Veggie offspring is a slaw unto itself
Reloaded family restaurant fails on the salad front..and elsewhere
Hendersons, the dear departed basement salad bar, has a place in the hearts of Scottish veggies of a certain age.
Before every eaterie offered a plant-based gluten-free soup and a beetroot burger, the Edinburgh farmers-turned-restaurateurs were grating cabbage and constructing hearty lasagnes without resorting to mince.
It was also popular with non-veggies out shopping in Princes Street, seeking something more sustaining than a Jenners’ scone.
My fondest memory was in 1999, interviewing Robin Harper, who was standing as a Green candidate in the first elections to the Scottish Parliament. I had watched him pressing the flesh in Princes Street then took him to Hendersons for a plate of soup. Was he, I asked, a regular?
Oh yes, he assured me, pointing to the wall. And there he was, at the centre of a faded mural, wearing a jester costume and playing a lute.
The world has changed since the original Hendersons opened the doors in 1962. There are, for example, vegan burgers at Wetherspoons.
The Hanover Street café closed in the summer of 2020. Now Barrie, grandson of the founders, has revived the family business. It’s a smaller unit, in boujee Bruntsfield rather than the city centre. These walls are not adorned with future MSPs playing stringed instruments. It’s festooned with fresh paint, raw plaster, a funny timber structure and dried flowers.
So far, so modern. Barrie has also dragged the menu into the 21st century. The salads which were the main attraction of the first incarnation are still there, although to Nippy Sweetie’s dismay they are not displayed in a glass-fronted cabinet.
There are some newfangled ingredients – pomegranate, tahini, rainbow chard. But I have not, in the 40-odd years since I first visited Hendersons, softened my position on dried fruit in salads. Raisins are fine in
Christmas cake and delightful in scones. They have no place in slaw. So while I respect Barrie’s family loyalty, I had to pass.
Pumpkin and blue cheese ravioli with browned butter, crispy sage and toasted pumpkin seeds shows the new generation has ambition that goes beyond feeding shoppers baked potatoes.
It was getting there – a heavier hand with the cheese, a light toasting for the pumpkin seed garnish would have elevated this dish.
Carb Boy’s padron peppers delivered the salty blistered nibbliness required. Hard to get these wrong.
What, Nippy wondered, were cauliflower wings? I am so used to seeing these on menus that it took me a while to work it out for myself. Eventually I explained that they are a vegan alternative to chicken wings, deep fried in a sturdy batter and served with some kind of punchy sauce.
Amazingly, she accepted this without argument and ordered them. They were a fine example of the species, pleasingly dry and unsoggy, topped with lightly pickled red onions. She happily swiped them in a spoon of tangy mayo and declared them to be spicy to just the correct degree.
Old Henderson’s lasagne was a treat for those of us who didn’t eat meat but couldn’t be bothered to make our own pasta sheets and bechamel sauce. This version, with lentil and smoked aubergine ragu, sounded promising.
And while it looked cute, topped with blistering cheese and baked in its own dinky dish, it failed to deliver on taste or texture. The ragu was so woefully under-seasoned that it slipped down almost unnoticed. No smoky depth from the aubergines, no structure from the pulses. Carb Boy, who claims to hate thyme and loathe rosemary, was pleading for herbs. Or anything with flavour.
Nippy Sweetie’s courgetti with romanesco had the opposite problem. One flavour, garlic, dominated the spiralised courgette and the green brassica.
I’d also argue with the addition of olives and capers to a creamy sauce, even if the cream is made of pulverised cashew nuts rather than cow juice. For me, they go with tomatoes and that’s it.
A good pelt of seasoning balanced it a bit but it was still, basically, a pile of watery strands of courgette sitting in an overwhelmingly garlicky puddle.
My beetroot and black bean burger was better. A wellseasoned, deeply flavoured patty, proper baked bun rather than horrid cash and carry pap, plus homely skin-on chips. Ketchup and mayo were welcome touches.
We had no time for dessert, which might have been a blessing. I was nervous about what the kitchen might do to a buckwheat, pistachio and bramble s’more cake.
The new Hendersons is timely – we all need to eat less meat. But it lacks the dazzle of innovators like Glasgow’s Sylvan or the retro charm of its initial incarnation. It urgently needs more tweaking.