Avery

54 Saint Stephen Street, Edinburgh, EH3 5AL
Tel: 0131 563 4470
Internet: www.averyedi.co.uk
GPS: 55.957855, -3.206488

“Thank you, San Francisco.”

So writes chef Rodney Wages on the home page of the old Avery website, and I am sure he is not alone in having fond memories of this bustling Californian metropolis, with the unspoiled beauty of the Marin Headlands and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area on its doorstep, overlooking the occasionally foggy expanse of San Francisco Bay. And of course, provided the fog eventually clears, that bridge. I mean, who doesn’t love a good bridge?

For Rodney, however, these are more than mere happy holiday recollections. He spent more than a decade in the city, running a restaurant on Fillmore Street, named Avery. For much of that time he held on to a Michelin star. Then, it seems, he and his new wife developed itchy feet, and they decided to relocate. Touring the UK, they ended up in Edinburgh and were seduced (well, it happens to the best of us – for me it was that view of the Old Town from Princes Street – but perhaps for Rodney it was the bridge, who knows?). They returned the same year, and by 2023 Avery in San Francisco was closed, to reopen in Edinburgh’s Stockbridge in early 2024.

I chanced across news of Avery earlier this year, and spent a few minutes reading more of Rodney’s backstory. A Kansas native, he spent many years working under Thomas Keller at The French Laundry, before opening Avery. On this basis, only a few minutes later I had booked a table. Just a week or two later, and barely a year after opening, Edinburgh’s Avery picked up a Michelin star, Rodney reclaiming that which he had relinquished when he left California.

Edinburgh’s Avery took over 54 St Stephen Street, a basement venue previously home to The Stockbridge Restaurant, an unimaginatively (but informatively, I guess) named dining room which had been doing well in this venue for perhaps twenty years. It is a dimly lit yet cosy venue, without a huge number of covers which allows for a tightly-knit team to run kitchen and front of house combined. Mostly front of house is Jason, while Rodney and accomplice Silvia staff the hobs and pass; this is one restaurant where you will find chef himself bringing his dishes to the table.

The menu is set, and on the evening I attended amounted to twelve courses, although I believe the number of dishes can vary up or down from this figure. The menu itself is little more than a handwritten list of hints and teasers, and thankfully the quality of the cooking far surpassed the quality of the handwriting.

I have heard it said that dining is primarily a visual affair, so I hope you will forgive me for making this a pictorial account of my evening at Avery.

First up was caviar, which sat atop a base of anchovy jelly and chives, with sour cream atop a seaweed base. Visually it appealed, and yet I was tentative. Anchovy jelly? But I put my palate in chef’s hands, and it was the right decision, as this was a simply gorgeous mouthful (I tried to make it last two mouthfuls, but it wasn’t easy). The sour cream was the most dominant flavour, with chives next, working to frame the sweet and delicate caviar, while the anchovy jelly was extraordinarily light in texture and flavour. A real success and a great opener.

Scotland’s rich supply of high-quality seafood would tempt any chef to settle here, so it was no surprise to see a number of fishy dishes on Rodney’s menu. Next up was langoustine, which was presented in a dish of fermented pineapple, with chili and sesame. The fermented pineapple brought a gorgeous, savoury, umami quality to the dish, along with the toast of the sesame and a little chili spice. Another delicious and unique combination of flavours and textures.

My only complaint would be that the dumpy spoon provided made it impossible to lift the sauce from the dish. For the first (but not the last) time this evening I found myself tempted to lift the platter to my mouth and simply drink it.

I may even have done that.

No, I won’t be publishing any photographs of such loutish behaviour.

Next up were beets, where I admired the workmanship more than the flavour. Fresh beets were roasted, then peeled, then sliced and finally grilled, and presented as a rose, the flavour lifted by a dusting of burnt sesame and onion ash. Onion, chive and garlic feature quite strongly in Rodney’s cooking, in one form or another, although here I struggled to find the flavours alongside the beet.

Nevertheless, the presentation was beautiful, and I can safely say this was the best rose-shaped beet I have ever eaten.

On a couple of occasions two dishes came out hand-in-hand, and so alongside my very beety beet I was able to tuck into BBQ eel, a little sliver of barbecued eel hidden beneath a blanket of smoked pork fat, all atop a tempura shiso leaf. This was fabulous; even though the smokiness went to an extreme level, rather masking the flavour of the meaty fish, it was offset by the dainty crunch of the leaf, and overall it really worked.

