Passorn Thai Restaurant

 

You may not find a friendlier welcome in an Edinburgh restaurant than the one at new Thai kid on the block Passorn. Your coat is whipped off and your seat whisked out with aplomb – it’s not their fault I’m the sort of clumsy diner that takes this as a cue to get tangled up and fall on my arse. Angelic Dining is the tagline here and the mood is certainly one of friendly transcendentalism, with low lighting, murmuring loved-up couples and immaculately plated food.

I started with Bangkok cakes, Taffir-style marinated fishcakes of prawn, cod and kaffir lime leaves; what arrived were three little pucks of fresh, grease-free seafood in Panko-like breadcrumbs, all with that pleasingly squeaky texture that Thai food does so well. Across the table my dining buddy tucked into the first course of what was to be a triumvirate of deep-fried offerings. His golden Taro fritters may have looked suspiciously like lumpy McCain micro chips – and indeed were dubbed ‘potato family’ by the menu, just to give vegetarians an anthropomorphised guilt-trip – but they were sweetly earthy and mopped up the chilli-peanut dip perfectly.

He followed this with Pad Ma kauy doi krum, slices of aubergine fried in a feather-light coating of egg (those kitchen angels definitely had a hand in this one) and doused on a deeply savoury yellow bean sauce. My ‘Angel Curry’ saw generous slabs of chargrilled rare sirloin steak drenched in a so-called ‘exotic’ house curry sauce; fortunately ‘exotic’ was a bit of a naff description for a delicately spiced red sauce that delivered a endorphin-fuelling kick long after the first bite. We both dug into bowls of sticky coconut rice topped with crispy shallots, glutinous sweet pillows of starch that absorbed the complex savoury-sweet flavours perfectly.

Every morsel was cleared from each plate in lightening speed. Should I have eaten that beautifully carved carrot rose? Probably not. Did I wolf it down? You betcha! If only all of my five a day could be so ornate.
Stuffed to bursting, I watched my friend finish off his holy trinity from the deep fat frier with banana fritters (in more of those breadcrumbs) topped with snowy vanilla ice and drizzled with golden syrup, like the school dinner pud of your dreams. If you're strong enough to ignore the tempting sin of gluttony, the food at Passorn will really give you wings.