The Shore Bar & Restaurant, Leith, Edinburgh

It's 1 o'clock on a Friday and LW is a worried woman. Why? I enquire brightly. Surely the prospect of a Tom Eats! lunch should be source of joy, not tension.

But this is a lady who takes her part of the enterprise seriously, the enterprise in question being the choice of eating places in Leith. It is fair to say that the last outing did not go well, scoring a miserable 14 out of 25, and she felt responsible. But surely we're on a dead cert today? The Shore is part of the wonderful Fishers group, literally next door to the flagship Fishers in Leith. So why the long face? (Supply our own joke.)

Well, she has just been told that there is a brand new chef, possibly starting that very day. I see. When that happens, Michelin would take your stars away until he or she has proved to be up to scratch. But it's impossible to be despondent for long in this comfortable setting, especially when you have Keith and Danny looking after you.

The old wood and mirrors take you back to 1884. When it was built? Gracious, no, it's much older. It was originally constructed as a counting house (merchant's office) in 1802. The left hand side became a pub in 1884, many of the original features still surviving. The restaurant area is the room to the right (the one where the counting was done), though you can eat in the bar itself.

The menu has all the sorts of things you'd expect from a good pub lunch menu, but as befitting the location and the ownership there's also a section headed Crustacea. Mains are mostly in the £18 - £20 range. Steak is more expensive, as you would expect. What is slightly incongruous is a halibut dish at £46. Nothing untoward with that per se, but it does slightly skew the price range. Fear not, you can dine here very reasonably. No, delete that. Why? Read the fixed price set menu. Two courses £15.50. Yes, you did read that correctly. FIFTEEN POUNDS 50! That's not reasonable, it's ridiculous.

Now on the website they are quoting £19 or 2 and £24 for 3. Still great value. Is this a let's-wait-till-chef-is-broken-in price? No idea, but we weren't going to go past it. I am a Fifer after all. But cheap ain't necessarily the same as good value. Let's dive in.

LW had extolled the virtues of the smoked mackerel pâté in the past. OK, but not an unusual dish; however, this version is very fine. Piled on a hunk of sourdough toast with the accompaniments of slivers of Granny Smith, fronds of dill, and pickled cucumber, this started things with a bang. And steak tartare on a set menu? With an egg yolk atop for you to mix yourself. I prefer my steak tartare to have a little more piquancy, but that's personal taste.

The smoked haddock promised broad beans, courgettes and aubergine. None of these would make my top ten veg, but here they were combined into a sort of caponata loveliness, a fine bed for a fine fish. Regular followers will have noticed that September saw a good few risottos in the Italian Johnston diet. We currently claim some expertise in the field. This means that the Delica (sic) squash risotto would be subject to close scrutiny. A small pedant point. I think they meant Delicata. That's the oval stripy one not dissimilar to its better known butternut cousin. Risotto can be boring: squash can be very boring. But combine the ingredients with toasted pumpkin seeds for crunch, and goats cheese for some sharpness to offset the sweetness. And add to that some considerable skill from the kitchen, and we have something which would have been applauded even in Ravenna.

And here's the thing. From the carte, LW's two courses would have cost £31.50, and been good value at that. We paid less than half of that, and had absolutely no room for a third course. The choices from the set menu would have been bread and butter pudding or cheese. The latter with no supplement!

This column is mercifully free from exclamation marks. I make no apology for having used two today. Get here while prices last. And even when they come to their senses and go up a bit, continue to come. Atmosphere, food, service. All can attract the adjective great.