I took my family to their favourite Edinburgh restaurant, where the queue is still down the street
This year, this place celebrates its tenth birthday
I probably sound smugly organised, but I’m extremely glad we booked Dishoom.
On our visit, we had three very hangry kids in tow, and the morning walk-in queue stretched all the way down one side of Edinburgh’s St Andrew Square.
To be honest, I was blindsided. I know that this restaurant group’s breakfast offering, served from 9am until 11.45am on weekends (from 8am weekdays), is popular, but I didn’t realise it remained such a draw.
After all, their first Scottish location has been open for ten years now. They were here before the trams, and pre lockdown. That makes them geriatric in Edinburgh restaurant years.
Anyway, though I visited the new Glasgow branch recently, this is my first trip to the Scottish OG in a while, and we were keen to try a new dish on the brekkie menu - the haggis pau, which was a west coast exclusive but has now come to the east, and give their new V for Vitality Functional Drinks list a whirl.
As we went upstairs, the nieces remembered the place. They’ve been a few times. Indeed, they came with me when I reviewed it back in 2016.
“I cried when I accidentally ate a chilli,” said the eldest. Ah, happy memories.
Still, I think they’re excited by the clattery place-to-be ambience.
First, drinks. We need to regulate blood sugar, so there are no more melt-downs.
We try a couple of options from their new booze-free menu, which promise superpowers, kind of. There are things like ginger and turmeric shots, and a matcha sour, for instance.
I really enjoyed the frothy and light raspberry super lassi (£7.50), which could’ve given me the power to climb out of a well, without the help of a famous dog. It featured kefir, vitamins, aloe vera, and tremella mushrooms. Apparently, these ingredients are good for skin and anti-ageing. Begone scowl lines and neck rings.
The Mr Xavier’s Mule (£7.90) was a good hangover slaying combo of chai cold brew, ginger beer and orange cordial, while the Beyond Breakfast Lassi (£7.90) was a meal in a glass, with oats, mango, banana and plant-based milk. Health kick complete, we could go full muckbang with our food.
My other half wanted to be the haggis pau (£12.90) guinea pig. He was really stoked with this option, and I think this incomer could be our new favourite thing on the menu.
There were two butterflied milk buns that were topped with honeyed chilli chutney, cream cheese, discs of this porky peppery haggis, then runny yolked fried eggs, and about three planks of Ramsay of Carluke’s streaky bacon on the side.
I went for the Parsi-style ‘power breakfast’ of keema per eedu (£17.50). Though it’s a classic, it’s something that I haven’t really noticed on their breakfast food list before, perhaps because ‘chicken livers’ don’t really call to me like sirens before noon. It was a pleasant body-building breakfast of a surprise, with a hot cauldron of spicy minced chicken, with those tangy livers in the mix, then a topping of two fried eggs, and, for texture, lots of salli hay-coloured chips. And there were two whole buttery toasted buns on the side.
The children had cast aside the Kids Menu. That’s for amateurs. Instead, the wee one, with an appetite like a long distance trucker, had gone for the double bacon naan roll (£13.60). It was a bruiser of a sandwich, and, though we’d asked for Dishoom’s signature chilli sauce on the side, just in case there were tears, he adored it.
Same goes for the elder niece, who rated the sausage naan (£11.90), with a pair of peppery halved sausages wrapped in the sleeping bags of soft bread.
Middle child, aka sweet tooth, had opted for the cinnamon jaggery pancakes (£12.70). There were two thick and suitably bouncy versions of these, along with a large dollop of vanilla cream, strawberries, a blueberry and a blackberry, and a wee jug of chai-spiced syrup.
Despite the sugar fest, she still wanted a rather pricey kids mango kulfi (£6.70) for afterwards. They all did.
That gave the grown-ups a YOLO moment, and we shared a basmati kheer (£8.90), with a cardamon-spiked rice pudding that was creme brulee caramelised on top and came with a dollop of blueberry compote. We felt like pioneers, who had only just realised that breakfast needs a pudding course too.
So, Dishoom Edinburgh, a decade down the line, is still churning out the bangers. There is no sign of faltering, even against an endless stream of customers.
I suggest you stay smug like me, and get that breakfast booking in.
Dishoom, 3a St Andrew Square, Edinburgh (0131-202 6406, www.dishoom.com)
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