Now that we’re outside Eda, this big, glass-fronted restaurant, we can’t imagine why it took us so long to notice it. Perhaps it’s because it’s right on the corner of the restless junction where Glasgow’s High Street meets the Tron. Rushing by I might have taken it as the lounge of a budget chain hotel.

But now we’re warm inside and the windows prove astoundingly effective at deadening the traffic hum, we can really take in the views it offers, the Tron rearing up in the foreground, the dramatic Ionic columns of the Mercat building, red sandstone tenements with tall, grey slate roofs, a Mary Poppins’ rooftop world with a murmuration of pigeons swooping in formation overhead.

Now that we’ve shaken off the hostile elements outside, and our hands are warmed by Turkish tea, we begin to notice how clean and smart Eda is, its chefs kitted out like consummate professionals in snowy whites, and we see that the screens above the open kitchen aren’t showing trash TV, but taking us on a food tour of Turkey’s food sights and artisans.

READ MORE: Meze Meze, Argyle Street, Glasgow. Reviewed by Ron Mackenna

Seriously, this is making me want to book a trip there right now. The music, haunting, atmospheric Anatolian folk, the sort of thing I might buy a concert ticket to hear, piles on the desire, while my eye takes in the decorative detail I initially missed: Iznik tiles and wall-hung platters, an indigo-blue washed ceiling with a cloud-like effect, pewter and coloured glass lights.

Now my attention comes to rest on the chefs; with all that well-honed knife sharpening they’re doing, they look the business. The smells begin to hit me: an aroma of roasting cumin seed, a cuddly invisible cloud of bread baked to order, just for us.

And unfashionably early in the day as we are, on a Monday, what’s worse, Eda is not caught napping. So as fast as you can open a can of ayran, there appears a basket of steaming hot flatbread, hot doughy, puffy with air bubbles, its exterior with a golden sheen. We dip it into the typically minty Turkish lentil soup, with flecks of red pepper, pul biber, through it, and the customary lemon wedge to squeeze in and sharpen it up.

We use it also to sop up our warm mezze.

There’s aubergine tarator, convincingly smoky from Eda’s grill, the familiar cacik (diced cucumber mixed with yoghurt, mint and garlic), served less usually with warm vegetables: long thin slices of fried potatoes and aubergines, char-grilled, sumac-slathered, vinegar-doused onions, aubergine, and green finger peppers.

The borek are impeccable, as if someone had hand-chopped fresh spinach rather than taken the pre-chopped stuff out of

the freezer, and crumbled the cheese by hand.

Main courses are voluminous; they arrive on elongated platters, like a feast. Eda is a place where a meal for two feeds three. I’ve had better Istkender kebab than this in Turkey.

The lamb is the element that lets it down, a bit too dry, not succulent enough, but it’s a reasonable effort, and the totality of the dish is pleasing, a luxuriously buttery tomato sauce, plump spoonfuls of set yoghurt, little pieces of fried flat bread to soak it up, bouncy bulgar wheat that’s characteristically orange from being cooked with pastes of red pepper and tomato, cinnamon-scented rice with vermicelli cooked through it, and, as if that wasn’t enough, salad on the side and grilled vegetables strewn over the top.

Moussaka comes in a similar assembly, minus the fried bread. For my taste it’s top-heavy with white sauce, and not quite oily enough either.

But here’s a real test for Eda. It makes kunefe to order, the toothsome Middle Eastern delicacy made from kadaifi pastry, cheese, nuts and sugar syrup; there’s a 10-minute wait. And when it comes I’m impressed. It’s not so different from the kunefe I had the good fortune to see being made, and taste, in a bakery in Nablus, Palestine, that’s renowned for this delicacy.

You can see it in the decor, you can see it in the food: somebody obviously takes pride in Eda.

Joanna Blythman Guild of Food Writers Food Writer of the Year 2018

Eda, 8 High Street, Glasgow 0141 552 2843

Food: 8/10

Decor: 8/10

Service: 9/10

Value: 8/10

Joanna Blythman

Guild of Food Writers Food Writer of the Year 2018