King of Feasts @ The Hanging Bat, Edinburgh

Oh, memories. Our visit to King of Feasts’ residency at the Polwarth Tavern was our first piece of food writing post-lockdown. In case you missed it four years ago, here are the notes: it was punishingly hot outside; lots of extremely aggressive but absolutely delicious sauces; a delightfully gooey scotch egg.

Suffice it to say things are different in 2025, but we are once again out and about amid a spectacular mini-heatwave for dinner at King of Feasts. This time, though, things are a lot bigger. It’s a much larger menu than in those Polwarth days, and a much bigger space, with the King taking up residence at The Hanging Bat.

We’ll get to the food in a minute, but first a word for The Hanging Bat. The venerable craft beer bar has been one of the focal points of Edinburgh’s beer scene for the last decade or so; after a bit of recent uncertainty, the Leeds-based Northern Monk brewery have taken the reins. On a first visit, not a huge amount appears to have changed – although the tap list definitely features more of the Monk’s beers than last time – but there’s something reassuring about that continuity. The Hanging Bat does craft beer, the new owners do craft beer, let’s all have a delicious craft beer.

And what goes better with a tasty beer than a bunch of exciting fried things? That’s always been a key point in the King of Feasts plan, and the good news is that’s mostly carried over to the new space. There is real skill in getting a basket of tater tots or onion rings (£4/5) just right; soft and near-caramelised inside, carapace like a crab’s shell on the outside. The chicken tenders (£8) don’t quite hit the same heights, but the popcorn haggis melts (£8) are a classic bit of savoury nonsense that we could eat all day long. A mix of haggis and cheese in a crunchy falafel-esque outer, sat on a bed of brilliantly fiery and deliciously creamy peppercorn sauce; these are genuinely fantastic, and an example of this sort of elevated maximalism working perfectly.

It’s when we step away from the ‘crunchy chunk with wild accompaniment’ dynamic that things go off the rails. A chicken caesar salad (£14) should be a zingy, decadent excuse to eat a bunch of cheese, fat and meat and still call it healthy, but our salad feels very underpowered. It’s barely dressed at all, so everything feels disconnected. What dressing makes it through is tasty, but King of Feasts has never exactly traded on subtlety (entirely complimentary) so it can’t really stand toe-to-toe with the likes of those haggis-cheese-peppercorn fellas from before. There just isn’t the textural or flavour contrast to make this work; the chicken lacks a bit of oomph, the croutons are nice but we’re paying £14 for a salad and one of the kindest things we can say about it is ‘the croutons are nice’. The caesar salad profile – lemon, mustard, anchovy, big umami flavours – should be well within the KoF ballpark, but this one was a swing and a miss.

Things pick up when it comes to the old stalwart of King of Feasts – sandwiches. The One True Monk (£10) brings a big hunk of crunchy fried chicken, an inscrutable but delicious fast food-inspired sauce and the unmistakable twang of American sliced cheese. The Butter Aubergine (£10) is an enormous flatbread stuffed with fried aubergine, lime pickle, a butter curry sauce, lime pickle, a poppadom to give it a bit of recurring crunch, and tell you what there’s definitely some lime pickle in there. It’s tangy, it’s sloppy, it’s very very limey and it’s pretty damn tasty. Plus, it’s always nice to see the vegetarians get an option that’s just as unhinged as the meat-eaters.

This move to The Hanging Bat does look set to benefit everyone involved – on opening weekend, the pub was packed despite it being the hottest day of the year so far; clearly word of the King has spread far and wide. A bigger space and bigger menu will bring growing pains, but the good news is there are still a few knockouts on this menu. If the ‘more is more’ mentality that’s made King of Feasts so effective can be applied right across the board, this king’s reign could continue for a while yet.

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133 Lothian Rd, Edinburgh, EH3 9AB; bar open Sun-Thu, noon-12am, Fri-Sat noon-1am
thehangingbat.com