Cadiz has the air of a knowing, slightly upmarket joint that’s grappling for some type of authenticity. It’s there in the name – Cádiz is an ancient Spanish port, after all – and in the menu of pulpo gallego, seafood arroz and jamón Ibérico. Sometimes, when searching for the flavours of Spain in the UK, that is as good as it gets.
The Spanish have been terrifically good sports about what we Britons have done to their food over the years: chopped chorizo in syrah, stiff omelette masquerading as tortilla and bowls of frozen battered squid in place of delicate calamar. We stole the word “tapas” and changed its meaning from “fresh anchovy on a cocktail stick while on a balmy bar crawl in San Sebastián” to the really rather different “sitting down somewhere in Halifax eating patatas bravas that are actually Aunt Bessie roast potatoes in sweet chilli sauce”. Somehow, the Spanish are still cordial.
Cadiz, the restaurant, is not like that, though: it is an elegant dining room close to Edinburgh’s Royal Mile that serves Scottish seafood in a Spanish way. It presents itself as swanky and frankly above playing the Macarena while charging £7 for some Iceland ham croquettes, and it is. But, for all the website’s vows to nail the ambience of “latitude 36.53, where the taste of the sea meets the sound of the city”, it is an oddly un-Spanish experience. Yes, the decor features large paintings of lobsters and black-and-white portraits of gnarly Spanish fishermen, but much of the wine list is French and the cocktail list boasts the likes of From Cadiz With Love, in which Bombay Sapphire gin meets Chambord raspberry liqueur, to sip with your snacks of Scottish oysters with soy and pickled ginger, and sourdough.
The menu begins with platters of Cepo de Campo Ibérico ham with manchego for £24, before quickly jaunting over to a £29 “9oz prime rib-eye steak with confit garlic”, plus optional bearnaise or green peppercorn sauce on the side for an extra three quid. The small plates (don’t call them tapas) side of the menu is similarly so French-Scottish that they should have called the place The Auld Alliance. Seafood bisque sits alongside a delightful summer chicken salad with pine nuts, and grilled asparagus with hollandaise. There are glorious, plump scallops that come with actual Spanish morcilla (blood sausage), but then we’re back to Shetland mussels with parsley and cream, and served with skinny fries. It is almost as if, in trying to please everyone and avoid the patatas bravas route, Cadiz has lost sight of Spain altogether, and instead offers up haddock and chips, lobster thermidor and lemon sole. The house paella, made with calasperra rice, pork loin, chicken and various seafood, is served only on Sundays, which seems a shame, because surely one of the whole points of going to a fancy Spanish joint in the first place is to experience good paella made properly.
We made a pretty underwhelming start with the pulpo gallego, a small cast-iron pan filled mainly with hot oil, new potatoes and a dozen or so chickpeas, and we had to hunt for the ungenerous serving of thinly sliced octopus hiding among them. A large plate of sunrise-yellow, saffron-infused seafood arroz was, however, stodgily delicious and came flanked by two very good grilled langoustines and three mussels. It was a sort of budget paella for people who find wrestling a massive pan a bit too much of a commitment. The king scallops were also very good, dramatically seared yet soft to the bite, sitting in a rockpool of white wine and coral sauce with baby spinach and large, year-one catering school fondant potatoes. During my glorious reign, I shall call a moratorium on the fondant spud. The Cadiz house salad, meanwhile, was a small, damp bowl of mushy green that was fit only for a donkey, though I have been mistaken for one of those, especially when without makeup, so I suppose that’s fair enough.
Hoping desperately for a slice of burnt Basque cheesecake, I asked for the pudding list only to find it offered panna cotta, chocolate fondant, salted caramel cheesecake – the inhumanity! – and raspberry pavlova, which is Antipodean anyway. The cheeseboard features picos blue, manchego and a tetilla prestes alongside some munster, Scottish oatcakes and chutney.
On leaving the rather sedate, fur-coat-no-knickers Cadiz, we wandered down the back stairs and through its cheap-and-cheerful sister restaurant, Cafe Andaluz, which is unashamedly, noisily old-school Spanish. In full Friday lunchtime swing, every table was taken, the place was jolly and full of laughter, flamenco music played in the background and waiters wrestled jugs of sangria and plates of gambas pilpil, pollo al ajillo, pan con tomate and, the final insult, large pans of paella mixta that they serve every single day. “That’ll teach me to try to be fancy,” I said to Charles as we smiled weakly at a woman knocking the crisp top off her crema catalana. Next time, we eat downstairs.
• This article was amended on 15 September 2023. An earlier version described Cádiz as a “Mediterranean port”, when it is on Spain’s Atlantic coast.
Cadiz 1st Floor, 77b George Street, Edinburgh EH2, 0131-226 3000. Open all week, noon-8.30pm (10pm Fri & Sat). From about £35 a head à la carte; set lunch £21.95 for two courses, £25.95 for three, all plus drinks and service
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