Restaurant review: Mithas, 7 Dock Place, Leith, Edinburgh

T alk about setting yourself up for a fall. When the invitations were sent out for the launch party of Mithas, the new top-end Indian restaurant owned by the family behind Khushi’s, it invited guests to “attend the opening of the first Indian restaurant in Scotland aiming for a Michelin star”. It was either a splash of marketing genius or hubris run amok.

Still, the ambitious mission statement has not only made restaurant land sit up and take notice, it has also ensured those good folk at the world's most influential restaurant guide will beat a path to Leith to see whether Mithas is indeed worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as its starred neighbours, The Kitchin and Martin Wishart. Not that it would be unprecedented was it to gain a star: there are already five Michelin-starred Indian restaurants in London, led by the inestimable Tamarind, with Amaya and Benares snapping at its heels.

However, there won't be much point collecting gongs if there's no mantelpiece to place them on. Mithas' first and only priority has to be to turn a profit, and even in these early days whether or not it is able to do so is a moot point to judge by the paucity of fellow diners when we visited. Sixty-five years after opening their first venue in Edinburgh, the Mohammed family have recently and successfully extended into Dunfermline and Stirling, but with a host of long-established restaurants in the capital struggling to keep their head above water, there could hardly be a less auspicious time to launch a restaurant of any sort, let alone one that charges like a wounded rhino.

And, make no mistake, Mithas is expensive, especially for a nation that generally baulks at paying more than a tenner for its taste of India. The invitation to experience “cuisine that is both age-old and brand-new” is one thing. But with the tasting menu weighing in at £49.50, your starting point for a meal for two including service is £110 – so the shock of the new isn't confined to what's on the plate.

The good news, however, is that thanks to the Mohammeds' faith, Mithas is BYOB and there's no corkage charge. Handily, a small branch of Sainsbury's has opened a couple of hundred yards away and is open until late, so even if you're caught unawares, there's an easy remedy.

Top restaurants don't win awards for cheap booze, however, and, keen to find out what constituted “innovative yet familiar” dishes, we opted for the ten-course tasting menu rather than picking three or four dishes in Indian tapas style. Our menu provided a wide cross-section, but I'd give it a side-swerve in future because the dishes tended to be so small – several were a single piece of meat or fish – they were gone in a mouthful. Throw in an extraordinarily attentive waiting staff clearly anxious to make a good impression and the result is a disjointed affair constantly disrupted by arriving food and departing crockery.

The first things to land were the condiments, which consisted of the dry 12 spices, a toasty-hot plum chutney and a surprisingly subtle tomato and sweet chilli dip. These were quickly followed by a thoroughly underwhelming ‘chicken salad’, which was basically a piece of lettuce with tiny morsels of chicken, garnished with cress. Next up was a whole scallop each in a coconut yoghurt sauce, which was a distinct improvement, followed by a bite-sized chunk of monkfish tikka, which turned out to be the most succulent piece of monkfish I've ever eaten.

But for every dish that impressed – we enjoyed the sea bream in ginger and the slow-cooked baby leg of lamb, while the two small chunks of chicken tikka were done to perfection – there was another that conspicuously missed the mark. The raw banana and vegetable sheekh (a spring roll-shaped object that didn't taste of banana) and the roast potatoes left us particularly non-plussed, while the timing of the nicely-tart palate-cleansing lime sorbet seemed entirely random. Having been told: “This is not a curry house,” we then had a passable chicken biryani served with a very good lamb karahi, a decent tarka dal (lentils) and yoghurty raita. The home-made ginger, vanilla and milk chocolate ice-cream is definitely worth trying too.

Most disappointing of all, we were seated just inside the entrance, within sight of precisely no other diners and with drawn shutters which meant that we couldn't see the street. The open kitchen was just about visible if I stood up and peered over the partition, but our only interaction was with our waiting staff, making for a rather soulless experience eating in what was effectively a corridor – a very plush corridor, but a corridor none the less. I suspect we were seated in this manner because there weren't enough diners to fill up the large main dining room, but there are many elements that go into a good eating-out experience and the obvious presence of other people is undoubtedly one of them.

Overall, Mithas was a disappointment. I love Khushi's and regularly eat there, while the demise of Roti, Tony Singh's fine-dining Indian restaurant in Edinburgh – was a cause of genuine sorrow. Bea's mother was born and brought up in Calcutta, so Indian cuisine was a staple of her childhood, and on the rare occasions when she could scrape together any extra money after starting her first job, she would blow it eating at that temple of modern Indian food, Cafe Lazeez. Yet Mithas is not in that league: dreams are the starting point for all great ideas, but on this showing a Michelin star is a pipe dream.

Bill please

Vegetarian tasting menu £29.95; vegetarian and seafood tasting menu £45.95; tasting menu £49.50; dishes £5.95-£25; puddings £6.95 Rating: 6/10