Henderson’s has been an institution in Edinburgh for as long as anyone can remember, since back in the days when being vegetarian was perceived as a perversion every bit as un-Scottish as dead pig porking. So it’s rather wonderful that it’s still here, still doing the business. And, unsurprisingly given that vegetarianism is now a mainstream perversion, still evolving and innovating. Or so I thought.
What was until recently its more intimate bistro, an offshoot of the main restaurant linked by a corridor underneath the Georgian streets, has been reinvented as Henderson’s Vegan, apparently the city’s first wholly vegan restaurant. It looks the part, too: contemporary, pretty, bustling. The redesign is fresh and appealing: a wall of pale logs and little plant shoots, twiggy lampshades, lots of natural materials and bosky tones. All very promising.
But then the menu arrives, to puncture our temporary sanctimony. Hummus? Really? Served in grouty gobs with oafish batons of raw veg, celery, carrot, pepper, and oatcakes as delicate as Shrek? Where are we, 1973? Or how about haggis nachos? No, I’m not joking: a pile of bought-in nachos dolloped with Henderson’s “famous” vegetarian haggis, a blurt of pulses and oatmeal and, at a guess, curry paste, some of those pickled jalapeños you get at the Odeon, all helped along with “vegan cheese”, an abomination made with, among many other things, coconut oil, modified starch, “colour”, acidity regulator and “preservative”. (The guac is quite nice, but then, like pizza, even so-so guac is quite nice.)
There’s a thick, blowsy chickpea pancake filled with what tastes like spiced mashed potato, as though someone had tried to make dosa having only ever heard about it via Chinese whispers. And cashew nut fritters that you could fire from the castle’s cannon to pretty devastating effect, with a curiously sweet, pink “satay” sauce that seems to have wandered over from a pavlova by mistake. And the rice – oh, man, I’d forgotten rice could be like this: bulbous, beige grains that require as much chewing as cud.
We leave feeling an unusual combination of flat and bloated, buoyed only by a decent grüner veltliner. I’m pretty glad that it’s a night I’m sleeping alone. Look, I hate to break it to you, folks, but you’re going to die anyway. (I was surprised at the youth of our fellow diners, most of an age where immortality is all that beckons. There’s only one man in the place who’s not staff, and he looks like he’s been dragged along by his far younger, far more attractive “niece”.) When they come to cart off my gaseous, carnivorous corpse, I figure I’ll have died happy, having managed largely to avoid vegan cheese. Personally, I’d rather go in a massive, animal-fats-induced cardiac seizure than self-medicate with food in an attempt to prolong the adult nappy years.
Obviously I’m never going to be a convert. And even if I were in the market for conversion, Henderson’s Vegan ain’t going to be the place to do it: it’s as if the vegetable-celebrating restaurants of recent years never happened, no Noma or Arpège or our own Ottolenghi. Where were the jewels of pomegranate, the za’atar, the tahini, the yuzu, the dukkah, all the sparkling, vivacious flavours that make being meat- and dairy-free a genuine, attractive alternative these days? Even cauliflower, favoured veg du jour, puts in an appearance only on the blackboard as that old trouper aloo gobi. A lot of the menu’s… er, pleasures rely on the fryer. I can’t bring myself to tell you about the leaden desserts, but I suspect parts of them will be with me till I croak.
The dish that comes closest to today’s vivid, vegetarian flavours is a salad of wilted kale, packed with fruit and teeth-adhering seeds and nuts, sweetened with maple and topped with chickpea “croutons” (they’re not: they’re just fried chickpeas), but even this feels like a penance. I frequently go for days not eating meat without even trying, but my reaction to all this stodgy hairshirtedness is to long for something formerly feathered or furred, slapped on a fiery grill, oozing blood.
I ask our wonderful waitress CC if they’re attracting only vegans and she’s adamant that, no, everyone comes in, including “lots of people with allergies and intolerances”. Ah, yes, them. So there you are: one for conservative orthorexics everywhere. But not, I’m afraid, for me.
• Henderson’s Vegan 25c Thistle Street, Edinburgh EH2, 0131-225 2605. Open all week, noon-9pm (10pm Fri & Sat). About £20 a head for three courses, plus drinks and service.
Food 3/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Value for money 4/10
