Malmaison and SORA have teamed up to create a Japanese French Brasserie inspired menu.
The concept’s and menu’s success at a few key Malmaison properties has seen it rolled out for a limited time to Edinburgh’s two Malmaison properties on St Andrews Square and Leith.
We dined at the St Andrew’s Square Chez Mal. Malmaison and their sister hotels Hotel Du Vin have always had a rather cool and fun modernity and the relatively new Edinburgh central site is no exception.
The building occupies a corner site right on St Andrews Sq, jostling for trade alongside other neighbors in the square such as The Gleneagles Townhouse, The Ivy and Harvey Nichols.
We were welcomed in the smart lobby and shown through to the restaurant that overlooks the Square gardens and the buzz in the festival.
It’s a dark interior with rich greens, funky modern chandeliers and bold art, the soft furnishings also soak up any noise.
The maître d’ guided us to a lovely round table with extremely comfortable round velvet bench seats and talked us through the Japanese-French brasserie-inspired menu.
We kicked off with the charred edamame beans coated with smoked salt. These were tasty but my lack of chopstick skills made extracting the beans from the pod a bit clumsy, so I opted for popping them out using my fingers.
Then on to the sushi platter with California roll and prawn nigiri with a dab of caviar,
Salmon nigiri, and my favourite: a good, very fresh slice of tuna nigiri. All presented with pickled Japanese vegetables, radish, wasabi, and topped with mint flower/garnish.
This dish was paired with a peach and lychee spritz, a really light and refreshing cocktail consisting of Briottet Crème de Pêche, Kwai Feh lychee liqueur, lavender cordial, peach bitters, prosecco, and peach soda. That’s a lot of ingredients, but they all work well.
Then on to the main course of flat iron steak with roasted onion and fries, I ordered rare and got rare. A large well seasoned, tender steak, sliced on the plate accompanied by a mini pan of creamy black pepper sauce. We also opted for the black cod skewers to keep the surf and turf theme going, delicate pieces of cod accompanied by miso and lime.
The cocktail for this pairing was a spicy margarita – shot of 818 blanco tequila, Cointreau, lime, agave, and salted chili.
At this point I was pretty full but managed to tackle the dessert of Calamansi citrus posset. This was lovely: chilled, not overly sweet white citrus and topped with honeycomb, raspberries, strawberries and thai basil – paired with a sweet but sharp citroncello to finish.
We enjoyed the meal tremendously and the setting adds a sense of occasion.
Perhaps the only issue I have with the menu is that it offers almost too much in quantity, as the initial sushi platter is virtually a meal in itself, not a bad complaint to have though.
The SORA at Chez Mal is on until 30 September at all 18 Malmaison Hotels.
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