Shri Bheema’s

14A Nicolson St, Edinburgh

0131 556 7777

Lunch/Dinner: £5-£28

Food rating: 2/10

PAPER tablemats at Shri Bheema’s in Edinburgh show a map of the UK with red icons representing the chain’s six branches in Aberdeen (two), Edinburgh (two), London (one), Bletchley (one). This enterprise is unusual in that it began in Aberdeen, and expanded southwards.

Apparently Shri Bheema’s is owned and managed by “a close-knit family team” that works to present “the most authentic, pure and delicious South and North Indian food at competitive prices”. “We make sure, when the customer sits for the meal, they feel light and effortless and when they are done, they rise with the same feeling of lightness and effortlessness,” the website says. The team “works strongly to maintain the highest quality and continuously improve our service to retain the fame and popularity”. I think we can say that Shri Bheema’s is not a business riven with self-doubt, more like one itching with ambition to stud that map with many more red icons to form a restaurant empire.

Call me pedantic, but I like "authentic" to mean something. Scanning the online menu it was pretty obvious that Shri Bheema’s wasn’t going to be taking us down untrodden paths of culinary authenticity, but the online menu did, at least, list a few road-less-travelled Southern Indian dishes that dangled the hope of a restaurant worth visiting. So we feel cheated when we get to its first-floor restaurant, directly opposite the Festival Theatre, and are handed a menu much more restricted than the online version.

Of course menus evolve; some dishes go down well, others don’t. An online menu isn’t a legal contract. Yet I can’t stop that sense of disappointment, or ignore the mounting suspicion that Shri Bheema’s website reflects someone’s dream of a restaurant story, rather than the reality of the dining experience.

After the starters arrive I find myself watching the clock, impatient to go through the routine of sampling everything, and then leave. But the meal seems to take forever. Our food arrives sluggishly. Maybe we’re waiting in line behind all the couriered takeaways that are heading downstairs in insulated bags. A dispiriting line-up appears. Savoury vada stinking of cooking oil instantly pollute the mouth with a layer of tenacious grease. They’re flanked by two dips. One is brick red, and aggressively hot with that type of powdered chilli that’s all heat, no flavour. (This bludgeoning spice turns up in almost every dish we go on to eat.) Otherwise, this dip’s precise composition is inscrutable from its utterly anonymous taste. Experience leads me to assume that the other dip/pickle must be coconut, but it’s mean on the mustard seeds, a white mush that is a far distant relative of the fresh, or even desiccated, tropical nut. Is it made from coconut flour? I can’t say, but it amounts to a characterless mouthful of something creamy-coloured.

Steamed idli are noticeably bland, short on the necessary acidic, fermented tang that makes these starchy dumplings interesting. They have the same two drab sauces, as does a pretty average dosa. A stodgy lentil sambar accompanies the vada, a thinner one (the same one thinned down slightly?) comes with the dosa. In both, that same tyrannical chilli heat, which anaesthetises the tongue and lips, makes a poor substitute for real flavour.

Tandoori lamb chops are tender and while the marinade is disconcertingly orange in hue, this is the best offering yet. Everything else is an ordeal to eat. I can think of at least two Indian restaurants in walking distance that cook better. Vegetable kofta are islands of mushy oiliness in a thick yellow sauce; kothu parotta forms a daunting tower of oily chopped bread that tastes as if doused in liquidised onions; lamb in the Chettinad curry is worryingly jellied; aubergine is impregnated with more of the wretched, smelly cooking oil. Plates are cold, food lukewarm. Breads turn brittle and dehydrated within minutes of arrival.

We lose the will to keep eating. Waiting for the bill, I read the "children’s menu": chicken nuggets and chips and a chocolate dosa. It offered a clue to the likely standard of the food here. Sadly, I missed it.