The Fruitmarket Gallery Café

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• What are these?

• Average price 2 courses: £10
• House wine: £10.95 per bottle

• Hitlisted
• High point: Imaginative and seasonal menu
• Low point: Service could be snappier
• Food served: Mon-Sat 11.30am-4pm; Sun noon-4pm [coffee & cakes served: Mon-Sat 11am-5.30pm; Sun noon-4.30pm]
• Private dining: N
• Open since: 2004
• Also offers: Vegetarian options (at least 25% of menu), Childrens portions, Childrens high chairs, Wheelchair access, Take away

The List's Eating & Drinking Guide 2008 is now in the shops.

This review is from the 2007 edition.

The exhibitions that grace the Fruitmarket Gallery walls suggest a desire to push boundaries, and the chefs in the café kitchen seem to have similar ambitions. The menu, which changes to reflect the season and its produce, is put together with creative zeal. So if it's a quick cheese roll you're after for lunch, then keep on walking. With words such as 'healthy', 'hearty' and 'wholesome' peppering the menu, the chefs care just as much about your arteries as your tastebuds. Salads are fresh, plentiful and covered with energy-boosting seeds. Fruit and/or vegetables make a lively appearance in every dish. Even the desserts try to steer you in the right direction - chocolate and beetroot cake anyone? (A bizarre combination which, miraculously, pays off.) The regular menu of soups, imaginatively-filled rolls, deli plates and salads is supplemented by daily specials, inspired by produce from home and abroad. Dishes such as ginger stir-fried salmon, sausage and lentil hotpot or sweet potato and sesame falafel may not be a cheap option at over £7, but will certainly give your lunchtime a sense of occasion. Even more so if you opt for champagne to accompany it, although the café's wide range of freshly pressed and squeezed juices and award-winning coffee quench the thirst just as well.