Britannia Spice

This imaginative and colourful restaurant, attracting diners from many miles distant, can be found near to Royal Yacht Britannia, moored in Leith, Edinburgh.

Diners are able to savour the very best Bangladeshi cuisine in o nautically themed `Main Deck' or `Quarter Deck' with its bright and yet tranquil ambience, Air conditioned with an extensive and mouth-watering menu together with an exciting and specially selected wine list to complement that perfect dining experience.

This is a real gem of a restaurant, a stunning multi-ethnic restaurant on Ocean Drive, Leith, perfectly encapsulates all that is best in exciting dining, with food and service to match that on the yacht moored opposite.

Britannia Spice - a colourful and imaginative restaurant with 150 covers - evokes the sleek beauty of the Royal Yacht. This really is a restaurant with a difference, whatever your previous experience of Indian / Bangladeshi / Asian cuisine this will add a new and exciting chapter to your expanding book of culinary experiences. Britannia Spice is styled to evoke the golden age of sail, together with the unmatched style and service levels from a bygone age.

Timber floors, sails, rigging and other nautical artefacts adorn the spacious dining room, adding to the overall ambience. Owner Dr Wali Tasar Uddin JP, MBE appointed honorary consul for Bangladesh some years ago is the perfect ambassador, meeting and greeting many old friends as they enter the restaurant, friends built over many years of service in Edinburgh with his Verandah and Lancers restaurant.

The quality and style of the cuisine has rapidly built and retained a loyal clientele.
"We use no colouring or curry powder, only the finest natural ingredients - our chefs grind all the spices themselves," explains Dr Uddin who ensures the menu constantly changes, responding to customer demands and requests

Every dish is lovingly prepared fresh in the spotless kitchen's gas or charcoal ovens - and many are exclusive to the restaurant. Among my favourite starters I encountered were Maccher bhorta (minced, baked fish with mustard oil, onions, green chillies and coriander) is something of a signature dish, along with charcoal-roasted lamb chops marinated in ginger and mustard.

Unusual main courses include Bangladeshi-style king prawns, and Britannia mixed tandoori - saucy lamb, chicken and prawns roasted in a clay oven.

There are Thai dishes spiced with galanga, lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves, Nepalese dishes flavoured with mango or ground pistachio and a mouth-watering choice of vegetarian fare. Amer Murgh (tender chicken cooked in mango pulp and cream) is an excellent and mild introduction to Indian cuisine, suggests Mr Uddin and he has yet to meet a customer who does not adore a highly unusual Bangladeshi dish called shatkora gosht (succulent lamb cooked in calamansi juice with lemon leaves and Begal chillies).

In keeping with Dr Wali Uddin's philosophy, Britannia Spice offers Thai, European, Sri Lankan, Northern Indian, and Bangladeshi food.

Dr Wali and his partners searched long and hard for a new restaurant site in Edinburgh, rejecting ten before seizing on the whisky bond shell last used by Glenmorangie plc. Their vision was clear: "We wanted a look that appeals to all ages, something memorable and on different levels," reports Dr Uddin who is a stickler for hygiene.

He opted for a modernist approach and enlisted the services of another relative, Paris-based designer Arshad Alam, designer and mastermind of more than a dozen wards winning restaurants in and around the London area.

Inspired by the restaurant's name, the latter took five months to conceive the classiest of dining environments - clean spaces which complement the royal yacht's 125 metres of streamlined elegance.

The result is a harmonious ambience based on creamy walls, honeyed timbers, cherry wood tables, floor, bar, work station etc) and chairs softly upholstered in Britannia blue. True opulence on board, the price affordable to all, the opportunity denied to so many because of its popularity.
One of Scotland's finest, a true shining light in the capital, large enough to appreciate, with the opportunity to have an intimate dinner for two or a banquet for more than a hundred. Like the namesake, designed and built for pleasure.

Britannia Spice, a true gem within the cluster of jewels in

Edinburgh can be found at
150 Commercial Street, Edinburgh
and you can book on
0131 555 2255
and view them on the web at www.britanniaspice.co.uk

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