Blonde

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• What are these?

• Average price 2 courses:
   £10.90 (set lunch)
   £16 (evening meal)
• House wine: £9.90 per bottle

• High point: No-nonsense home cooking
• Low point: Leaving
• Food served: Mon 6-10pm; Tue-Sun noon-2.30pm, 6-10pm
• Private dining: Up to 12 covers
• Open since: 2000
• Also offers: Vegetarian options (at least 25% of menu), Childrens portions, Childrens high chairs, Wheelchair access

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

This review is from the 2007 edition.

This neighbourhood restaurant is deservedly popular and has a welcoming and homely feel. The dining room is simply furnished with light furniture and wooden floors, and has a relaxed ambience which acts as the perfect backdrop to the carefully prepared food that emerges from an open and lively kitchen. Starters such as a mozzarella, feta and sun-dried tomato tartlet, and warm chorizo and blue cheese salad are uncomplicated and well-executed. The Cullen skink is creamy, tasty and swimming with chunks of smoked haddock - down-to-earth as it should be. Mains include a now trademark casserole of venison with mustard, honey and chocolate (somehow a perfect combination!). The sole stuffed with seafood mousseline is perhaps a little over-ambitious, but it still manages to be imaginative and unfussy. Straightforward steaks are cooked as you wish. Save space for desserts that only your mother can match - warm marmalade pudding and orange custard is tart and moist, and the often poorly-conceived banoffee pie is exemplary. A short wine list contains enough reasonably-priced quality 'house' wines to satisfy. Blonde, as always, is still very good value for money with interesting, really well-cooked food and staff that are friendly and accommodating.