Great scotish food and live jazz. A great combination!

Boisdale Restaurant has been a favourite of mine for more than 10 years. It offers a consistently good selection of dishes, with steaks, game and haggis all specialities. The Angus steak is hung until beautifully tender and the game changes based on seaso

Why on earth is there so much tartan? That’s because this is a Scottish-themed restaurant. I didn’t realise Scottish food could be applied as a theme – I mean there’s haggis, and well that’s about it right. Not so, it seems

Aside from all the tartan, initial impressions are not good. They’ve lost our reservation and don’t believe me when I say I have one – necessitating pulling out the email confirmation. Not daunted, they still say they’re fully booked and are starting to hint at us finding somewhere else, but this is deepest darkest Victoria/Westminster, a plethora of restaurants there are not and I am certainly not about to give up to hunt the streets.

The boys kick things off with a mini haggis for starters, complete with mash and neeps, which even has the option of a noggin of whisky as a chaser, which it seems is an absolute no-brainer of an option. I opt for the potted smoked mackerel with horseradish and toast. This isn’t nearly as pungent and fishy as I’d like, it’s tasty but far too mellow to be doing justice to the strong tastes of mackerel and horseradish in one pairing.

We’ve all ordered the exact same thing for a main, saddleback pork with curly kale and black pudding hash.

The meat is tender to taste, but far too hard to saw through which is making it seem all a bit too hard to plough through. The hash & kale are a little salty for my taste personally but the staff keep us plenty replenished with water, which they realise we are downing like those in the dessert.

By the time we’re about halfway through our mains, the lively jazz band kicks in and while we cannot see them from our position in the annexe, they’re an atmospheric addition to the place.

So as to enjoy the music, we opt to share a cheeseboard and the boys mull over the other option to end the meal; Havana cigars.

We’re plated up an immense portion of various cheeses so we can all share and nibbling on cheese & crackers, the tang of whisky in the air and the jazz band music filtering through to us are a great way to end the night.

However, as to the package as a whole, I remain unconvinced. Our waitress was lovely, attentive & sweet, however the front of house staff were a bit off-putting, the food was delicious but needed that little extra something to push it into divine.