The innovative new Edinburgh restaurant that will guide your tastebuds to a higher plane

The former Noma chef is relatively new to the city, so I didn’t want to mention that he was taking on a hexed property.

Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but in two decades of reviewing, I’ve visited SO many occupants of this St Stephen Street address. The restaurants never stick. It’s an awkward slot on the edge of the neighbourhood.

Still, maybe this place will break the spell. It certainly has witchy Wicker Man vibes, with folklore-inspired artwork on the walls, jars full of their fermented and preserved concoctions, and a lichen-covered branch suspended from the ceiling. Hubble bubble.

Already, things are looking promising, as it was busy on a Thursday night.

However, we’d already perused the menu online, and I wouldn’t say it looked particularly appetising. I mean, nobody’s stomach rumbles after they read the words blue spirulina.

Still, the food isn’t style over substance, promised Eddie, who is surely the best restaurant manager in town, and made everyone feel welcome in this relaxed space.

After we’d ordered, Dobson appeared from the kitchen and introduced us to our starters.

He shone his phone torch onto the brill (£14), so we could properly inspect the fillet’s ombre blue rinse, which was created thanks to that spirulina. The dish did look oceanic, even if it is a colour that’s also associated with cleaning products and slushies.

Apparently, the chef sourced this magic ingredient from a guy in Livingston, who grows it in a bioreactor and has been selling samples before he starts to produce it commercially.

Thus, this exotic ingredient fits Moss’s strict ethos of hyper-local sourcing.

And the taste of this dish. My goodness. The pool of buff-coloured sauce, which was made with alchemic ingredients, including shoyu, pine bark oil and stock, was buttery and dreamy, as was the velvety piece of fish. It was topped with a crispy tuile of salty pepper dulce that was as addictive as Monster Munch. Heavenly.

I’d expected some sort of tableside crepe Suzette-esque experience, when it came to the ‘table smoked wild bird’ (£16). But, no, it’s just that the pigeon breast had been smoked using the sawdust byproduct from making their own tables. Bonkers, but brilliant.

The plate also featured leeks, rhubarb, seeds, cherry gel, a charcoal lattice, and a duck skin crumb.

There was lots going on, but all you really need to know is that it was as rich and sweet as a sugar daddy.

I loved the complexity. If you had synesthesia, you might see the flavours as a psychedelic pattern. Every dinner I have henceforth will translate as Dulux magnolia.

And, I don’t think that was just the heady old fashioned cocktail made with Islay whisky (£12) giving me rose-tinted goggles. The mains were just as gorgeous.

The roe deer (£34) was ‘locally shot’ - hopefully not up on Raeburn Place, as the bang I’d heard up there was probably just a Land Rover tyre going pop - and came as a pair of yielding rose pink hunks. These were teamed with two planks of pomme Anna, which had been pimped up with rosemary and garlic and decorated with all sorts of gee gaws, like cep and leek yoghurt, and a white pudding crust. There were two blobs of tangy pineapple wheat gel on the side, like a pair of harvest moons on Mars. Indeed, this dish was interplanetary.

We loved the buttery edged piece of turbot (£32), too, which came with a couscous made from cauliflower and a sunflower seed miso.

There is a single very idiosyncratic pudding - memory foam chiffon (£12).

According to the server, this is the favourite dessert of Dobson’s wife, Akiko Matsuda, and he makes it for her once a week. That’s love. Incidentally, she created the ceramics here, including the tactile water cups. Anyway, I see why Matsuda is obsessed with this cake. I’m relieved that they have just a single pudding choice, because I might have deviated to a chocolatey confection and missed out.

Since they try to steer clear of using sugar, they said it took 17 takes to perfect this springy and incredibly light slice of honeyed sponge.

It comes with a candied beech leaf. We were told that these are only edible for about 10 days per year, so they quickly scramble up the trees, pick and preserve them. There was also a rose cream, fermented apple and sunflower miso, fig leaf snow and meringues made with charcoal.

Don’t overthink it, just go with the flow. It sounds like there might be some ‘challenging’ flavours in there, but there’s nothing not to love.

The meal concludes with buttermint flavoured candy floss on a stick. Why not? After all, you’re in Moss’s pleasingly eccentric world.

I’ve never been anywhere quite like this, and I think it’s going to be something of a destination.

You could say they’ve already broken the 112 St Stephen Street curse.

www.mossedn.co.uk