Tony Singh’s Road Trip

Trying to find a place that takes bookings, is between venues when timing is tight and caters well for vegetarians proved more than difficult. The menu for this pop-​up had a great sounding veggie section, took a booking and was perfect for getting between George St and The Pleasance. Hooray!
Problems started quickly. We had to call to say we’d be 5 mins late and the person on the phone had no idea what we were talking about, eventually just saying ‘ok ok ok no problem’. On arrival the booking was not even there. Still, we were sat downstairs in a dirty area at a filthy table and got menus etc. 2 times we asked for tap water and never got any, though beers came promptly. We were served by a total of 5 people who seemed to not at all communicate with each other since they asked us for our order when we’d already ordered, if we needed more food when we’d had none, brought the bill half way through etc etc.
There were bottles of sauces and vinegars on the table which all looked like they’d not been cleaned or refilled in weeks. 2 were fizzy with cloudy bits and the manager and 2 other servers had no idea what was in them aside from the one clearly marked ‘very spicy’ which they all proudly proclaimed was ‘the very spicy one’. Talk about under-​trained…
I think we got about 10 dishes between us and were underwhelmed in general. The sweetcorn was ok and its butter helped flavour other bland dishes. Haddock burrito was odd, the kimchi just plain dull. We had to ask for salt but really waned to ask for lemons and limes, fish sauce, chilies, anything to enhance any flavours…
Paper plates, shitty melting/​snapping plastic kids cutlery didn’t help the experience and it was not streetfood-​cheap. If Tony was cooking that night he should try tasting stuff before it goes out and check his staff, temporary or not, are representing him well enough.