I adore oysters but rarely order them in restaurants; I want a chef to work for his living! So I was intrigued to see how the next course, named simply wild oyster, was put together.

This was perhaps one of the most impressive dishes, visually it enticed, and the flavours were delicious. The oyster was served gently warmed, importantly preserving its soft texture, and bathed in a langoustine sauce – made from the shells generated four courses ago, naturally – with wild seaweed, smoked trout roe and chives. It all went down in the traditional manner, and was a welcome shift away from more predictable styles of preparing and presenting oysters.

Next up was aebleskiver. Nope, me neither.

I suppose I could pretend I was intimately familiar with the world of aebleskiver, but my knowledge of it went from know-nothing to world-expert level in the space of a minute, thanks to front-of-house-man Jason. Aebleskiver are small Danish pancake balls (so I guess any Danish readers are currently rolling their eyes in despair at my lack of knowledge) cooked in a cast-iron pan on the stove top. Served with syrup, jam or sugar, they are traditionally an Advent treat.

Not so at Avery, where you can eat them year-round, and they are served stuffed with broccoli, topped off with a little roasted garlic purée. While that might sound more like April Fool than Advent, they are incredibly rich, and delicious. Another little dish that I tried to stretch to two bites, but it was a challenge.

Returning to Scotland’s rich marine larder, next up was Bits and Bobs from the Sea, in this case a combination of Scottish red mullet and Blueshell mussels (from Shetland, if memory serves me correctly), which came bathed in a mouth-watering sauce of coconut and chilli oil. The seafood elements were sublime. The sauce was sensational. The capacious serving dish, meanwhile, suggested that theatre remains an essential part of Michelin-level dining.

Once again the spoon – I can’t remember if it was the gold one, or the wooden one – was too dumpy to lift the sauce from the base of the dish. And I dare not lift it to my lips, as this upturned lampshade was at least twice the size of my head.

I praised the dish as the bowl, still with a small lake of delicious sauce within, was whisked away, while ruing the absence of bread with which to mop it up.

“We can’t make bread as well, the kitchen has enough to do.”

Fair enough.

Now for a Rodney Wages signature dish. If you search online, you can find video of San Francisco diners tucking in to the tortellini in brodo, a combination of mushroom-stuffed pasta in a burnt onion and roasted garlic broth, with chives. Plenty of chives.

Parts of this I liked; the broth had a beautifully savoury umami character, with a sharp onion cut from the chives, while the pasta had a precise, al dente texture. The mushroom stuffing I was expecting to find seemed to have evaporated in the process though, and this felt like a filler, in more ways than one. For a dish with presumably a regular slot on the menu it should have been better.

Coming up now, a short sequence of two meat courses, starting with wild bird, which was a little bomb of pigeon, mushroom and foie gras, draped in slices of black truffle. This component was absolutely, fabulously, stunningly delicious. It came dressed in a sauce flavoured with Vadouvan, a French-influenced spice mix based largely on onions and shallots, with more exotic Indian nuances. It was an intriguing combination with the pigeon, which worked, although it is not a combination I would care to recreate at home (the wood pigeons knocking around my garden appear visibly relieved at this news).

The second meaty manifestation was Sika deer, with braised greens, fermented garlic and wild mushrooms. Now I confess I forgot to take a picture here, probably to your relief. Perhaps this was psychological; I found it to be one of the weaker dishes of the evening, the Sika deer passed over a candle before plating up, and I found it lacking in seasoning and flavour; sometimes quality ingredients deserve simplicity in preparation and presentation, but this was just too simple.

The knife provided to cut my miniature cube of meat was a source of some amusement (or bemusement?) as it must have been 18 inches long, larger than most of my home kitchen knives. Another piece of theatre which did nothing to enhance the experience other than perhaps to increase the risk of serious injury. Clumsy diners, beware.

Innovative cheese courses – like that at Les Jardiniers in Ligré – can make a huge difference to a dining experience (more than oversized knives and dishes, anyway) and Rodney Wages came up trumps with his cheese tart, in essence a pecan tart topped off with sharp (longer-matured) cheddar and honey. Just two bites again, but what memorable bites they were.

Finally, dessert and a selection of petits fours, and here the star of the show was the simply named custard. With apple, woodruff, cognac and burnt sugar, and dressed with dainty flowers, this tasted even better than it looked. Top marks for both presentation and flavour combinations here.

