The Bridge - Mediterranean Restaurant, St. Andrews — Restaurant in Scotland

With high expectations, I headed to the Marine and Lawn in St Andrews for lunch at The Bridge. We arrived 10 minutes late due to the extreme rain that seemed to have followed us from Edinburgh, but we were still within our 15 minute grace window. On arrival at 210pm our table wasn’t ready so where ushered to an unset table. I wonder if we had turned up on time, would we have had to wait 10-15 minutes for our table?! The staff are very friendly and soon after taking a seat, our table was set. Water, still or sparkling was offered but we are yet to get asked if we would have liked any drinks. I requested the drinks menu twice and eventually got hold of one just as dessert arrived!

We ordered the Cerignola Green Olives (£4.00). These look appetising but were rock hard and very inedible.

Fresh Burrata with marinated peppers, olive oil and rosemary (£11.50). This was lovely, Spring on a plate. The peppers were sweet and silky against the creaminess of the burrata.

Fritto Misto with prawns, squid, fish, chilli and garlic aioli (£10.00). Not deep fried in traditional batter but rather a dry batter/fine light spice mix. Nice enough but nothing exceptional.

I ended up with the Scottish Mushroom Tortellini with truffle butter sauce (£18.00). Sounds lush right? Unfortunately, the pasta isn't made on site and is delivered, ready made from London which means its frozen and you could tell. The filling, although generous, was chalky and the pasta just a little too thick. The mushrooms on top where piled high making my appetite disappear, not an attractive looking dish. No truffle flavour detected and no parmesan cheese topping offered.

The Grilled Tuscan Sausage with fried onions and salsa verde (£19.00) off the Grill and Sharing menu was quite the opposite from the pasta dish. The sausage was very well seasoned and juicy, soft sweet caramelised onions caressed the sausage coil but the salsa verde was extremely scare. The flavours were there and I thought this was a very well executed dish.

The Risotto Primavera with asparagus and broad beans (£12.00) would rival any neon sign with the incredible vivid green colour. Along with the Burrata, this would make the ideal Springtime lunch. Risotta was on the right side of al dente for me and the flavours remained fresh. I wish I had ordered this as my main.

The dessert menu had five dishes available and very typical Meditereanean/Italian sweets - Tiramisu, Pannacotta, Cannolo, Affogato and Ice cream.

The Pannacotta with rhubarb (£7.00) lacked any beautiful wobble and was very well set. The rhubarb was served in long thin strips and not rendered down enough to not require a knife to cut through the long strips (which was not provided). Average dessert.

The Cannolo with ricotta, candied fruit and pistachio (£6.00) was not a dessert I would order again. The Cannolo casing was too thick and took several attempts and some brute force to crack through with a spoon. The ricotta had been over whipped and was a congealed thick mess with bits of fruit and nuts in it. Tasteless!

Three things that were fantastic - some of the food, the later part of the service from mains to coffee and the coffee itself!

I have dined and stayed at a few Marine and Lawn hotels and service and food has been exceptional. I would like to think that Rusacks St Andrews were just having a bad day and that this is not their normal level of service and food offerings. The restaurant itself is lovely, bright and airy with views that encourage day dreaming and thoughts of golfing. For me lunch here was a 3 way split - some lovely dishes, some average and some not so good. All of these dishes and mentions re service can easily be improved and I hope that when you dine, its a more to the standard expected from...

What a shame, we booked a table to have a last meal when we dropped our daughter off to start her studies.

14:00 on Sunday 7th September 2025.

The service was poor to absent.

After waiting 25 minutes to take our order the waitress returned to us 5 minutea later to tell us that they had run out of rissoto, all the pizzas and mussels, when there are 2000+ students visiting with family they run out of food, ridiculous.

Then we were left with Chicken Milanese and Linguine.

We should have walked out. But not the way to say goodbye to your favourite daughter.

The food gave us stomach ache within minutes of leaving the restaurant, too much rock salt, dripping butter & oil and clams which looked undercooked. Then the pasta ... blanched and fried in butter with raw chillies. Tastless and unedible.

Our daughter had a bad case of hives and my wife & I sit 24 hours later with stomach cramps and the taste of salt still exuding from our palate.

The waitress forgot our order for drinks and then they had the cheek to slap on a 10% service charge.

We will be back to St. Andrews for the next five years, what a mistake to treat potential long term customers this way.

The Rusack Hotel staff were very polite, welcoming and the ambience in the entrance feels very special.

We felt like it was a bad trip to Greggs or KFC, the prices we paid for the food was unacceptable and they knew I could not complain on this very special and emotional day.

Nearly £130 for a chicken parmo with the parma ham. A chicken breast extruded through a mangle to the point you could see through it. Covsred in batter, deep fried in 3 nanoseconds covered in parmesan ... lazy profitering, no wonder there are no pictures...

As a local I’m really disappointed with what we are provided with in the hospitality sector generally. So, this time we chose a hotel restaurant and we were left the same disappointed feeling. We were sat at what can only be described as a garden room furniture style area in the windows. Unfortunately on this visit there were dead flies on the window sill. Curtains had been washed and hung all shrivelled up, and some were off the runner in places with a light out in the ceiling making for quite a tired, drab environment. Staff used the bar area for their workplace gossip and chats with no regard for the patrons in earshot. Bar door left open for us to view the dirty floor, overflowing bin and chaos. We ordered some olives to sit with whilst waiting on food. The dish was placed on the table and the waitress walked away, only to be called back and asked if we could have something to pick the olives up with?! Starters were nice and fresh. Mains were utterly disappointing; fish overcooked and honestly tasted like greasy old oil. The risotto was the most disappointing and confusing. The rice was crunchy al dente and the sauce claggy and gloopy. The texture was nothing I’d experienced with risotto. The flavour was indescribably bland. At £140 for two locals having two courses it is...