Granite City And Grill - Aberdeen City

While staying at the Hilton Garden Inn the most convenient place to dine is the Granite City Bar and Grill within the hotel. Dinner was excellent with the Haggis Balls being an outstanding starter. Breakfast each morning during our stay was excellent with a great variety of choices.

Very lovely food and interesting dishes on the menu. Thoroughly enjoyed it and would certainly eat there again.

Good service, very nice food and wine and nice ambience upstairs for dinners with larger parties. Did not see the area where small parties sit or couples, but the building is very nice.

About midnight on Tuesday 20 Aug 2013, Nick Nairn tweeted that he was going to have a pop up at the Granite City Bar Grill where he's setting up in Sept/Oct this year. The menu was a choice of 4 starters, 4 main and 4 desserts for £37. We were shown to our table and introduced to our waitress seamlessly. Drinks were served timeously. The food order was taken a short time later and then the wait for our starter of about 20 minutes. I had monkfish muscles with puy lentils in a broth. My wife had the cheese soufflé with crispy pancetta. My fish was cooked to perfection (the best I'd ever had) the broth was tasty too, however the broth was far too powerful for the delicate fish and that was a disappointment. My wife's cheese soufflé was good but no wow factor. Main for me when it finally arrived around 3 minutes after the starter was lamb, dauphinoise potatoes, with peas and broad beans. The potatoes were creamy and tasty, the lamb tender but the whole thing was slightly on the cod side and served on a cold plate the runner beans I think could have been planted and hey would have grown. The presentation was also uninspiring. My wife had chicken, truffle potatoes and green beans. The chicken was moist and the potatoes/beans a good accompaniment but as with the lamb, he presentation was sloppy. Desert after I asked My Nairn to get a waitress to take our order, was for me the show stopper. I had apple tarte tatin with vanilla ice cream and it was lovely and crisp with a slight bite to the apple and a generous amount of caramel Mmmmmmm. My wife had the chocolate tart with caramel and crème fresh. Not being a desert person I assisted my lovely wife and thought it was a good tart but not enough of a chocolate punch. Mr Nairn came and spoke to us agreeing with some of the points made and informed us that there were issues in the kitchen which would receive a full revamp of the kitchen, dining area and that all staff would be undergoing training. I would have expected a little more and my overall thoughts are that it was a bit over priced for what was received and that as a test audience he might even have offered a substantial discount on the night as I know the food did not meet with his approval. That said there was enough promise to bring me back again once the refurb is complete.

The service was second to none in Aberdeen. The menu is quite short but just enough. The champagn was very nice. The starter, haddock fish cake, was very delicious and memorable. The salmon and the sea bass were cooked perfectly for our main dishes. The desserts were very good. The prices are a little too high but reasonable for a restaurant in a hotel.