Ka Pao, Unit 420, St James Quarter, Edinburgh EH1 3AE (0131 385 1040). Snacks and small plates £3.50-£10.50, big plates £7.50-£14.50, desserts £4.50-£6, wines from £25
Can you enjoy a good meal in a bad building? Especially if you know that the building has been nicknamed “the dog turd” by many in the city? That’s not exactly an aid to the digestion, is it? Let’s get specific. Can you enjoy a meal at Ka Pao, a boldly eclectic southeast Asian bistro where they thrill you with big flavours and thrill you again, when it’s located inside a shopping centre like Edinburgh’s St James Quarter?
The delightful dog turd soubriquet is attached to the bronzed coil rising to a peak, atop the new W Hotel, part of the £1bn retail development. It’s true that the Scottish capital, which still applies the word “new” to districts which started going up more than two centuries ago, is not massively keen on major architectural change. But there’s no denying the impact of that aspect of the St James Quarter on the skyline. Once you’re told that the bronze coil resembles the poop emoji it’s really very hard to see anything else. A petition to add googly eyes to complete the emoji look received unsurprising amounts of support. They could still do it.
In reality the serious issues with the development lie not with the bronzed poopy coil, which you can always point and laugh at, but with everything else back at street level. There’s no doubting the effort and expense that has gone in to creating the new limestone-clad buildings: the huge curving shopping gallerias with their vaulting glassed roofs, home to the likes of H&M and Peloton and a new space for John Lewis, the Everyman cinema and the Bonnie & Wild food market.
It is meant to be a joyous, elegant urban retail “experience”, akin to Roppongi Hills in Tokyo. In truth it’s just a bloody great, soulless shopping centre, calculated to make you think long and hard about your life choices. When I was 10 years old Brent Cross shopping centre opened in Neasden, a manageable 182 bus ride from my house. I thought there was nothing cooler than sitting by the central fountains there and eating cheesecake from the Lindy’s concession. The problem is, I’m no longer 10 years old. I no longer think shopping centres are cool. I have been to Westfield. It didn’t make me like myself.
Still, these places are full of units that need filling and not just with shops. In come restaurants on preferential leases: branches of Pho, Wingstop, Five Guys and Itsu. And tucked away on the fourth floor which, courtesy of Edinburgh’s hills and a delicate rip in space and time, somehow also manages to be at street level, is Ka Pao. The first Ka Pao, which is Thai for holy basil, was opened in Glasgow in 2020 by the team behind the Middle Eastern-cum-Mediterranean accented Ox and Finch. That first Ka Pao occupies a dreamy art deco building, which is so gorgeous it was saved from demolition by a feverish local campaign. The interiors of both boast girders and ducting and booths, but where the Glasgow version looks like a response to the heritage of the building, in Edinburgh all the sharp edges feel like the only possible option. Thank God for the leather-clad banquettes, which soften things.
I’m aware it seems a little mean to bang on about the environment when the borderless cooking here is a proper slap about the chops. It’s bold and exciting, every dish a bang of flavour and intent. You are experienced people of the world so you will know they serve sharing plates delivered in no particular order. Raging at this is like shouting at the wind to stop blowing the trees, à la Elton John. I am not yet that man. Give me time.
I ordered eight sharing plates, if you include the sticky chilli and lime leaf cashews and peanuts, which you should. I could easily have ordered an entirely different eight dishes. The most diverting, for £6, are corn cobs quartered lengthways, then grilled and slathered with a sweet salty coconut, shrimp and lime sauce. Eat them as you would spare ribs. Protect your shirt. Long-roasted pork belly turns up a few times. In a fresh, peppery and sour salad of watercress and sorrel the pieces are lightly battered and deep fried. In a curry of monkfish cheeks, it’s in meaty cubes, and comes in a broth with an uncompromising chilli kick which recalls the best brow-dampening dishes of northern Thailand.
Stir-fried minced venison and pork with lime leaf and lemongrass, much like that great Laotian mince meat salad larb, comes threaded with red bird’s eye chillies and what I take to be handfuls of their green siblings. I pick my way around them, fearing the burn. Eventually I try one. It’s the finest of mellow green beans. I dig in. Florets of cauliflower are roasted and presented in a deeply spiced broth, then topped with a nest of deep-fried shredded potato for texture. There is a roughly chopped salad of cucumber, chilli, lime and peanuts with just the right burst of acidity.
This is what I tried. I could have tried the fried chicken with spicy caramel, or the whole grilled sea bream with a herb salad and green nam jim, or the hispi cabbage with cashew nut butter and sriracha, or the salt and sichuan pepper oyster mushroom. Tables of four can order a sharing menu of a dozen dishes for £27.50 a head, and there’s a lunch menu at £17.50. The cocktails, mostly at £8.50, include lime leaf and palm sugar, coconut and chilli and cassia bark. I settle for a lemongrass and lime soda as I have a long train journey ahead and don’t want to be the snoring, dribbling drunk in coach L.
We finish with a light cardamom and almond sponge with a zesty basil and lime curd, and a soothing palm sugar panna cotta with pineapple, papaya and mango. Then at the end I pay the very reasonable bill and find myself out once more in a brightly lit shopping centre, being enticed by the promise of Calvin Klein underpants that won’t fit me, and Miele ovens I simply can’t afford. During the day it’s a pretty gloomy way to finish a nice lunch. After dinner, when I imagine the whole space is a deserted wasteland echoing only to the crunch of metal on stone provided by skateboarders grateful for the new addition to the built environment, it would, I’m afraid, sour what should otherwise be a beguiling experience.
News bites
The not-for-profit Burnt Chef Project, which provides support to people in the hospitality industry suffering stress, has launched an NHS-approved wellbeing app in partnership with mental health service provider Thrive. The app, available to businesses on a monthly subscription at £3 per employee, includes more than 100 hours of content covering meditation and relaxation, plus a mood tracker and an in-app chat function, allowing users to talk to trained therapists in times of crisis (theburntchefproject.com).
Chef and restaurateur Peter Sanchez-Iglesias has announced the closure in August of his Michelin-starred Bristol restaurant Casamia. The restaurant reopened after the pandemic with a new approach under head chef Zac Hitchman, combining the food with “a tailored approach to music, lighting and art to guide diners through the menu”. Sanchez-Iglesias admits the restaurant is no longer financially viable. It will be replaced by something “a little more accessible” later in 2022 (casamiarestaurant.co.uk).
Tickets are now on sale for the Soho Food Feast, organised each year by the local community, with proceeds going to the Soho Parish School. Day tickets to the event, which takes place on June 18-19, cost £15 with food tokens once inside at £2.50. Restaurants running food stands across the weekend, include Norma, Kricket, Bao, Gunpowder, St John and Gauthier (sohofoodfeast.co.uk).
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
