Restaurant Review: Bombay Bicycle Club

I'M A CYCLING widow. MY boyfriend, Rolf, has been glued to the Tour de France footage for weeks, while I'm relegated to watching EastEnders on the portable telly in the kitchen.

Even worse, for a foodie like me, there are no edible perks to this sport. Football fans have pies, tennis lovers can enjoy strawberries and cream . . . However, these ascetic two-wheeled sportsmen, and their fans (who are also usually cyclists, like Rolf), appear to pedal up the Tourmalet in the Pyrenees with only the

No wonder they're all rangy looking. So, to bulk him up, I dragged my beau away from the current étage to visit an appropriately named eatery – Bombay Bicycle Club, a fixture on Edinburgh's Brougham Place for almost two decades.

We popped along on a Friday night, without booking, and although it was pretty packed, they fitted us in – though the waiter made it very clear that our lack of organisation was not on and led us to a table at the back with a heavy sigh. Oddly, a recent refurbishment has resulted in a few mod-cons being displaced from the kitchen, meaning that our seats, which were on the mezzanine, faced a couple of freezers and the wine fridge.

Never mind, the lower part of the restaurant does look very nice – it still has the vintage advertising posters, but a new glass frontage lets in loads of light and red walls make the place look inviting.

The menu is extensive, so I asked a different (rather sour-faced) waiter what he prescribed. "Anything under the Chef's Recommendations section," he replied. And there they were, around 15 dishes highlighted on the laminated list, so the staff don't have to bother chatting to you.

From the choices of starters, we decided to share the king prawn on puri (£5.95), to ensure we had enough room for the main event. Once we'd ordered, a member of staff marched up. "Have you ordered any poppadoms?" he asked me. "No, but I'd like some, if you're offering?" I replied. "But your starter is nearly ready!" he snapped, striding off. Good grief.

I wasn't sure whether I was going to be permitted any poppadoms. But, sure enough, they were slapped down a few minutes later, along with our seafood starter. This featured decent-sized prawns, which were nicely
seasoned with fresh coriander. They were served with a good portion of puffy, unleavened puri bread. My crispy poppadoms came with all the usual paraphernalia – a delicious lime pickle, raita and mango chutney.

As soon as we'd finished, our plates were whipped away and we were served our mains of madras sag gousht (£8.95) and Kathmandu chicken (£8.95), with side orders of pineapple samber (£3.95), pilau rice (£2.95) and a peshwari nan (£2.95). We should have ordered two helpings of rice, as this little pot wasn't enough for both of us. Still, the other portions were extremely generous. I was crazy about the pineapple samber, which I'd ordered on a whim. It featured fruity chunks with lentils and tamarind, and its sweetness made it a great accompaniment to our other choices, which weren't quite so addictive.

My poor dining partner was sweating, though, after chewing his way through some rather tough lamb in the madras sag gousht. "This is heavy-going – it's like riding up a mountain with my brakes jammed on," he said. Mind you, I did enjoy the delicately spiced fenugreek sauce which enveloped it. Our tender Kathmandu chicken was rather nicer; a spicier and more garlicky rendition of chicken tikka. We mopped up the sauces with our nan – which wasn't the peshwari version (with sultanas and almonds), that we'd ordered.

After eating, we sat there, napkins discarded on our plates, for 25 minutes, before our dishes were cleared away. At this point, I was craving something sweet, despite the fact that Indian restaurants aren't renowned for their puddings (although Kushi's, another Indian restaurant in the capital, serves fruity lassis for the sweet-toothed). However, I didn't expect my polite, "Excuse me, do you have any desserts?" to be met with a gruff, "We need this table back." My query was never answered. A waiter just whipped off the tablecloth and pointed at a crumb-strewn table by the door. "Go down there if you want anything else," he said.

Normally, I'd stomp out at this point. But, in the interests of research, we moved to the other table and I ordered one of the mango kulfis (£1.95) from the menu of frozen desserts. The waiter then destroyed any remaining mystique by walking past me with my pud in its plastic packaging, before decanting it, upside-down, into a sundae dish.

Unfortunately, this incident left us with a nasty taste in our mouths. Eating in a restaurant is like riding a bike – it's all about balance. The food is important, but you have to think about service and ambience too. I'd like to think the staff were having an off-night, but my other half wasn't quite so forgiving. "That was bad customer service," he muttered under his breath. "Bombay Bicycle Club. Harummph. I bet none of them even rides a bike." sm

Bombay Bicycle Club

6-6a Brougham Place,

Edinburgh

(0131-221 0064)

THE Bill

Dinner for two, £35.65, excluding drinks