Mother India Cafe

Infirmary Street, Edinburgh

visited 11/2/11

There's not much I can tell you about Mother India that isn't already known. It's a very popular, very busy, very good restaurant. You get the impression of a very slick operation. There's a big choice of small dishes (you choose about 2 per person) yet they are all distinctive, not overly sauced in the way bad Indian restos favour, and with a real taste of whole spices. On the visit I got my fork into a lamb patina (very tender lamb flavoured with mint), a nicely spiced aloo gobi where you could really taste the cauliflower, a more conventional but very flavourful sag lamb, a distinctive and quite classy trout with lime and coriander (a special). All excellent.

The service is very slick-they have a big throughput and don't encourage dallying but it's a noisy, buzzy place and I wouldn't dally anyway. The minor works (nan, pickles etc) are fairly average and they could get in few more interesting wines with very little effort, but the food is good to exciting and if you need a table for a party, or don't want to take too long over dinner it is hard to beat.