If you have read this far, well done, but you perhaps have one burning question. You know me well, perhaps, and you also know that dining is not just about great food, but also great wine.

The wine list at Avery is the most disheartening and undemocratic listing of über-expensive bottles, overly famous names and ambitious mark-ups I have ever seen cobbled together in one place. I thumbed through the handful of pages and struggled to find something I wanted to drink. Something that wasn’t too many hundreds of pounds per bottle anyway. I found myself wistfully reflecting on my recent dinner at Dulse, where I drank the 2022 Pieropan Soave La Rocca, which at about £100 was one of the more expensive bottles on their list; here at Avery it would vie for position as one of the cheapest.

I turned to the Loire section, often a source of interesting bottles at better prices, and of course a region I know well. But there isn’t a Loire section. The list is Champagne-heavy, California-heavy, and expensive-Bordeaux heavy. The Bordeaux section, for example, lists only seven bins; five vintages of Mouton-Rothschild, and one each of Margaux and Lafite-Rothschild, the least expensive coming in at £950. The most affordable Rhône was a Crozes-Hermitage at £198 (although I suppose the Clos des Papes magnum at £365 was a slightly better value), but even this is 7 or 8 times (depending on how prepared you are to shop around) the UK retail price (including duty and tax), when a 3-fold mark-up would be the norm. There was a Californian Zinfandel at £134, otherwise this section started at £243 and went skywards. And so on.

I closed the list, unable to find something I wanted to drink, at these prices anyway. Reluctantly I opted for the matched wines, as at £149 this seemed like the best way to drink without incurring bankruptcy. I normally abhor matched wines – I like to choose my own poisons – but the truth is if you were to dine here this is what I would recommend, as some of the selections were pretty good. A 2022 Saint-Aubin Le Ban from Henri Prudhon & Fils worked well with the earlier dishes, even if it displayed the low acidity you might expect from this vintage, and a 2022 Brda Pinot Grigio from Marjan Simčič was one of the better orange wines I have tasted in recent years (this might not be saying much). The pours were generous and Jason was quick to provide a top up as required (for these early wines anyway, not the later wines, but given the quality that followed that is fair enough).

The 2022 Lady Marjorie Chardonnay from Raen was perhaps the star of the show, as this is about as far as possible from what I would usually choose to drink in a restaurant, and yet I was modestly impressed; this was tighter and fresher than I was expecting (to be transparent, you should be aware that several geological epochs have come and gone since I last put a Californian Chardonnay to my lips).

The 2017 Monferrato Rosso Scajeta from Rugrà was rather ordinary, but both the 2009 from Suduiraut and the Krug multi-vintage (edition 172, based on 2016 and ten older vintages, so young for Krug) were tip-top offerings, although I am not sure either was a perfect match with their dishes; the Suduiraut was poured alongside the pigeon (this was a good enough match especially with that slightly spicy jus, but there are so many better options) and the Krug was popped for the desserts (which simply did not work at all). Two mismatches, but I suppose the choices reinforced the luxurious nature of this dining experience. It’s just that I would put the Krug at the front of the dinner, the Suduiraut at the end, and hook the pigeon up with another red.

But I am such a square.

Speaking of being a square, I couldn’t resist taking a bathroom photograph. Is this a San Francisco thing?

Or a Stockbridge thing?

Toilet humour, square wine attitudes and over-sized dishes (and knives) aside, this was ultimately a superb dinner. Yes, the wine list is dispiriting, depressing even, but the matched wines turned out alright in the end, and I discovered a rather decent Californian Chardonnay in the process. Of the dozen dishes, I thought ten were top-notch, a handful of which were truly stunning, leaving just a couple of misfires, which is a very high hit rate.

I would certainly dine here again. I just need to see some development of the wine list first. As well as find someone willing to pick up the bill.

Prices: Pre-payment is made when booking a table at Avery, currently set at £149 per head, so £298 for two diners. With a 15% service charge added at this point, we were in for £342.70 before even knocking on the basement door. Charges on the evening included one set of paired wines at £149 and one cocktail at £14 – a very restrained evening to be honest – and two coffees at £6 each. The bill came with a service charge of £25.50 – how this was calculated is a mystery and it may well be a set fee. With a £20 tip added on top of this the second half of the bill came to £220.50. The total cost for dinner for two was therefore £563.20. (28/3/25)