Best restaurants in Leith: Edinburgh's waterfront food district
Edinburgh: Port of Leith distillery tour & tasting
What are the best restaurants in Leith, Edinburgh?
The Kitchin and Martin Wishart are Leith's two Michelin-starred options; both require advance booking. For more accessible dining, Fishers on The Shore does reliable seafood at fair prices, and The Roseleaf does Edinburgh's best brunch. Leith is 20 minutes from the Old Town by bus and well worth the journey for a proper meal.
Why Leith is Edinburgh’s best neighbourhood for food
Leith has been Edinburgh’s working port for over a thousand years. It was a separate burgh until 1920, with its own identity and a different relationship to the city on the hill than the polished Old Town ever had. That independent spirit persists: Leith’s restaurant scene is not trying to replicate what happens in the tourist centre two miles away. It is feeding the people who live and work here, which means the prices are fairer, the menus are more personal, and the quality is consistently higher than most of what you will find near the castle.
The concentration of quality along The Shore — a cobbled street running beside the Water of Leith from The Sandport Street bridge toward the Western Harbour — is remarkable for a stretch of less than half a mile. Two Michelin stars, a cluster of excellent independent restaurants, good pubs, and the Royal Yacht Britannia at the dock end. Leith is worth most of a day, combining lunch or dinner with a walk through the neighbourhood and a visit to the yacht.
To plan the full neighbourhood visit, see the Leith destination guide.
The Kitchin: Scotland’s most celebrated chef
Tom Kitchin opened his restaurant at 78 Commercial Quay in 2006 at the age of 28, having trained with Pierre Koffmann at La Tante Claire and Guy Savoy in Paris. Within a year he had a Michelin star, making him at the time the youngest Scottish chef to earn one. Eighteen years later, the star remains and the restaurant continues to set the standard for what Scottish fine dining can be.
The menu is built entirely on Scottish ingredients from named suppliers — there is always a list of producers on the menu, which reads like a geography lesson in Scottish food: fish from Scrabster, lamb from the Borders, herbs from the kitchen garden, game from Highland estates. The cooking technique is French-rooted but the flavours are unmistakably Scottish.
A dinner tasting menu runs around £105–£120pp before drinks; the three-course dinner menu is around £75–£85pp. Lunch is better value at around £40–£50 for two courses. Booking is essential and weekends fill two to four weeks ahead.
Martin Wishart: classical precision at The Shore
Martin Wishart’s restaurant at 54 The Shore has held a Michelin star since 2001 and is the more classically French of Leith’s two starred restaurants. Where Kitchin’s cooking is exuberant and ingredient-forward, Wishart’s style is precise and restrained — every element on the plate earns its place.
The menus change seasonally and always feature Scottish ingredients treated with French technique: Shetland scallops, Orkney beef, hand-dived seafood from the west coast. The wine list is exceptional. Dinner runs around £75–£95pp for three courses; the Saturday lunch menu (around £42 for three courses) is among the best value in Edinburgh for food of this quality.
Again, booking ahead is essential. Wishart’s dining room is small — only about forty covers — which contributes to the atmosphere and the booking difficulty in equal measure.
Fishers: reliably good seafood since 1991
Not every meal in Leith needs to be Michelin-level. Fishers at 1 The Shore occupies a small stone building at the water’s edge and has been serving straightforward, honest seafood since 1991. The menu does what it says — fish and shellfish from Scottish waters, cooked simply and priced fairly at £18–£26 for mains. The cullen skink is consistently good; the Shetland mussels in white wine are a dependable order; the fish and chips are the real thing.
No Michelin stars, no elaborate techniques, no chef’s biography on the menu. Just good fish, a view of the water, and an atmosphere that has not changed significantly in thirty years. There is a second branch (Fishers in the City) on Thistle Street in New Town if you cannot get a table at the Leith original.
The Roseleaf: Edinburgh’s best brunch
The Roseleaf at 23 Sandport Place is not technically on The Shore itself but a short walk from the heart of Leith’s restaurant district. It is included here because it does brunch better than almost anywhere else in Edinburgh and because visitors who come to Leith in the morning rather than the evening often overlook it entirely.
