Carmelite Hotel: Stirling Street, Aberdeen
Published:
THEY say first impressions count, but the Carmelite can clearly buck the trend.
After walking to the swank city centre hotel on a balmy summer evening, I was feeling a little hot around the collar.
Stepping into the lobby/bar area, I was hoping for a blast of air conditioning to cool me down – what I actually got was akin to stepping into a sauna.
On top of this a steady stream of water was escaping from the ceiling and landing in a big yellow bucket next to the lift.
But despite the glitches unfolding in the lobby, our cheery waitress seemed unfazed as she took us into the restaurant and took our drinks order.
To start I went for beef carpaccio with baby rocket and parmesan (£7).
Sliced perfectly, the raw slivers of beef tasted wonderful in the fresh lemon vinaigrette. Another nice touch was the occasional grain of sea salt on the meat, which acted like a little flavour bomb in my mouth every time I bit down.
My fiancee went for an old favourite, smoked salmon on melba toast (£4), but couldn’t get quite as enthusiastic as me due to the lacklustre-tasting fish.
After the waitress told me my first choice main course was sold out, I plumped for confit of pork belly with dauphinoise potatoes (£16).
The thick, juicy slab of pig that arrived in front of me was a sight to behold – and tasted just as good.
The only black mark was that the crackling was about as crunchy as wet newspaper.
The tender meat underneath it, however, was a joy.
As I was giving my cholesterol a beating it’d never forget, my fiancee was being saintly by comparison, going for grilled seabass fillet with rocket salad (£16).
While this dish may have been as virtuous as a visit from the Pope, it didn’t skimp on flavour.
This was a shining example of how keeping food simple is sometimes the best policy.
The pannacotta with blueberries and raspberries (£6) was another example of simplicity in action, as the cream wobbled on a knife edge between being set and not set – in other words, just perfect.
While we’d been busy eating, the hotel handymen must have been busy working in the lobby.
As as we left the Carmelite, the dripping had stopped and the air-conditioning was back on, blowing all our first impressions out the window.
