KUL Coffee, Edinburgh

Round here, we’re a sucker for an orb. Whether plopped on a wall just above head height for little apparent reason, or dangling from the ceiling to bathe the room in a tasteful glow, they tend to serve as markers for a certain kind of cafe experience. KUL, new to Elm Row’s street-off-a-street setting at the top of Leith Walk, has many of the other signifiers of that higher-end coffee vibe; textured monochrome on the walls, arched doorways everywhere, tasteful sans serif fonts. It also has big, big windows – all the better to see that a few weeks after opening, the place is packed out on a Sunday morning.

In the wrong hands, this could be a classic case of ‘signified-signifier gone wrong’, but it quickly becomes apparent that this isn’t just about the orbs, and these guys are extremely serious about their coffee. It’s in the diligence of the baristas, the sheer volume of equipment, and the (count ‘em) ten different coffees available on pourover in lovely little glass carafes, alongside your standard range of espresso-based stuff.

Some of those pourovers are not cheap (are we going to spend £15 on an admittedly large cup of coffee? Not right now, but thanks for asking!). The good news is that the coffees back at our end of the scale are delicious in their own right, all made by hand by some folk who clearly know their way around a fancy gooseneck kettle. The Huye Mountain (£6), a Rwandan coffee roasted by Swerl roastery in Falkenberg, Sweden, has a brilliant punch and acidic, citrusy twang; the La Piragua (£6) is a lightly fermented Colombian coffee via the Scenery roasters in London, and comes out with tropical flavours and a super smooth finish. Our tasting notes: it doesn’t taste anything like a Solero, but it does bring a Solero to mind; big thumbs up.

We can’t survive on fancy coffees alone, and KUL’s brunch menu is a run through of some sweet and savoury brunch classics with some interesting additions. In the savoury corner, the Turkish Eggs (£12.95) are delicious, and hit all the right marks. We’re talking jammy yolks, a light lactic funk from the garlic yoghurt, savoury jabs from the Aleppo chilli butter, and an appropriate amount of dill, which is to say ‘quite a lot of dill’. It’s light but loaded with flavour, and it manages to look great despite all being near enough the same colour.

On the sweet side, it’s the sound of the summer, in breakfast form. Our pancakes (£12.95) come with an impressive array of toppings and stuff on the side – there’s a sweet and sharp lemon curd, a huge pile of whipped mascarpone topped with blueberry jam that is itself topped with fresh blueberries, and a light crumble of shortbread over the whole thing. Throw it all together and it’s a squidgy, slippery and slightly ridiculous plate of brunch that will leave you feeling like you could sprint the whole way down Leith Walk (which may be the fruit and coffee talking).

KUL is a very good example of this kind of coffee shop – there’s a sense of quality and swag to the whole thing. By the end of our brunch there are so many of little silver trays dotted around our table it looks like we’ve been working on the world’s most minimal jigsaw. There are a few things to improve – when it’s busy, it’s very very loud, as it turns out that those monochrome brushed walls from earlier will just fire your conversation right back at you. And for such a celebration of coffee, it would be nice to see some of Scotland’s excellent independent roasters represented on that lengthy pourover list: The Source, Cult, Dear Green, Fortitude… the list goes on, lads give me a call and I’ll shout a bunch of names at you down the phone. But KUL is the kind of place we can see ourselves coming back to, drawn in by great coffee and some truly excellent food. The orbs: they’re just a handy bonus.