The management of Edinburgh's Off The Wall are probably delighted that the festival is over for another year. The day I went there for lunch with my friend Ruaridh, there was a troop of 'performers' right outside the window singing 'Age of Aquarius', as if it were an entirely reasonable thing to be doing in the year 2002.

Inside, we were the only people eating. 'A wall of fire straight down the High Street would do it,' said Ruaridh, who is not a fan of the festival. 'Take out every bloody thespian in town. Bam. Incinerate them.' Locals steer clear of the crowded High Street during the festival, Ruaridh said, because they fear being mugged by a transsexual Germaine Greer impersonator on stilts, or some such other piece of over-wrought performance art. That was why the restaurant was empty.

It deserves to be full. Ignore the sign on the street-level door proclaiming it a 'Scottish restaurant'. It is a Scottish restaurant only in as much as it is a restaurant in Scotland; the food is both more cosmopolitan and less rooted than that. It does, however, declare the commitment to Scottish produce which is de rigueur in any Edinburgh restaurant these days - and reasonably so for the chef (and co-proprietor) David Anderson has a light touch which brings out the very best in those ingredients.

Each dish is a model of restraint, usually boasting no more than three parts. Anything that is there, is there for a purpose. What's more, at £15.50 for three courses at lunchtime, it is rather splendid value. Take Ruaridh's starter of a crisp-skinned fillet of sea bass with white crabmeat, on a lightly dressed salad. The crab gave the sometimes overly polite sea bass a rich fishy edge; the fillet returned the compliment by giving the crab a little decorum. The seared saddle of rabbit on a green-bean salad with which I started was just as good; it was the gamiest bit of bunny I have ever tasted.

The same intelligence was obvious in the main courses. My pink slices of pigeon sat on a dense cake of crushed potato surrounded by a sea of rich, porky lentils dotted with chives. Ruaridh's fillet of beef - with soft braised fennel and crisp Parma ham - was tender and pink. (And rightly so; buggering up a good piece of Scottish beef in Scotland is a capital offence.)

I would also like to mention the pretty and ornate plates which are by Villeroy and Bosch, who supply so many of Britain's dining rooms. To be honest I only really want to mention them because Ruaridh told me over lunch that the same company also makes rather fine toilets, one of which he has just had fitted. I think it's impressive that one porcelain company should so successfully have stitched up both ends of the eating process. Did Meissen ever make bogs?

At this point my mother, who happened to be in town, also joined us and decided to try the vegetarian option, even though I told her she didn't have to. Weirdly, she said it was what she wanted. It was a puff pastry tart of carrots, red onions and caramelised chicory and was, she announced, a fine balance of sweet and savoury, and a rather more complex piece of work than is usually offered to non meat eaters. Like I care. (You know I'm goading you, don't you.)

Puddings - a rich milk chocolate mousse with orange syrup for me, mango and almond tart for Ruaridh - were as lush as puddings should be. We polished off a bottle of a light Provençal rosé and tried to work out why, in a city like Edinburgh with a developed restaurant culture, no one had mentioned the many virtues of Off the Wall to us before. Certainly we remained alone. Outside our prayers were answered when a maniac massacred the 'Age of Aquarius' singers with machetes. OK, I invented that bit, but they did shut up, to be replaced by someone playing terrific stride piano. Maybe the festival does have its good points.