Restaurant review: Iggs, Edinburgh

Good things

Published Date: 17 August 2008
By Richard Bath

BARCELONA'S El Bulli may be widely acknowledged as the world's best restaurant, but I've always had a bit of a downer on Spanish food.
Not, I hasten to add, that I have the remotest misgivings about tapas, which I could eat all day (and often do for a week each summer), but I'm fairly immune to the charms of the sort of mid-range Spanish food that you should be able to linger over for hours.

Sure, there are some notable exceptions, such as paella, but all too often classic Spanish cuisine is accompanied by rivers of olive oil. In the wrong hands, many Spanish dishes aren't just a little oily – they're spectacularly greasy.

Not that you could throw that accusation at Ignacio 'Iggy' Campos's venerable Edinburgh institution, Iggs, which has long been a beacon of culinary excellence. Yet, whether or not the capital's eating-out population agrees with my assessment of Spanish food, there's little doubt that back in the Nineties, the classic Iberian grub served at Iggs simply failed to get the punters queuing around the block. Maybe it just clashes with the Caledonian palate.