an interesting location in a beautiful city - hard to go wrong! I would have liked a wider selection of food, but other than that there isn't much I would change.
 

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