Skua was a first time discovery at last year’s Fringe, and as an immediate dining highlight of the last few years, I was keen to return and to introduce it to Alex and Shuyang. Our now enlarged party in tow, we make the trek out from the old town to a quiter surrounds, and then led down to a basement restaurant with black walls and ceilings, with mostly candlelight for luminescence. But what Skua lacks in brightness, it makes up for in the food itself. As with last time, we look at the menu of snacks and small plates and decide it is perhaps best to just order one of everything (minus, to be fair, the £75 whole fish special), along with a couple of bottles of wine expertly chosen by Shuyang. It is a blur of plates, admittedly complicated by my insistence on taking photos of everything before people dig in, but we soon find our rhythm as a table. Bread and olives and a plate of salami picante all go quickly; the chickpea panisse, generously apportioned with a cheddar dressing, is delicately sliced up before being handed out. I have an oyster to myself (there’s really no other way), which is beautifully seasoned. The “mains” come, Isle Of Wight tomatoes of high enough quality to not need much doing to them at all, just full of juicy flavour; the fishes we do order all provide fine contrast to each other: the smoked eel wrapped in pancetta, the mackerel with taramasalata, the fleshy cured trout. I’m a big fan of the beef tartare, a healthy portion thereof topped with a mound of parmesan. If anything can be considered the main, it’s the gorgeous cut of lamb surrounded by the lively green of sprouting broccoli and a foamed up sorrel sauce. We go back for more on the panisse and the eel, and the second plates quickly disappear too. I round it all off with a delectably sticky donut, practically melting on tearing, containing a vanilla chantilly and covered in a plum glaze. We stagger into the night in search of another cocktail before our next show, very happily fed and sated.