Ooud Kitchen

Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh

visted 16/08/10

This is a small, bright little Middle Eastern restaurant with minimalist furnishings and friendly staff. We stopped in for a quick lunch.

Ooud makes its own flatbreads, and we had these with a few dips and salads. The flatbreads are perfect, and the dips wonderful expressions of their simple ingredients: hummous rich and smooth, an auberine dish of astonishing depth of smoky flavour but fresh and lively at the same time, a mixture of feta and roasted peppers with a bit of a kick to it.

You can also order more substantial tagines (although all meat dishes were off the menu that day). I want to come back and spend an afternoon with friends working my way through all the small mezze-type dishes with a few pots of their mint and rose petal tea (there's no alchohol). In fact on the strength of the few small dishes I tried, a few trips to sample the entire menu might be required.

The Ooud has reputation for slow service, but although quite busy it was fine on this occasion.