Tony Singh on the return of his Apex Edinburgh pop-up, Tony's Road Trip

The temporary restaurant is back for the first time since 2016 and haggis pakora is on the menu

Chef Tony Singh launches his new pop-up restaurant Tony's Road Trip that will be situated in the Apex International Hotel in Edinburgh during the month of August. 8/7/2015 Picture © Andy Buchanan 2015

Back in 2015, street food and small plates were exciting new trends.

Both were already a twinkle in television chef and cookbook author Tony Singh MBE’s eye. He was an early adopter of this casual style of cooking, and opened pop-up restaurant Tony Singh’s Road Trip at the Apex hotel in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket.

Serving Punjabi BBQ sweetcorn and haggis pakora, its unpretentious menu provided a whole other vibe to Singh's fine-dining restaurant, Oloroso, which closed down in 2013. Apex revived the concept a year later, in 2016, but now there’s a threequel.

The dishes at Tony's Road Trip

Tony’s Road Trip - they’ve dropped the Singh, presumably because he can do without a surname, like Kylie - will run from July 24 until September 3, at Elliot’s Restaurant at Apex Waterloo Place Hotel and the Grassmarket venue.

“We’re revisiting it. It was fantastic. I think we were ahead of the curve, it was all street food inspired and multi-cuisine,” says Edinburgh-based Singh, 52, who’s fresh from an appearance at the Royal Highland Show. “It suits the change in people’s eating habits, as everyone wants four or five different cuisines at once now”.

Don’t worry about having to mind your Ps and Qs. To suit an eating experience during the hectic Edinburgh Festival Fringe, this will be a relaxed affair. You can order one dish, or ten. Just don’t use the term sharing plates, because possessive customers “don’t like that”, says Singh.

As he says; “People can come and have fun and be wild. We know there are temples of gastronomy, where you go and shut up and try to listen to the next person’s table. That’s the thing with Road Trip, the fun will be brought back into hospitality. It’ll be a nice oasis of fun”.

The OMG Slider

They’ve paired each dish with a brew from Aberdeen company, Fierce Beer, and there are summer-y spritzer-style cocktails.

As far as food goes, they’ve revived some of the originals, as well as adding new options.

For example, the haggis pakora was a shoe-in, as it was a bestseller for two years straight.

“Don’t tell my mum, but it’s better than hers,” says Singh. “Everybody’s bored of bon-bons. We also looked at the crowd-pleasers and went for chicken tikka pie, vuhra - a spiced kebab lamb patty - and deep-fried sweetcorn ribs”.

Tony's chicken tikka pie

Alongside side dishes that include curry sauce and fries, there’s also ngiom - a Cambodian salad with lime, chilli, herbs, roasted peanuts and cabbage. We’re glad that this option made it onto the list, and not one of Singh’s other favourites from his recent trip to that country.

“When I was in Cambodia last year. I was eating spiders and the water grub things. Once I learnt to eat them properly, they were lovely,” he says. “It’s just that they got a bit stuck in my mouth, because the wings are big plastic-looking things, it was like chewing a tape box. They showed me how to peel the wings off and then they were as sweet as langoustine”.

As well as a plant-based section, which includes masala dosa chaat, the new menu also features a single fish and sauce - “no vinegar in sight” - The Gaucho flat iron steak with chimichurri, poutine that has had “a Scots makeover”, prawn satay, a humble cheese and pickle toastie, and Korean pork belly.

They’ve even revived the look of the bright orange and pink menu, which appears to be inspired by a Sex Pistols album cover.

Tony Singh

It’s definitely worth staying for pudding, as they’ve got flooda - a “lush Indian milkshake with ice-cream and jelly and noodles” and churros. However, Singh’s favorite is something he’s called The OMG Slider, which is vanilla ice-cream sandwiched in a brownie with monkey blood squirted on top. He loves that nostalgic and gloopy syrup, which used to be served from the side of ice-cream vans.

“I had to get that on the menu,” he says. “It’s probably never seen a raspberry in its life and is possibly banned in 14 countries, but it takes you back to childhood. It’s not like you’re going to drink it, or have it for breakfast every day, it’s a treat”.

He’s always been a fan of sauce, whether it's the chippy or sugary stuff. Singh’s cookbook, Tasty, which was published in 2014, had an entire section dedicated to the stuff. It’s early days but he’ll soon be releasing his own range, Tony Singh’s Dip and Drizzle Sauces, and shows me a picture of the fun packaging. The customers at the pop-up will be guinea pigs for some of his new condiment creations, as Apex will be putting a few of the bottles on tables.

Singh is as non-stop as the Duracell bunny. Although he no longer has Radge Chaat at Edinburgh’s Bonnie & Wild, there’s also the supper club that he throws at his home and he’s gearing up to appear on the next series of Cooking with the Stars. There are plenty of other impending television appearances, and he’s just been shooting a series about Scotland with a Belgian crew.

He’s also planning a non-work-related road trip - a fortnight’s beach holiday to celebrate his wedding anniversary.

“I usually fall ill when I go on holiday, because I’m on it all the time,” he says. “I was talking to this consultant, who looks after brain surgeons and people in high pressure jobs. If they retire and stop properly, they’re normally dead within five to six years”.

As soon as he gets home, Singh is just going to have to quickly get back to making great food.

If only so we can have another Tony Singh’s Road Trip in 50 years time.

For more information about Tony’s Road Trip visit www.apexhotels.co.uk/tonys-road-trip/