Check these new restaurants in Edinburgh.
Rustom dished up its first dopiaza recently on Grosvenor Street.
Billed as a Pakistani and Indian restaurant, Rustom promises that it will take guests on ‘a journey of taste and smell across the streets of Lahore and Mumbai’.
On the plate, this means a mix of street food and much-loved, familiar old warhorses such as lamb bhuna and chicken tikka masala.
If you would rather be a little more adventurous then Rustom’s menu rewards deeper exploration.
We’ve got an eye on the Kabuli pilau – an Afghani rice dish with lamb shanks.
Some of the veggie options read enticingly. Marinated aubergines in a crispy, spicy batter accompanied by a tamarind chutney are the sort of thing that presses our buttons.
New restaurants in Edinburgh: Sonder
Should we include Sonder among this round-up of new restaurants in Edinburgh?
It opened at the beginning of August so we’re pushing the ‘new’ thing a bit.
However, it looks as though they are doing something interesting in the kitchen and, to paraphrase Duncan Bannatyne, for that reason, we’re in.
Sonder has set up shop on the Clerk Street address that housed the short-lived Diablo Loco bar.
While the former business was all tequila, mezcal and Tex Mex grub, Sonder is ‘a modern, open plan dining / kitchen experience, using seasonal Scottish ingredients’.
It is a small plate, order-several-things kind of place.
The menu is split into sections such as garden, sea and land. The descriptions of each dish are short. They list the ingredients used but say little about how they are cooked.
Some people will find this intriguing. Others will simply find it irritating.
A typical example might be ‘tomatoes, almond, raspberry, tomato water’ or ‘lamb neck, carrot, apricot, yoghurt’.
Lamb neck, carrot, apricot and yoghurt at Sonder.
Sharing dishes
There is also a £35 sharing dish. On the current menu, this is BBQ red-legged partridge with seaweed potatoes, pickled redcurrant, cabbage and girolles.
Other prices range from £3 for sunchoke, celery and yoghurt from the snack section of the menu to £13 for scallop, roe, fennel and cucumber.
According to their website, Sonder is a noun: the realisation that each passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.
One to ponder on as you’re tucking into a plate of beef shortrib with walnut and burnt onion.
I’m not going to make too much of this as, due to the restaurant closing on Mondays and Tuesdays, I have been unable to check my facts.
However, I think the restaurant may be connected with the people who travelled around twenty countries and did a pop-up in each one.
I’ll check on this tomorrow and alter accordingly.
Anyway, we wish both Rustom and Sonder the best of luck.
Keep checking back to the 5pm Dining blog for more new restaurants in Edinburgh.