The story
From the French word for clay, Argile is an independent chef’s table restaurant in Edinburgh’s Marchmont, opened in 2022. The restaurant offers an intimate dining experience built around a frequently-changing tasting menu that showcases the best of Scottish produce, cooked with a contemporary French leaning and global influences.
Chef Jack, originally a self-taught cook, worked his way through Escoffier’s Guide Culinaire while living above a market in France during a university exchange year. He went on to work in the kitchens of Le Jardin des Sens in Montpellier, where René Redzepi and Sat Bains trained, and Restaurant Alain Chapel outside Lyon, where Michel Roux Jr. and Alain Ducasse trained. A love of wine and two years spent working front-of-house in wine roles round out his experience. Jack is aided by his small team of Thomas, Elliot and Scott.
The food is a single menu featuring a series of seasonal dishes, each one showcasing Scottish produce at its very best. Ingredients are carefully selected and dishes are crafted daily to reflect what is at its peak at that moment. As a result, the menu changes frequently, offering a multi-course experience for £100, service included.
Argile’s wine list focuses on regional French and European wines, prioritising small producers working organically and/or biodynamically. Particular attention is paid to less commonly-seen grape varieties and appellations, chosen to complement the cooking style. A paired flight of wines is offered to enhance the menu, as are options by the glass and bottle. Guests are also welcome to bring a favourite bottle, with corkage charged at £30 per bottle.
This intimate approach to modern cuisine has earned Argile a place in the MICHELIN Guide, as well as a “Very Good” rating from the Good Food Guide. With just nine seats for its normal service, booking is essential.
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High stools curve around the chef’s counter at this intimate neighbourhood restaurant on a quiet Southside street, where Jack Montgomery and his small team create a seven-course tasting menu for just eight diners. The repertoire is seasonal and the menu can change from day to day; either way, the culinary artistry and acrobatics are flawless right from the start. Openers might bring crisp pastry cups filled with a cloud of creamy burrata foam and grilled quince dusted with fennel pollen on a bed of buckwheat, followed by a dense, fleshy, diced Orkney scallop, its sweetness offset by the umami flavour and earthy funk of juiced olives, fig-leaf oil and fig paste. After that, flashes of Willy Wonka-style experimentation turn the evening into a culinary masterclass: pumpkin pot-roasted with seaweed on walnuts to give it a woodiness; a kombucha ‘scoby’ culture submerged in maple syrup to create a glaze; shelled Shetland mussels, huge and fleshy, on a citron-butter paste made from lemons packed in salt for a year with shio koji (a menthol-fresh rice fermentation). Japanese influences are also evident in other dishes. Slow-cooked egg is a double act: one is cooked for 63 minutes until the yolk has jellified; the other involves trout roe from Paris, swimming in an onion broth cooked for four days with togarashi and pickled enoki mushrooms, plus a slice of Ibérico ham adding salty richness and a hefty shot of Pedro Ximénez on the side. The wine list focuses on small-scale, organic and biodynamic vineyards, and the drinks pairing is part of the experience. Roe deer brushed with homemade black garlic, for example, is matched with a single varietal Counoise from the Southern Rhône, its delicate damson-tinged lightness a perfect match for venison. To conclude, a wood-roasted cherry and black-sesame Bakewell comes with a final nod to Japan – a crème fraîche ‘namelaka’, a silky white chocolate ganache cut with cultured cream to add acidity. Innovative stuff.
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