Phenecia, Edinburgh

rather postgraduate shabby chic with its copious yellow paint and framed prints--but the food was, frankly, terrible. It was also rather expensive. Because everything on the menu sounded so good, I ordered the mediterranean starter combination for over 15 pounds. For 15 pounds, I expected a better selection of food presented more attractively, although seafood was well represented on the plate. The calamari and the mackeral were decently cooked, but the spanakopita was a bizarre pink inside and the prawns were a disgrace. I believe they were supposed to be a sort of gamas pil pil impersonation, but they were just some cold sad small prawns with a little olive oil drizzled over them. And everything was floating in a lake of frying oil and olive oil as nothing has been properly strained or drained. My partner ordered the kefta for a starter, which was tasty if very tough. But his main course was a disaster. The tajine sauce tasted exactly like BBQ sauce, down to the consistency and that unmistakable ketchup tang. To top it off, when the waiter what was wrong since we barely touched our food, and I told him that the tajine tasted like BBQ sauce, he had the gall to inform me that I just didn't know what proper tajines tasted like. When I told him that I'd actually lived in Granada, Spain, where I'd had many a tajine in the Morroccan quarter, and none of them has tasted like BBQ sauce, he then told me that his chef was Tunisian and that this was the way tunisian tajines tasted. I didn't bother to tell him that Tunisian Tajine is actually a kind of omelette, as I was tired of arguing with someone who was trying to convince us that we should have liked the taste of food that we so obviously didn't enjoy. And for the pleasure of all of that BBQ sauce, and a coke and a small glass of Becks, we paid 34 pounds. Now, this amount won't break the bank, but considering the fact that you can get moules et frites for 6.96 at the King's Wark in Leith, 34 pounds seems a lot of money to pay for bad food and worse logic. Under no circumstances would I recommend this restaurant, there are too many places with much better food AND better prices to be had in Edinburgh.