Now there’s no need to carb your enthusiasm
Y Burgers at Down The Hatch are heavy on Canadian quality
Lockdown, now dragging to an end, has given me a chance to make inroads in my sprawling spreadsheet of unreviewed restaurants.
This unwieldy document has gone through many incarnations. It may need to go through another as I am currently trying to set up a new laptop. Who knows what files will survive this terrifying process?
It’s a joint effort between me in the spare room in Glasgow and Josh in Canary Wharf. He is holding my digital hand across hundreds of miles and assures me that all my precious lists are safely stored in the cloud.
Down The Hatch has already been transferred from spreadsheet to spreadsheet. I’ve had a notion to try their Canadian comfort food since they arrived in South Queensferry six years ago.
When they opened a second venue, in Edinburgh’s Antigua Street, I redoubled my efforts.
Once restaurants with tablecloths and sommeliers reopen, places that specialise in filthy burgers and worship gravy will fall down the list again. But while we need bolstering food that can be eaten from a paper carton on a park bench, Down The Hatch’s North American fried hugs it is.
This place is not for those who avoid carbs. This is food for people who welcome carbohydrates into their lives and would probably marry them if it was legal.
I enlisted a heavily pregnant friend to help me out. We studied the app – if I can work my new laptop, surely I can order a burger on my phone? And thanks to the miracles of modern technology, our food was hot and ready for collection at the appointed time.
When James Craig designed the layout of Edinburgh’s new town in the 18th century, he can’t have known how useful the little patches of green would be 300-odd years later. We repaired to the garden at nearby Gayfield Square and got stuck in.
Poutine, the Canadian take on 13 Antigua Street, Edinburgh, EH11 3NH www.downthehatchcafe.com
Bill for two: £32.25 Flavour: 8/10 – If you have acquired these tastes, they are all there Value for money: 8/10 – Generous portions
chips and cheese, is a Down The Hatch speciality. The idea makes me anxious. Why would anyone want to ruin perfectly good sauté tatties by covering them with gravy? Surely this would make them soggy and horrid? And what could cheese curds add to this damp abomination?
But I take my research seriously so I ordered a side portion. (Homesick Canucks can get them as a main course or add haggis if they want to do fusion.)
The chips were good examples of the skinny, skin-on, fearlessly salted variety.
The gravy was the usual hot, meaty liquid. I struggled to distinguish the cheese curds from lumps of polystyrene. They made cottage cheese seem vibrant and exciting. I ate quite a lot, in different combinations, to see if the poutine grew on me. Half a carton down, I still didn’t see what these three ingredients were doing in the same dish.
Old chum had the good sense to order her fries unadorned, to accompany her Hatch burger. This is the house bestseller for a reason, a classic fat beef patty adorned with streaky bacon, cheddar, tomato and pickles, doused with a sweet barbecue sauce.
Unlike the monstrous poutine, these elements are very happy together.
The bacon brings a salty crunch, the cheddar a melty savour, the pickles deliver a vinegary hit and the sauce sweeps it all together. The bun is part texture, part device to stop all the other bits falling on the floor. This is how it’s meant to work.
For lubrication, old chum requested a banoffee milkshake because she’s eight months pregnant and making the most of it. It was so sweet she worried about developing gestational diabetes. There were even tiny foam bananas, last seen lurking on the penny chew tray in 1972, at the bottom.
To my relief, my Philly cheese steak sandwich did not have any strange or unwelcome bits. I always forget that this classic does not actually contain Philadelphia cheese.
Instead the filling was a very pleasing mix of steak strips, green peppers and onions. It could easily have sat on one of those terrifyingly hot mini frying pans that used to be popular in Mexican restaurants.
The meat was topped with cheese and presented in a soft roll. The beefy juices squidged into the spongy bread. The whole thing was wrapped in foil to prevent disintegration.
There was no need for a caesar salad but I panic if everything on the table – or picnic rug, or park bench – is brown. And torn lettuce was very welcome, even if it was thickly speckled with health-cancelling parmesan.
The snow came on before we had finished. Were the Canadian gods punishing me for disrespecting their national dish? Or was it just another spring day in Scotland?