Kweilin Potterrow

Where? 26-30 Potterrow, Edinburgh (0131-667 2299, www.kweilin

potterrow.co.uk)

Confucius said, “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop”.

I’m not quite sure exactly what he was getting at, but there are a handful of stalwart Edinburgh Chinese restaurants that don’t change much and never quit. We’re talking Rendezvous (61 years old), Loon Fung (45), Jasmine (a relative baby at 20), Stockbridge’s Ping On (48) and Kweilin on Dundas Street (33 years old).

I don’t know of any other genre of eatery that has such longevity in the capital, where restaurants come and go like Kitkats in a vending machine.

It’s taken Kweilin over three decades to open a second branch, and, in this one, they’ve added Japanese food to the mix. I have to confess to never having been to the original, but I love passing by and seeing the retro red scalloped awning, yellow chairs and lanterns in the window. Reassuringly constant and immune to trends, it’s a tortoise doing an ultra-marathon.

In contrast, their new restaurant – a space formerly occupied by middle Eastern eatery Nawroz – is quite dark and slightly less fancy inside.

There were only two other tables on our mid-week lunch visit, both presumably eating from the set lunch menu (£10.80 for three courses, two for £8.80), which features retro classics like chicken and sweetcorn soup, cocoon-like banana fritters and the meat in jammy sauce genre of Chinese British dishes that are my guilty pleasure. These looked pretty decent, from afar, but we skipped them and went for slightly more interesting options.

Trying a couple of their new Japanese dishes was a priority, especially when we were presented with something called Kweilin Dream Rolls (£14.50). If these had been truly dream-like, I would have discovered I was naked when eating them, then all my teeth would have fallen out. But, no, this beautifully presented tobikotopped set of eight huge sushi rolls featured centres of tempura prawn and sweet sticky eel, with a crunchy heart of cucumber. Smashing.

The portion of five “Japanese gyoza” (£3.90) were pleasant enough, though the watery bean curd and miscellaneous vegetable stuffing didn’t have much personality. I wouldn’t have known what was inside if I hadn’t referred back to the menu. Our soba noodles with mixed seafood (£14.50) were a better dish, with a tangle of slippery and umami fat noodles, lots of prawns, squid, scallop bits and fishy lumps.

Onto the Chinese dishes. Our favourite was the spiced and salted monkfish with chilli (£14.80), even though, apart from some hoops of chilli on the side, they seem to have forgotten to add the spice, but the batter was light and the fish pillowy, making it all rather addictive.

The char siu pork with honey sauce (£10.50), served on a futon of pakchoi, consisted of thin leaves of fivespice scented pork with a very light nectar-coloured syrup. While a huge helping of Cantonese style roast duck (£12.50) featured feathery soft hunks of softly fibrous meat and another subtle, slightly homeopathic gravy.

I’ve never come across a clay pot dish called che che chicken (£12.50) before, and I doubt it has much to do with Guevara. Instead, it was a wholesome and homely option, with char siu chicken in a gently spiced ground bean sauce, silky shiitake mushrooms, wrinkled like bath soaked fingertips, and other bits of miscellaneous veg. Soul food.

After ordering three portions of rice – egg fried (£3.20), garlic (£4) and boiled (£2) – all of which were fine, we were utterly stuffed.

The sesame-seed-speckled toffee apples (£5), like brass doorknobs with their shiny and crusty outer layer of sugar, swiftly solidifying like plaster of Paris, went neglected.

So, how long will this place survive at Potterrow? It’s hard to say, since Chinese restaurants in Edinburgh have a whole different lifespan.

The food isn’t that exciting, decadent or memorable, but, though the prices are comparatively slightly steep, it’s pleasant and the service is very good.

As long as they don’t stop, they may still be here into the next century and beyond, along with Loon Fung and the other old timers.