I suspect the pho here must be pretty special. They’ve had 40 takeaway orders of the hearty broth over the past 24 hours — in the middle of a July heatwave. Word must have spread fast about the new Vietnamese spot, which opened in the Southside in March. As good as Sen’s eight-hour slow-cooked beef noodle soup sounds, I’ll come back to try it on a day when it’s not baking hot, taps-aff weather outside. Vietnamese summer rolls are what I’m craving. In particular, the pile of fresh and frilly herbs that they come with; refreshing blasts of mint and coriander, or what the Vietnamese call rau thom, meaning fragrant leaves.
Sen is Tam Thi Tran’s first restaurant. She moved from Vietnam to Newcastle in 2012 to study global finance before deciding to open her own business. After many months when she couldn’t open due to the lockdown, plus some renovations to make the kitchen bigger and more breathable for her staff, the smart, small room is up and running. The decor is simple: navy blue walls that her husband helped her to paint and a ceiling dangling with mustard-yellow silk lanterns delivered especially from Hoi An, one of her favourite places in Vietnam. The photogenic ancient trading port is a mix of Chinese temples, Japanese pagodas and French colonial houses, and Vietnamese cuisine is a similar fusion of European and Asian styles.
In the petite former premises of Field, in the heart of student land up by Edinburgh uni, Thi Tran didn’t want to create a fast-food bar. Her website says it’s not about “eat-up-and-go”. She’d rather people relaxed and learnt about Vietnamese traditions.
My mum and I get a warm, unhurried welcome when we go for lunch with my two-month-old baby. Thi Tran checks the music isn’t too loud for him and insists on hand-rolling the summer rolls for us: her twist on the classic prawn dish comes with grilled prawn mousse wrapped around a palm sugarcane skewer. She lowers translucent rice paper into a tall plastic water bowl (a standard household gadget in Vietnam, she tells us) before deftly assembling neat, sticky tubes of cucumber and mango strips, with lettuce, vermicelli and fried shallots. The runny peanut sauce and clear nuoc cham fish sauce add layers of salty and sour depth, and she sends me home with top-ups of each for the leftovers we couldn’t finish.
Our table fills with small dishes: soft nuggets of salt-and-pepper squid made with Thi Tran’s dad’s secret recipe of spices that gradually warm the mouth with a slow-burning heat; spongy fishcakes sitting on a daintily chopped mango salsa with sweet baby mint leaves; a mini portion of salty, lotus-root crisps sprinkled with flecks of roasted seaweed. A plate of chewy chicken pieces in a coconut and lemongrass sauce is a sticky treat, served with egg fried rice, lighter and less oily than the comfort food Chinese takeaway equivalent. We use two long prawn crackers to scoop up mouthfuls of a peppy papaya salad — crunchy strips of carrot give a nice contrast to the slippery tropical fruit and there’s a mild kick behind the chilli and lime dressing. The papaya salad can come with a homemade spicy beef jerky but we pick the meat-free version from the vegan menu, which is another highlight of Thi Tran’s modern Vietnamese selection — she has made sure there is a non-meat pho and Saigon avocado summer rolls among the various plant-based options.
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Seasonal produce is important to her too, so today’s menu will run for six months before she swaps in new items. The seafood comes from Scottish fish markets and the sirloin steak that she uses in Sen’s shaking beef dish, for example, is East Lothian. The sweet basil in our papaya salad is delivered fresh from a Vietnamese supermarket in London — its aniseed fragrance and clove flavour is a key element in many Vietnamese dishes and the Scottish temperatures don’t make it easy to grow her own, she explains. Light and bright fragrances are all over the meal, and the platter of aromatic herbs is exactly what I was looking for. I was excited to drink a Vietnamese drip coffee again too (my first taste was in Glasgow at the Hanoi Bike Shop); the dark, turbo shot of caffeine is heavenly when dripped into a layer of gooey condensed milk in the bottom of the glass and I’m still flying a good half-hour later.
Vietnam’s national flower is the lotus — the sen that the restaurant takes its name from. Growing as it does out of muddy ponds into something colourful and fragrant, it represents purity, commitment and optimism for the future. For a restaurant that began its life in lockdown and seems already vying to be a local favourite, the symbolism seems pretty sweet.
Sen, 41 W Nicolson St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9DB
How it rated
Food 8
Service 9
Atmosphere 7
Total £89.30
What we ate
Lotus root chips £3
Grilled prawn mousse on sugarcane £13
Fish cakes £7.50
Salt-and-pepper squid £8
Vegan papaya salad £8
Chilli and lemongrass chicken £16
Egg fried rice £3
Lime and coconut panna cotta £5
Ice cream £5.50
What we drank
Sparkling water (750ml) £3.90
Glass of pinot noir (175ml) £6.90
Saigon Special beer £4
Decaf coffee £2
Traditional Vietnamese drip coffee £3.50
