Recently I popped in at the The Atelier Restaurant for a bite to eat, and a little food sketching.
The 2 AA Rosette Scottish dining restaurant lies on Morrison Street in Edinburgh’s West End, and has a cosy and relaxed atmosphere with a friendly welcome.
I visited with the Sketcher Clan for a week day lunch, they open 12-2.30pm, 5.30-9.30pm Tue-Thu and 12-2.30pm, 5.30-10.30pm Fri and Sat, and the place seemed to be a popular business lunch location.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary ‘Atelier’ means a room or building in which an artist works. This couldn’t be more appropriate for this Edinburgh kitchen.
Atelier: a room or building in which an artist works
We enjoyed 3 courses of beautiful food. Each plate was a work of art, the above starter of ‘Lamb ballotine, buckwheat, fennel, artichoke’ had delicate sauces dabbed around the the plate like one of my sketches.
Not only did they look good but tasted delicious, the Sketcher twins shared a pasta dish of ‘Fregula, peas, asparagus, ricotta’ and when they couldn’t finish it all asked if we could take the rest home.
Our shared dessert of ‘Poached apricot, dark chocolate cremeux, sorbet’ disappeared before I could sketch it to a flurry of silent scooping and synchronised ‘mmmm-ing’.
Below is a sketch from after the event 🙂
Today’s sketches were made with a black fine liner pen and watercolour paint.
The Atelier Restaurant website
The Atelier are holding an ‘Aura Night’ Italian cuisine evening on Monday 22nd August for one night only from 7pm-10pm, creating a ‘Tasting Menu offering a Journey through great Italian flavours’. Places are £45 per person and reservations are required. To book, please call 0131 6295040