WOW, EDINBURGH; THE LAVENDER, LONDON SW11

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Robert Hardman

IT is now so rooted in the restaurant rip-off process that most of us have given up notic- ing it. Ask for water and the reply will come `Fizzy or still?' It no longer crosses our minds to reply 'Tap'. And so, come the bill, we find that we have paid £3.50 for a bottle of something which costs 50p in the shops and about 5p to produce. And we do not even blink.

So it was a pleasingly nostalgic moment as I sat in Wow, a new arrival on Edin- burgh's busy restaurant beat, and ordered a bottle of still water. 'Are you sure you don't want tap?' asked the waitress. 'It's very drinkable in Scotland.' This was not a case of devolutionary triumphalism; the waitress was a proud Yorkshirewoman from Hali- fax. This was a case of common sense.

London may pride itself on its range of ,cuisines or its number of celebrity chefs but Edinburgh can still teach much of the Lon- don market a thing or two about service and value. And London cannot simply hide behind excuses such as overheads. With a new parliament drawing in a new subsid- locracy and Europe's fifth-largest fund- management market, Edinburgh is going through the same property mayhem as its sister capital.

A few months ago, I wrote of staggering bloated from the Apartment, another Edin- burgh newcomer, wondering why I had ordered anything more than a starter, let alone three courses. There was a similar sense of contented gluttony after a night at Wow.

Set behind huge windows on the ground floor of a typically solid New Town corner building, Wow was a coffee shop for several years before the owner became bored with selling cappuccinos and croissants. He has now reinvented the place as a bright brasserie restaurant doing simple modern British food in hefty amounts.

The decor is what estate agents call funky' — aubergine walls, a clomp-clomp Wooden floor, candles on blocks poking out from the wall — and the staff are cheerful without being evangelical. 'All very even- tempered and unobtrusive,' observed my friend, Arabella, approvingly.

She started with a terrine of scallop and smoked salmon with a lemon sabayon, and had no regrets. It had a delicate, almost crab-like flavour, and Arabella liked its scrambled-egg texture'. My game terrine came as a huge slab with a milder flavour than I had expected. Those who like their game high as a kite might be a little disap- pointed, but there was plenty of extra taste from the accompanying nectarine compote. I usually avoid salmon in restaurants on the basis that we eat it all summer and it's probably farmed anyway. But when in Scot- land I have this idiotic notion that it will have been freshly plucked from a torrential glen. So I ordered roast dace of salmon on a warm potato, sugar snap and mangetout salad. It was an honest, if unremarkable, slice of salmon with a gargantuan salad. A true Scot, Arabella has eaten far too much salmon in her time to bother order- ing it off a restaurant menu. 'Sea chicken,' she observed dismissively, embarking, instead, on a first-rate breast of guinea fowl with celeriac and swede purée and mustard sauce. The last, pleasingly, turned out to be rather more sophisticated than its billing, a careful blend of mustard, chives, cream, beef glaze and shallots.

We did not need pudding but tried a lemon and vanilla creme brillee, anyway. It was the only disappointment of the evening, barely braleed and rather too gelatinous. With a £14.25 Macon Lugny white and a £14.50 bottle of Backsberg Cabernet Sauvi- gnon, plus two rounds of coffee, the bill came to £75 including service.

Back in London, I tried a place which, if not Wow's twin brother, certainly looks as if it might be related. The Lavender, near Clapham Junction, is another big-win- dowed brasserie joint with a warm glow. In a few years, it has attracted good reviews and a loyal local following. The formula has been slowly transplanted to offshoots in Vauxhall, Putney and Shoreditch. This, the original on Lavender Hill, remains the flag- ship. 'Clapham Junction's the new Chelsea,' explained the manager proudly.

If anything, this little piece of Clapham is the old Chelsea. There were plenty of dis- placed Sloanes in sensible jerseys ordering hearty grub from a blackboard menu, but not nearly enough Eurotrash, Prada, rocket salad and attitude to qualify for today's SW3.

My friend, Miranda, and I both started with squid and — the now mandatory — chorizo sausage which was predictable but perfectly edible. I had been eyeing the lamb or the pork chops, but the hearty Sloanes had got there first and ordered the lot. Instead, I plumped for breast of chicken with herb polenta. It came in the modish Matterhorn style, piled vertically in slices around a salad base on top of the polenta.

The chicken was fine but the herb polen- ta tasted exactly like soap. I was not aware that there was now a herb called Palmo- live. Miranda ordered the 'caramelised button onion and goat's cheese tart'. She certainly couldn't argue with the caramelised bit. The onions, the cheese, the pastry and everything else had been roasted to caramelisation temperatures. Occasionally, the taste of the cheese broke through but the overwhelming flavour was of burnt pastry. We decided not to bother with pudding.

Foodwise, then, not a roaring success, but the service was attentive, there were plenty of mid-range wines to choose from, and the Lavender is certainly one of the more attrac- tive places on the long Lavender Hill strip. The price, at £70 for two, including two bot- tles of £14.50 Rioja and service, was easily sub-Chelsea. Wow, though, it was not.

Londoners frequently moan about whingeing Scots. Perhaps, when eating out, they should do a bit more whingeing them- selves.

Wow, 2 Broughton Place, Edinburgh; tel: 0131 558 8868. The Lavender, 171 Lavender Hill, London SW11; tel.. 020 7978 5242.

Robert Hardman is a columnist and corre- spondent for the Daily Telegraph.