Paloma
50-54 Henderson St, Leith
Book through: Open Table

We waltz down Henderson Street with skipping hearts having secured a last-minute table at Paloma which is currently scoring a 4.7 on Google. Never mind us restaurant critics, the wisdom of crowds tends to be real. Another great taco shop would be a fine addition to Leith.

We already have a top-notch taco shop in the form of Chorrito, nestling in the sandstone building on Leith Walk. Their counter and diminutive tables showcase exceptional Mexican food, with added zing from their house-made hot sauces.

Paloma looks promising, all mint green and Instagram pink. Vivid chairs and tables spill on to the street. It is buzzy. But while the place is hard to miss, it is also best to avoid, I am sad to report.

To be kind for a moment: we all want new restaurants to open up. This is a hard premises and the spot hasn’t worked for a succession of openings, most recently the much-vaunted Borough. Not everything at Paloma is bad. There are one or two decent dishes, but too many plates miss the mark.

First, a word about the service. I am absolutely fine with relaxed service. Frankly, it is much nicer than the hover and bother style of some waiters. But Paloma’s service is as flat as their tacos. As we enter, a table is vaguely pointed out across the room. Eventually, but not graciously, we are permitted to close the French windows.

When food arrives, it is thrown down quickly by the waitstaff, one of whom might wish to pay a little more attention to his personal odour. All of them seem to mutter at a pace which challenges even the most loquacious amongst us. Are they afraid of actually speaking to the customers? I listen to podcasts on double speed and still couldn’t catch half the words.

One phrase I do catch. “Food comes as it is ready, and it is designed for sharing”. Naively, we thought the starters might come well, at the start, but this waiter wasn’t joking. For a place plastered in bright colours, there is not a lot of laughter happening around us. We are meant to enjoy the food without unnecessary smiling.

First came some tostadas with whipped feta, pineapple and red chilli. In retrospect, I wish I’d ordered more – it was definitely the best dish but hardly demonstrates fiendish culinary technique. The next best dish was

monkfish skewers, cooked with morcilla blood sausage, piperade and red pepper. The words “cooked with” are doing a lot of work in that description.

While the skewers were good, the morcilla was dumped on the side of the plate, slightly cold. It offered no cohesion with the fish. Black pudding and a robust meaty fish kebab has potential, but the magic doesn’t happen just by putting two things on the same plate. I was tempted to jump behind the pass, grab a frying pan, and crisp off the morcilla myself.

Chicken skewers were beautifully plated on a mole rojo, a traditional Mexican dish made from chili and nuts. As a prop for social media, it was superb. On taste, however, the mole had that faint sense of having been made a day or so ago and heated up in a microwave. Perhaps I am committing a great calumny here, but it certainly wasn’t very tasty. Mole sauce should be earthy, smoky and show far more depth of flavour. This one was sadly off the mark.

Ribs with ancho, served with toasted corn and a mezcal glaze were better. Temptingly, the waiter pops down a second plate of them, and then, realising they are meant for another table, whips them away without so much as a word. At least not one I could make out. A jalapeno slaw had more carrot than even Peter Rabbit might care for, insufficient lime, and seemed less acquainted with a jalapeno than needed to ensure full compliance with whatever the Trades Description Act is called these days.

And we should discuss the tacos. The masa (corn flour) had good flavour, and they were nicely charred, but were not on the generous side. Maybe the kitchen had stamped them out with the top of a wine goblet. A good taco needs space to show off what is inside. You need some proper real estate for the crema, a main ingredient, perhaps something crunchy and julienned, and a hot sauce, to fold together. You just can’t do it well in a two-biter.

Carnitas is a classic Mexican dish made from slow cooked pulled pork. It is meant to fall apart. Here, three sad cubes of pork belly sat on a particularly small taco. The flavour was ill-defined and the fat chewy. On the other hand, the lamb birria taco was very good indeed. It had much more flavour, with waves of spice and heat, and had clearly been simmering for hours. It came with a dipping sauce described on the menu as a ‘bone broth’ which is apparently what slightly oily meat juice goes by around these parts. It was actually quite good, but it wasn’t broth.

The fried chicken taco was more, er, interesting. On the plus side, the chicken was fried in a light corn batter, allowing the taste of the marinade to shine through.

That was, however, also its main downfall. So far, a lot of things had tasted the same.

Chilli and lime prawns definitely tasted different. I presume it was meant to taste like an early-nineties prawn and cream cheese sandwich from M&S. We finished with a fried avocado taco, served with confit tomato and roast garlic. It was pleasant, but no-one wanted the last bite very much.

We trundle out, disappointed, and set about perking ourselves up at Bittersweet, where the cocktails keep getting better and better. We prop up the bar, drink negronis, discover that their bowls of courgette fries are just delightful, and promptly order a second bowl.

Thence to Ardfern to finish off the night with a bottle of something delicious. We are reassured that Leith still does wonderful hospitality with great food and drink.

Paloma will need to up their game in the kitchen and front of house to tempt me back… ■

£35 per person, including drinks
Food 5/10
Service 4/10
Value 6/10