][1]As ever, it’s all go on Leith’s restaurant scene.
After two or three year’s trading, ESI brasserie on Constitution Street has packed its bags and been replaced by The Tapas Tree, a name which Spanish food fans may remember from the Nineties.
Run by Luis Letelier, The Tapas Tree specialises in… well, you can guess, can’t you?
Long before every second restaurant offered their take on tapas, Letelier was one of the first caterers to pioneer Spanish tapas in the capital with the Tapa Ole restaurants and then The Tapas Tree on Forth Street, a site now occupied by Urban Angel.
Not surprisingly, a lot of tapas menus are fairly similar. Full marks to Letelier for adding less well known Spanish specialities to the menu such as fabada from Asturias and Andalucian salmorejo.
Restaurants close for hundreds of different reasons but ESI had always seemed to be ticking over quite comfortably so it was a surprise to see it up for sale last year.
Edinburgh’s food scribblers were delighted when it first opened because the ESI of the name referred to the Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman who were the venture’s founding members.
It was a combination that allowed for lots of variation on the theme of ‘An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman open a bar…’