Drinks at Grand Cru & curry at 9 cellars
Last night I had a couple of pints of San Miguel (£2.85 per pint) at Grand Cru on Hanover St, Edinburgh. This bar is popular with the after work crowd, but does get fairly busy at the weekends as well. It’s fairly large and has many tables to sit on, and some comfy leather sofas. The staff are very attentive and do offer table service: although this gets stretched when the bar is really busy. They have a good range of drinks available, including a fair sized cocktail, wine and champagne list. Their food menu is bar snacks based, with decent nachos and rolls available - check out their duck wrap which is particularly decent. I’ve always liked Grand Cru, but it can get a little smoky inside. It’s appeal will increase, for me at least, when Scotland’s smoking ban comes into force next March.
Afterwards we grabbed a taxi to the 9 Cellars Indian restaurant on Queen St, just by The Stand Comedy club. We hadn’t reserved a table at this basement restaurant but they found us a table on the entry level floor. This back area had just two tables, seating four persons at each. Where we sat at least, wasn’t particularly atmospheric; but it did allow conversation for our table. The service was very attentive and we were happy to drink the pints of Kingfisher lager.
We also ordered some poppadoms and appropriate accompaniments. Service was excellent and very friendly. We also shared some tasty vegetable pakoras for starter. These were plentiful and delicious.
For main I had the Chicken Korma Sutra dish (£7.50). This was absolutely delicious - the chicken was beautiful and the sauce was one of the best I’ve tasted. Another of our group had Lamb Rogan Josh, which was equally delicious, and the lamb was terrific: it literally melted in the mouth.
The menu is selected Indian dishes, with all mains costing around £7.50. With this you have to buy rice, or breads though. They don’t serve Nan breads, so we ordered a couple of Chapatis with our main courses.
I don’t think the 9 Cellars restaurant will suit everyone as it doesn’t served the traditional array of Nan breads and Bhunas, Baltis, etc. Saying that though, their menu did say to ask for a specific dish and they would try their best to prepare it. However everything we tasted on the menu was done very well indeed.
This is one Indian restaurant in Edinburgh I am happy to recommend! It would be an excellent place to grab a curry before or after a night at The Stand comedy club, but is decent enough to warrant a trip on its own accord.
