William Sitwell reviews Cardinal, Edinburgh: ‘I don’t need 16 courses, not even if very hungry’

My phone spoke to me as I set off from my Edinburgh hotel: ‘Cardinal closes in 20 minutes,’ which seemed strange as that was the time I planned to arrive.

And at 8pm precisely, Alice and I were two of 14 diners that evening (there’s an alcove they can fill with another 10 as the mood takes them). I counted them, just, what with the dining room being in almost total darkness, with black walls, black tables, black chairs and only the odd splash of colour from some vibrant modern art.

The place, I realise, closes to guests at 8pm because to dine at Cardinal you need to be in the throes of the action by then. It’s a tasting menu, one of those compulsory chef flourishes, a relentless assault from the kitchen – and you’ve got three hours to deal with it.

To grapple with the mental and physical challenge. Mental, because like a night of stand-up comedy you leave the place strangely unable to remember a single joke (or dish, as Cardinal calls them), and physical because the body isn’t designed for this. And if yours is, I suggest you get a second opinion because it shouldn’t be.

We counted the items listed on the menu: 16 of them. I felt my digestive tract stiffen. I don’t need – nobody needs – 16 courses, not even if hungry or very hungry. And what about you, the reader? Me simply listing the dishes would tumble over this column’s word count and that’s not the contract we have reached (I describe the place, the food, bung in some jokes and give you a fair idea as to whether it’s worth the journey and the damage to your wallet).

Yet here we are, halfway in, and I’m showing reticence at fulfilling part of my brief – mentioning the food – because it reminds me of how I felt when I tried to go to sleep that night after tackling the full force of the tasting menu.

Undoubtedly chef Tomás Gormley (whose other Edinburgh restaurant, Heron, I love) has a deft and skilful touch. You could see it in the dish of the night, the lobster (six plates in), which hid under hollandaise with my favourite potatoes – pink fir apple – which Gormley cooks over charcoal. It was a fabulous and innovative delivery of a lobster. And in the beef dish with shallot and tallow (number 10), where he renders otherwise tough old dairy cow into a plate of tender and sumptuous wonder. There was also a cute chicken dish that came in a triangular waffle sandwich, the chicken fried and crisp, the waffle a little sweet, tempered by the saltiness of some caviar and tart crème fraîche. Think haute cuisine at the funfair.

Post-beef, we paused to eat some snow, or granitas as they call it. If only we could have actually run out of the restaurant and rolled in snow, then, perhaps, after an ice bath, a hot tub and another cold-water plunge, we could have returned to the table refreshed. We were asked to squirt drops of concentrated liquid on to the snow to flavour it. But, to be honest, by that point in the proceedings I was struggling to lift a fork, let alone squeeze some sort of Ribena drops on to granita and discuss the findings with Alice.

Entire concept aside, it was the only low point. For, yes, I liked the food but, just as Emperor Joseph says to Mozart in Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus (and I know it because I once played the part), there are ‘too many notes’. We called time after some ice cream and they delivered the rest as petits fours to take away.

Which was a rare mark of common sense. I mean who would actually, after a full 15 dishes, want to eat a whole ‘sea buckthorn jammy dodger’?