Clove Club is a large for a one star Michelin restaurant.  It has a main dining room that serves only the longer of two tasting menu options. We sat in the bar area that requires you to prepay for the shorter tasting menu but offers the option to upgrade to the longer menu when you arrive. Both menus are available in printed form. Bare wood tables and no clothes add to the noise level issues however when we last ate here we were in the main dining room and it was also noisy. Service is friendly and helpful and pacing and portions of the menu are nicely done. Wine pairings are available. We chose the longer tasting menu and ordered our own bottles of wine.

 

Both menus start with a selection of snacks prior to which they do bring a warm moist towel for each guest at the table, since most are finger food.  This is a courtesy too often skipped in fine dining establishments.  Smoked Pike roe, ricotta and Genmaicha tea was in the form of a tart was topped with green beans.  It was mild but nice.  The shell was tad soft.

 

Buttermilk fried chicken and pine salt was served in a bed of pine.  The light batter was crispy and the chicken was moist but there was no twist or striking feature other than a tasty chunk of fried chicken.

 

Haggis buns were served warm and stuffed with a ground meat and liver filling.  They had a distinctive iron aftertaste.  The bun was nicely soft.

 

Hay smoked wild brown trout was served with toasted almonds and watercress on an almond milk sauce.  It was very tender and smokey and the nuts added a nice crunchy texture to the velvety fish. This course is offered with a caviar supplement which we did not take.

 

Morels were stuffed with Wood Pigeon sausage and accented with a wild garlic purée and snails. The dish was topped with some crispy breadcrumbs. The morels and snails were great – chewy and moist. The sausage had a fairly strong game taste but overall the dish was not as highly flavored as I would have expected.

 

Bread was served and it was a dark bread with a good crisp crust and dense doughy interior. It was served with a tasty butter.

 

Spider Crab “Partan Bree” was shredded spider crab in a foam and rice.  It was fairly soupy and presented with a crab shell on top that was removed in the service.  It was good.

 

Hazelnut grilled pollock was served with a spring herb broth and peas.  It had a hint of mustard in the flavors.

 

Slow roast Guinea Fowl breast was served with nettle and guava and English asparagus with Hollandaise.  The fowl ‘oyster’ was served on a skewer.

 

30 day aged sirloin of Scottish Angus beef was served nicely rare alongside a crispy potato.   With it was beef croquette with a mustard/mayo dollop.  The rare beef had the flavor of aged beef and was juicy.  The croquette was filled with tasty shredded beef. The potato was a perfect crisp outside with a soft potato interior.  I could have eaten a plate of them.

 

Warm blood orange, sheep’s milk yoghurt and wild fennel granita was plated with some mint crisps.  All the flavors worked together well and there was a nice bit of textural contrast.  The tart yoghurt provided a nice opposition to the sweet fruit.

 

Warm potato mousse  was topped with caramel ice cream and was a delicious combination of flavors.  All blended together nicely and made a fun, different combination of sweet flavors.

 

Bitter chocolate tart was served with reduced milk ice cream.  The tart was surprisingly light but packed with chocolate flavor.  Some dots of caramel sauce adorned the plate and added a luscious addition to the excellent dessert.  You can easily see why this dish has been on the menu since they opened about 5 years ago.

 

Extra treats included loquat leather and popcorn, salted caramel homemade chocolates, Dr, Henderson’s bon bons (filled with Fernet-Branca, an amaro) and peated barley cakes with Dundee marmalade cream.  The cakes were particularly good and felt like a healthy ending for a tasty meal.