Vinyasa — Restaurant in City of Edinburgh

Dined here June 12 and it was worst Indian food I've ever had! When I arrived there were 2-3 tables already eating, but the place was otherwise empty. Shortly after placing my order a party of about 16-20 (mostly children) arrived as well as 2 tables of 2 ppl. I asked for water with no ice, I got water with ice and lime. My two veggie pakoras arrived promptly. They were steaming hot from the inside, but soggy on the outside not crisp at all which gave me the impression and taste of something that had been re-heated/microwaved. Unfortunately, my entree (Chicken Kurma, rice, and garlic naan) seemed to be forgotten as the other two tables I mentioned earlier received their entrees well before me. I would also like to mention that I watched my entree along with someone else's get mistakenly delivered to the table right beside me. It wasn't until that table insisted they did not order either of the 2 entrees did a server finally take the dishes away. They got their correct meals delivered promptly while my entree went back to the kitchen. After some time I eventually receive my entree and rice. I decided not to ask for to be remade because the lady at the table beside me never touched/ate from it. Also, I felt bad as there were only two servers working and they were clearly already overwhelmed as they frantically wheeled drinks, food and dirty dishes throughout the restaurant on a 3-level service cart. If you need to deliver food to tables that way, you need more servers or at least a busser. Even using this cart one server still kept forgetting to remove a random handful of cutlery he had decided to dump on my table. Anyways....I realized the server forgot the naan and brought me the wrong rice. When ordering I had asked if they had "jeera" rice and said if they didn't it was ok I would just order something else. The server said the did not have it, but "no problem we can make it for you" but instead they brought me fried rice. I waited a few minutes and asked for the naan. Another few minutes goes by and still no naan so I ask again pointing to my food saying I didn't want to my entree to get cold. After the third time I finally let the the server know that if the naan wasn't ready to just leave it and to take it off the bill because I didn't want my food to get cold waiting. Instantly, the naan arrives and it's the only redeeming thing I ate. Unfortunately, the Kurma tasted as sad as it looked (very pale light yellow). It was so bland and lumpy that all I could taste was the coconut. Couldn't taste any flavour of almonds, herbs or spices at all. I was so annoyed a this point that I ate a couple more bites and just decided to ask for the bill. However, sever kept chatting with one table even after taking their payment until another table flagged him down. Then he was stuck speaking with the upset table. So it took a while to get my bill, let a lone pay it. Neither server offered take away containers, or even thought to ask how the food was considering more than half of everything was left on the table. My entree was served to the wrong table, was given the wrong rice, they forgot my naan, flavourless entree and most likely microwaves pakoras.... 0/10 would never...

The Vinyasa restaurant have recently launched a Monday Curry Club, where every 4 weeks they offer up a new selection of Indian and Bengali/Bangladeshi cuisine and we were kindly invited along and try out their dishes for May. After a day wandering around Edinburgh, it was good to nip down a quiet side street (just off the Royal Mile) and get away from the crowded streets. Inside the restaurant is modernly styled and brightly decorated so we had high hopes that the food would be just as fresh and stylish.

For £14.95 you get three courses, with a choice of two for the starters and a choice of three for the mains. I went for the Fiaza – lentil pakora. Crisp, not greasy at all like some pakora can be. Very light tasting. It was a little strange as I’m used to pakora with chunks of vegetable or meat. Ideal for a starter.

Mr D went for Shami Kebab, which is basically a burger of meat, chickpeas and spices. The two slices was a large portion, so good if you are hungry but too much for Mr D (and even me). The spices were very strong (but not hot) and overpowered the dish. We both thought grilling the burger would be in tune with our tastebuds. Chicken Saag – the king of meat. Mr D loved this. A good amount of spinach, tasty and tender melt-in-the-mouth chicken and full of flavour. Again the portion was a good size. Lamb with spices and baby potatoes. I love lamb curries and this one hit the spot again. Tender and almost fragile lamb pieces fell off the bone. The potatoes soaked in the spicy coating. A good balance of meat and potato in order to enjoy both parts.

We were recommended the Tarka Dhal to go with the lamb. It was a little too smooth for me, but Mr D loved it. The fried onions permeated the dhal and went well with the rice and chicken. Gulub Jamun for dessert – Thumbs up from both myself and Mr D, deliciously creamy ice cream and cardamom tasting Gulub’s completed a good meal.

Overall, friendly helpful service and good location, if you like meat on the bone then this is well worth the money for the meaty flavours and big portions (so big that we even had a doggy bag to take away with us and Mr Foodie had this for lunch the following day so he was very happy!). Although the spices used were strong, heat-wise the dishes were mild, so if you’re looking for something hot you may have to ask for extra spices or go for something from the regular menu. Recommend for a Monday night...

If there was anything less than 1 star I would have given it. This is worst experience of customer service I have had ever. To start off with, I was visiting Edinburgh and we decided to have Indian for dinner. Vinyasa came up on Google and we headed straight there. We were given the menus. We usually order starters and poppadums first and then order for the main course. We wanted to do the same here, but this very rude server, told us we cant do that. We have to order everything at once. I have not been told that before at any other restaurant, but this guy insisted that we placed all the orders together. He also said, if we cannot order together for the mains and starters then we just cannot place the orders. And so we eventually we just placed all the order together. So first came the poppadums in a steel plate. And wait these poppadums were roasted and burnt!!!! We asked them to take it back. Then came the machli kebab, which was salmon loaded with red colour and tasteless and this was after a wait of 45 mins. The mint chutney was so artificially green!!! This was followed by garlic and coriander naan, which for some reason again had some red colour on it. The curry that we had ordered came after almost more than an hour and was okayish, but lot of turmeric. The customer server was rude and racist. I saw him talking to all the customers politely, but was only behaving rudely to us. Ohh and water was served to us only with main course i.e after an hour and half. If you still plan to visit this restaurant, kindly ask the server there if he is only rude...