Chop Chop, Edinburgh - Restaurants in Edinburgh | s1play.com

Something special

Review published on 03/07/2006 © Sunday Herald

Last time I reviewed Edinburgh I was on the trail of decent, reasonably authentic Chinese food. This provoked a mini flurry of suggestions from readers.

One directed me to the newish Chop Chop on Morrison Street, which was a bit of a coincidence since I had just spotted the owners stocking up on leafy oriental greens, juicy spring onions and feathery coriander in the excellent greengrocer, Global, near Tollcross. This gave me some confidence in the venture, wise sourcing being a prerequisite of good cooking.

There’s no difficulty finding Chop Chop. It leaps out like a red and yellow beacon at the grey, traffic-saturated Haymarket junction. It is a huge, bare barn of a place with the ambiance of an institutional canteen and unforgiving lighting more suited to an industrial warehouse. Thankfully, it is extremely well heated and so surprisingly comfortable.

The colour scheme is very Chinese – rich, oriental red contrasted with a softer yellow reminiscent of imperial gold. It reminds me of restaurants I have visited in Asia, vast functional eating palaces designed to accommodate, on a daily basis, a seething mass of hungry, food-focused diners.

This is the complete antithesis of most restaurants here where the management is so overly preoccupied with selling decor and surroundings as an aspirational lifestyle statement, that the food is just an irritating afterthought.

The soups made the spirits soar. The steamy, fragrant lamb broth was crystal clear – a light, savoury stock packed with meaty flavour- with a kaleidoscope of vibrantly fresh coriander and fine curls of spring onion floating on the top. This was a soup that could revive the appetite of a flagging invalid, the sort of soup that would give you a reason to stay alive. The Ga Da soup was a knock-out too, in an entirely different way, a filling comfort soup of small dumplings in a savoury broth freshened up with fine, raw Chinese cabbage, almost like a liquid version of Yorkshire pudding and gravy.

Deep-fried or stir-fried dishes are in the minority at Chop Chop and instead dumplings form the backbone of the menu. These come either boiled or as ‘potstickers’, that is, fried on one side. You make up your own dipping sauce to taste from rice vinegar, soy, fiery chilli oil and mashed garlic. So many dumplings in Chinese restaurants taste as though they were bought frozen from the cash and carry, but not these. The porky chive ones, the pungently fishy prawn ones, the gingery beef and celery ones … they were all dazzlingly fresh.

And the standard didn’t let up. A dish of pork belly cooked with sauerkraut and cellophane noodles was attractively sour and clean, a reminder of how many northern Chinese dishes are not so different from the plain tastes you find in northern European cuisines. We lapped up springy egg noodles in a soothing peanut sauce, devoured crisp matchstick potatoes dressed with sesame seeds, spring onions and coriander and then freshened our palates on a crunchy cucumber and glass noodle salad in a tangy mustard dressing.

I was well impressed with Chop Chop. It is a very useful restaurant – cheap, fresh, tasty, and healthy. Flexible too, because most dishes come in various quantities, so you can cast your net wide and sample a good range. And if you feel a little out of your depth initially, there is a totally charming Polish waiter to guide you through the possibilities. It is the sort of place where you might drop in once a week when you can’t be bothered cooking, or eat a quick bowl of soup for lunch when passing by on your own.

An address where people of average income can afford to treat the massed, non-paying ranks of family and friends without taking out a mortgage.

© Sunday Herald