Large Doner Kebab, Cafe Piccante (London Road), Edinburgh

Offering: Large Doner Kebab

Establishment: Café Piccante, London Road, Edinburgh

Date and time: 17th December 2016 23:29

Price: £7.50

Seating: 3 chairs, 1 window length table

In the East of the city, towards the London Road area, there is a wealth of kebaberies to choose from. One particularly well known feast for the eyes is the legendary operation known as Cafe Piccante. This eatery made its name by being the first kebab zone to offer a chocolate pizza, a live DJ complete with bab-orientated set list and a mean looking bouncer that's ready to eject any of the underfed jakey's that can't handle digesting the chilli sauce. Of course, this Cafe Piccante is the one situated in Broughton Street - next to the hustle and bustle of the Capital's gay-friendly nightspots.

The London Road branch is sobering in comparison. With the DJ long hung, the bouncer (almost) not required and pizza's strictly savoury - other than that, the London Road Cafe Piccante offers an identical product to its more popular big brother. Operating from the former style-over-substance racket that was Picasso; Piccante doesn't really add much to the competing (and somewhat strictly average) babberies of this part of town.

The first thing worth noting is that there Piccante certainly want you to taste the spice and they do this by adding a few sliced jalapenos as part of their salad offering. This is a nice touch and I feel as though all doners should come with this enticing yet mild pepper (or at least something similar). It is the perfect accompaniment to any kebab, even if you like your kebabs creamy rather than spicy as they offer a succulent crunch as part of the overall experience.

...stop making your chilli sauces too sweet - they are called 'chilli' for a reason...

The cuts of the tomato are exactly how tomatoes should be cut for a kebab: quarter pieces to assist with the grandiloquent lift of the pita sandwich. Unfortunately, many eateries continue to insist that tomatoes must be sliced and stuffed into the pita, with no thought as to how a poor connoisseur must ravish such an already deconstructed sorry looking kebab. As a whole though, the salad is well thought out and is generally near the standard of how a doner salad should be, perhaps only lacking any red cabbage.

Sadly, with this kebab, its all downhill from here - the chilli sauce is sweet and adds little to nothing to this bab-nasty exercise. Calling all kebab shops - stop making your chilli sauces too sweet - they are called 'chilli' for a reason. They are not called sweet sauces. Emphasis should be given to creating a sauce that has bite, not a sauce that has sugar.

There's a slightly odd feature of the kebab that may interest some of you and it was also a feature of Turkish Carry Out kebabs too; the box is compartmentalised. If you don't like your kebabs and salads to touch then you might be in luck - for the rest of you though, I fear you may never live this down as it clearly is a slight.

The doner meat is grim and tastes like ultra processed soya morsels; it gives the whole kebab a non-distinct peppered taste with very little else to show for itself. There is no real meaty texture and it quickly becomes apparent that none of this meats imbalanced combination of ingredients concludes in a memorable meal. It feels a lot like this establishment really don't care about what they are selling when it comes to doner and care only for the people that are going to be too drunk to be discerening enough to conclude that this kebab was essentially uninspired. Like far too many places, this establishment is well placed and just outside of zone one to qualify for the prestigious 3PM opening hours, it almost certainly catches the dregs of the late night revellers that were far too pre-occupied to go to a decent kebab place when they came out of whatever hole they danced in. If you are such a person, may I recommend one of their many un-donered pizzas.

Verdict: 5/10

Large Doner Kebab, Ali Baba Kebabs, Dalry Road

Offering: Large Doner Kebab

Establishment: Ali Baba Kebabs, Edinburgh

Date and time: 26th February 2017, 16:27

Price: £5.50

Seating: Around 7 seats and 2 tables


After the many accolades it received in the British Kebab Awards of 2017, I decided it was time to revisit Ali Baba Kebabs. That's right, this wasn't my first time walking through that wooden interior - I had been there a some years ago when I was working at nights in Corstorphine. It was around that time I also took my first trip to Lazeez, in fact, these visits were likely made days apart. My memory of the first trip was that the staff member - a Middle-Eastern man was incredibly friendly and personable. The Kebab at the time was pretty good but not exceptional but I ended up eating at Lazeez a lot more due to its general comparative quality.

Not much has changed in Ali Baba Kebabs; the quaint decor is still there, the Middle Eastern man still serves various food-stuffs from what seems like such a small takeaway but most of all, the quality on offer at this eatery is still fairly good too.When I asked for a large kebab, the sum of £5.50 seemed a little overboard for the container it was served in, however all fears were allayed when I opened the kebab sitting at it the seats of this joint. It was a sufficiently packed pita with all of the fine salad offerings one would come to expect from a doner. One thing I tend to avoid when going bab-deep is the insistence of cucumbers in a doner; they just don't add anything to the whole experience in my opinion. In a tuna sandwich, I would happily eat cucumbers but pretty much in any other circumstance, other than in raita sauces, cucumber just seems like a waste of time.

...that sauce tasted almost exactly like the chilli sauce you find in frozen doner kebabs...

First impressions of the chilli sauce is that it has a really smooth texture - not the thick, lumpy cut up vegetable textured stuff that usually signals the best of kebab chilli sauces. When I combined a cut of the meat with the salad, the first thing that hit me was the fact that sauce tasted almost exactly like the chilli sauce you find in frozen doner kebabs that you might get in Iceland - that's not too bad a thing though, in fact, I really liked and found it somewhat charming but I felt it was a tad sweet and not really that hot. There's also a nice tangy salad dressing, the typical creamy brown type that you might be accustomed to at times like these. The meat was really decent too - perhaps better than the likes of  Pasha but Pasha does seem to have a more consistent product in many ways. The meat tasted really satisfying though and there's something quite distinct about this kebab that you don't find in many kebabs in Edinburgh - I can't really put my finger on on it but suffice to say, once you have a doner here, it just scratches an itch that many other babs can't reach.

Upon the almighty lift, the pita bread holds up perfectly - it's really soft and doesn't have that toasty crisp that the Pasha pita bread had. The size of this kebab is also really good for the price; OK, it's no Madras  Cottage but when you consider that Topkapi are offering what is obviously a smaller product at £1.50 more, you find that this pretty good value. Perhaps the worst thing about Ali Baba is that Lazeez is around 5 minutes walk away and whilst it doesn't charge too much for its offering, the size difference is considerably noticeable - Ali Baba gives a far bigger bab but the kebab in Lazeez is tastier.

Are you visiting from a nearby town and hoping to pop on the train? That's where Ali Baba really shines. Picture yourself with ten minutes to go before your train is due, a mere stones throw away from Haymarket train station - you can run for a large kebab with all the trimmings and be a mere one minute late for the last train home, but it doesn't matter - you've got a large Ali Baba doner to keep you warm throughout the night and you can't get that at Waverly Station!

Verdict: 7/10