Bardoulet's Restaurant, Horseshoe Inn, Eddleston

When you make comparisons it’s only fair to compare like with like. And so, while Bardoulet's fine dining restaurant at the Horseshoe Inn in Eddleston (a village less than a half hour drive south of Edinburgh) is a damn site finer than most meals you’ll eat, for what it is (and what it costs), it ain’t all that. In fact, it’s a bit a of a let-down.

The welcome is friendly enough, but the enthusiastically crass décor of the restaurant (a gilt mirror the size of a bed in what might be called ‘hobbit baroque’ style; table decorations incorporating a rose, drowning under what seems to be a floating layer of polystyrene (it’s probably camphor, but the logic of the implied metaphor is still embarrassing)) means initial impressions are distinctly lacking in finesse.

The food is a combination of the genuinely delicious and the frustratingly try-hard. Starters included a lobster mikado salad and a Brittany artichoke and gold beetroot beignet (each with things like bisque panna cottas and truffle foams in there to mix it up). These were as exciting as they sound, although the wazabi [sic] mayonnaise was a bit too heavy on the salt.

For the main course, while my pot-roasted pork belly (with langoustines, pumpkin purée, brussels sprouts, chestnut and Madeira jus, no less) was extremely edible, there was nothing much about the pork to elevate it above good quality pub food. On the other side of the table, wild halibut (with a similar volume of extras) was extremely well crafted.

You’d have to be a real sourpuss not to enjoy an evening meal at Bardoulet's. But with such an accomplished fine dining venue as Cringletie House just down the road, if you are planning to treat someone special, this isn’t (yet) the best bet for an occasion to savour.