A town-centre brasserie with two rosettes, a cocktail bar the students and the golfers share, and a blue plaque by the door for the doctor who took the first photograph in Scotland. The place in St Andrews for the dinner that is not about golf.
Halfway along South Street, where the road widens toward the cathedral and the Saturday crowds thin, there is a handsome stone building with a blue plaque beside the door. Most people who read it are waiting for a table. It says that Dr John Adamson lived here, and that in 1841 he made the first calotype portrait in Scotland — the first photograph, in effect, of a person, in a country that would go on to produce some of the finest early photography in the world. His brother Robert learned the process from him in this house and went to Edinburgh to make the pictures with David Octavius Hill that hang in every history of the medium. The building became the town's post office in 1907. In 2012 it became a restaurant, and the restaurant had the sense to take the doctor's name.
The Adamson is what St Andrews did not have before it opened: a proper brasserie, in the French sense of a big, bright, good-humoured room that serves from noon to midnight and is as right for a Tuesday lunch as for a Saturday night, with a bar attached that is a destination on its own. Fourteen years and two AA rosettes later it is still the busiest good room in town, and the place a local will send you when you ask where to eat that has nothing to do with the Old Course.
Why go
For the room, first. Exposed stone, a long bar, an open kitchen, Calum Colvin's photographs on the walls in a nod to the man on the plaque, and the particular noise of a restaurant that is full of people enjoying themselves — which is, be warned, a noise. Joanna Blythman, the most exacting critic in Scotland, called it the buzz you only get in restaurants that are highly successful, and she is right; it is also why you do not come here for a whispered conversation. Come for a birthday, a first night, a table of six, the end of a golf trip.
Then for the cooking, which is brasserie food done with more care than the genre requires. The kitchen buys well — East Neuk seafood, Scotch beef, Fife vegetables — and cooks it without fuss: a chateaubriand for two that is the dish people come back for, a ribeye that the regulars order without looking at the menu, scallops, crab, a king prawn linguini, a parmesan chicken with skirlie that is Fife on a plate. The sticky toffee pudding is the dessert everyone mentions, and the bread arrives as a small baked loaf with butter and balsamic, which tells you the kitchen cares about the things nobody reviews.
The bar
The Adamson Bar, in the same building with its own front door, is the best cocktail bar in St Andrews and it is not a close contest. The list is long, a little theatrical — smoke, spheres, the occasional test tube — and made by people who know what they are doing; the house drink, the Physician, is Finlandia, St Germain, cranberry, raspberry and mint, and is named, like everything here, for the doctor. It runs from noon until eleven or midnight, seven days, and it is the one room in town where the golf crowd from the Scores, the students from the union and the people who actually live here drink at the same bar without noticing each other. They also run cocktail masterclasses, which is a better rainy afternoon than it sounds, and the mocktail list is taken as seriously as the other one.
"The buzz you only get in restaurants that are highly successful."
The detail people remember
The chateaubriand, carved at the table for two, on a Saturday night with the room at full volume around it. Or, for the other kind of visitor, the plaque: standing on South Street at nine at night with a drink in your hand, reading that the person whose house you are in changed how the world saw itself, and then going back in for the sticky toffee pudding.
Who it is for
Couples wanting one proper dinner in town that is not a hotel dining room. Groups — the four-ball on the last night, the family with a graduate, the hen party doing it properly — because the room can absorb them and the bar can hold them afterward. Students with parents in town. Anyone who wants a cocktail made by someone who has thought about it. And the visitor on a Tuesday who wants lunch on South Street with a view of the world going past the window.
It is not for anyone who wants quiet: the room is loud when full, and it is usually full. Book, especially at weekends and in the season. Prices are town-centre-brasserie prices — starters around £9, mains from the mid-teens to the thirties for the steaks — and the vegetarian end of the menu is shorter than the rest. Ask for a booth if there is one going.
A little history
John Adamson was born in St Andrews in 1809, trained as a doctor, and came home to practise in 1835. He fell in with David Brewster at the university, who was corresponding with Fox Talbot about the new calotype process, and in 1841 Adamson made the first portrait by that method in Scotland. He taught it to his younger brother Robert, who went to Edinburgh in 1843 and with Hill made two and a half thousand photographs in four years before he died at twenty-six; the town he left behind became, for a decade, one of the most photographed places on earth. John lived here at 127 South Street from 1848 to 1865, ran the town's museum, campaigned for clean water and drains, and died in 1870. The building was the post office from 1907. The Dalton family opened the Adamson in 2012 and have added the bar, the Hatch next door, and the rosettes since.
What to do nearby
The cathedral, five minutes along South Street; the university's museum for the Adamson photographs. Read: St Andrews Cathedral, where the story began.
The Byre Theatre, two minutes down Abbey Street, for the play before dinner. Read: The Byre Theatre.
Jannettas for gelato after, two minutes. Read: Jannettas Gelateria.
The other dinners in town: Read: Forgan's · Little Italy · 18 at Rusacks.
The Saturday night of the weekend: Read: A perfect weekend in St Andrews.
Know before you go
Address: 127 South Street, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9UH — the blue plaque marks the door. Tel 01334 479191.
From the Old Course: Twelve minutes on foot through the town; five from Market Street.
Hours / season: Restaurant Monday to Thursday noon–3pm and 5–11pm; Friday noon–3pm and 5pm–midnight; Saturday noon–midnight; Sunday noon–11pm; kitchen closes 10pm. Bar daily from noon. Open all year.
Price: Starters around £9; mains from around £16 to £35 for steaks; chateaubriand for two around £75; puddings around £8. Cocktails around £11. Expect £50–£80 a head for dinner with drinks.
How to book: Book online or call; essential at weekends and in the season. The bar takes walk-ins.
Good to know: Loud when full — ask for a booth. Two AA rosettes. Cocktail masterclasses by arrangement. Step-free entrance. The Hatch, the sister café-bar, is next door for breakfast and brunch.
Best time: Saturday at eight for the room at full volume; Tuesday at one for lunch with South Street going past the window.
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18 at Rusacks St Andrews | Rooftop Bar Over the Old Course