Some Press Coverage and Links
Just click on the mastheads to be taken to the articles
Harden's Guide
Sunday Times Review
The review in April 2006 Bite Magazine -
Calistoga Restaurant review
Calistoga is a place for people who are serious about their tucker. There's a periodic table of wine on the wall and wine books dotted around the small restaurant. A strict no-smoking policy means you can taste your food, which is immaculately and artfully presented by the owner/ chef team. The chef, Seanan has been there since it opened its doors last August, so there is also consistency in the quality of the food.
Did I mention that it's entirely Californian? The wine list is Californian, the food is Californian, the no-smoking policy is Californian Law, there's even Californian internet radio played in the background. The attention to detail is almost obsessive.
Restauranteur Gordon Minnis has been involved in the wine industry for many years and still manages to find time to work part-time for Henderson Wines. He told us that when he worked at Haldane's restaurant he was besieged by requests for Californian wines. In response he started collecting and learning more about Californian wines. His wine collection ended up so large that he had to open the restaurant to sell his wine and make room in his cellar. An interesting motivation for a restaurant! One of the unique points of Calistoga is that there is only a £5 mark up on the wine. This means that you can enjoy a better quality of wine for the same price than in some other restaurants (which often have rather steep mark ups).
Gordon picked out a cracking bottle of De Loach Chardonnay (£22.00) for us. Not too heavy on the oak, it was a lively number which complemented the delicate taste of our dinners.
We had a look at the website, www.calistoga.co.uk before we got to the restaurant, so my partner and I already knew what we fancied. For starters, I chose the Saffron and Ginger Melon Salad with pine nut and sweet pepper salsa (£5.00) which was simultaneously hot with ginger and cooling with melon. My partner's Chorizo and Scallion Frittata with roast red pepper paint (£5.00) was light and airy. There was something almost comical about the flamboyant garnish on my mains, which was the Organic Bean stuffed Baby Eggplants with crunchy carrot tumbleweed (£11.50). Although it was a delightful vegetarian option, my partner's Pan seared Duck Breast with sticky orange rice and a citrus sauce (£13.00) was definitely the business. He loudly proclaimed that it was the most skilfully cooked duck he'd ever tried. The dessert menu came with recommendations on dessert wine to complement each dish. My Vanilla and Honeycomb Pancake Cheesecake (£4.50) was complemented by an apricot sticky, whilst my partner's Bitter Sweet Chocolate Torte with raspberry compote (£4.00) matched well with a dark sticky wine.
Low on Californian glitz, Calistoga is high on gastronomic attention to detail.
The Herald Review on 9th June 2005
Web Issue 2286 June 09 2005 
The Best BARRY SHELBY
Calistoga
As regional styles of food tend to go, California cuisine can be a slippery one to define. It seems to cover quite a lot of different dishes in the so-called golden state, which is appropriate as California is a large place with diverse ethnic communities among its population of 34 million.
When you are in the state, menus described as offering Californian cuisine can include such apparently pedestrian dishes as a tuna salad on sourdough bread with house salad or, more intriguingly, braised rabbit Bolognese with brown butter sage risotto cake and Parmesan. The latter is from Brannan's Grill in the Californian Napa Valley town of Calistoga – namesake of this nine-month-old bistro on the south side of Edinburgh.
Calistoga the restaurant probably benefits from any confusion over what constitutes Californian cuisine and, anyway, it doesn't claim to be purist: the menu can range, depending on the time of year, from prawn and pea wontons with sweet chilli dip to chilled watermelon soup with julienne of crab sticks; from teriyaki tofu and vegetable spring rolls to char-grilled swordfish steak on toy box tomato and baby potato salad.
Although small, you can't miss this place as the state flag waves above the front door. The feel inside is casual: a 30-odd seater with tables of chequer-board mosaic tiles and folding chairs of plastic and aluminium. The room is smoke free and an internet link streams a Californian radio station into the dining room. All wines are Californian in origin, aside from two foreign specials from France and Australia.
Given this speciality, Calistoga should benefit from the success of Sideways, the hit film set amid California wine country. Here are the buttery Chardonnays and heavily oaked Cab Sauvs that the Napa and Sonoma valleys are probably best known for, as well as the finer and more subtle Zinfandels.
And, yes, there are seven of those Pinot Noirs that the movie's protagonist makes such a fuss over – and little wonder, with one from the DeLoach Vineyards in the Russian River Valley (£26): medium body but still substantial. To add to the appeal, Calistoga's policy is to mark up bottles by only £5 over retail cost.
Dinner is a bargain, too, with three courses for £20.
A complimentary bowl of steamed adzuki beans serve as a suitable appetiser. The green curried pork and vegetable dumplings starter is underwhelming; fried parcels of stuffed pastry accompanied by a standard Thai dipping sauce. The frittata, however, with chicken and butter beans is a hearty slice of savoury pie, served with spicy sauce drizzled round the plate.
Also well matched is the main course of smooth mango ginger coulis with some "citrus steamed" sea bass: two delicate, if slightly soggy fillets with a tower of sticky rice. The char-grilled rib eye is marbled, flavoursome and, despite its slender dimensions, still red at its centre: properly rare as requested. The chilli and chive mash that accompanies it absorbs some of the grill flavours.
For dessert, the dark chocolate pot is crowned with a proud swirl of whipping cream straight out of the ice cream parlour canon while Milky Way spring rolls seem like a Pacific Rim nod to our local deep-fried Mars bar. But Calistoga likes to do things a bit differently, right up to the conclusion of the evening when "the check" comes tucked inside the comments book.
93 St Leonard's Street, Edinburgh, 0131 668 4207
Style: Casual bistro
Food: California/Pacific Rim
Price: Three-course dinner, £20
Wheelchair access: No
(Copywrite "The Herald" Newspaper)
The List Eating Out Guide Review
See us at Restaurant-guide.com -
Why not review us?