The menu is inventive without being contrived: the full Scottish breakfast is excellent, the eggs are cooked properly, and there are enough interesting options (smoked mackerel on toast, Scottish smoked salmon with cream cheese and capers) to justify a proper sit-down rather than a quick stop. Weekend mornings see queues forming by 10am; arrive at opening or accept a short wait. Closed Mondays.
The King’s Wark: Leith’s best pub lunch
The King’s Wark at 36 The Shore occupies a building that has been a tavern in various forms since the fifteenth century — allegedly the site of the tavern where Mary Queen of Scots was first given a drink of wine in Scotland on her return from France in 1561. Whether or not the historical claim is accurate, the building is genuinely old and the atmosphere is consistently good.
More importantly, the pub food is genuinely better than the pub-food average: proper Scotch broth, haggis with neeps and tatties, beef and ale pie. Main courses run £12–£18. The real ale selection is decent. The King’s Wark is the right answer for a winter lunch in Leith.
Port of Leith Distillery: food and whisky together
The Port of Leith Distillery opened in 2023 in a remarkable tower building on Commercial Street, and has quickly become one of Leith’s most interesting visitor experiences. You can visit the distillery, learn how they make their single malt, and drink in the bar at the top of the tower with views across the Firth of Forth. The food offering is secondary to the spirits but the snack and charcuterie boards pair well with the whiskies.
A guided Port of Leith distillery tour and tasting is the most structured way to visit and gives you the full context for what you are drinking. Well suited to whisky enthusiasts visiting Leith specifically.
Kanpai: Edinburgh’s most respected sushi
Kanpai at 8 Grindlay Street is technically just outside Leith in the west end of the New Town, but it draws from Leith’s foodie population and deserves mention here. Edinburgh has no shortage of Japanese restaurants but Kanpai is in a different category: properly made sushi with sourcing that is as rigorous as Kitchin’s, from a chef who trained in Japan. It is not cheap (omakase sets from around £60–£80pp) and the booking situation mirrors the starred restaurants above.
Cafés and lighter options in Leith
Project Coffee (Assembly Roxy area, and Leith Walk) is among Edinburgh’s best coffee roasters with a café attached; the sandwiches are good. Salt Café on Henderson Street does simple, excellent lunch food. Argyle Bakehouse (Argyle Place, technically in Marchmont but popular with Leith workers) does outstanding pastry.
For self-catering visitors or anyone wanting to assemble a picnic for the waterfront, Leith’s independent delis and the Leith market (Saturdays near Ocean Terminal) are both excellent sources of Scottish products.
The Royal Yacht Britannia and dining
The Royal Yacht Britannia, moored at the Ocean Terminal end of Leith, has its own café and occasional special dining events aboard. It is not a restaurant destination in the usual sense, but the gift shop sells some good Scottish food products and the café does basic lunches reasonably. For the full visit, see the food tours page or book a Royal Yacht Britannia ticket directly.
Getting to Leith
From the Old Town, the most straightforward options are:
- Bus: The 22 and 35 Lothian Bus routes run from Princes Street to The Shore in about 20 minutes for £2 (contactless).
- On foot: About 35-40 minutes down Leith Walk from the east end of Princes Street — a pleasant walk if the weather allows, passing interesting independent shops and cafés on the way.
- Tram: The Edinburgh tram now extends to Newhaven, a ten-minute walk west along the waterfront from The Shore.
- Taxi/rideshare: About 10 minutes from the Old Town, costing roughly £6–£10.
The getting around Edinburgh guide covers the full transport picture, including the best apps for real-time bus information.
Lunch versus dinner in Leith
Leith is excellent for both lunch and dinner, but they serve slightly different purposes for a visitor’s day:
Lunch in Leith works well as part of a broader Leith afternoon that includes the Port of Leith Distillery, a walk along the Water of Leith, and a visit to the Royal Yacht Britannia. The accessible price-range restaurants — Fishers, the King’s Wark, the Roseleaf for brunch — are the right choices for a midday meal that does not anchor you at a table for two hours.
Dinner in Leith is the occasion that justifies the journey from the Old Town. The Kitchin and Martin Wishart are dinner restaurants by temperament and format; the atmosphere of the Shore on a summer evening, with light staying late into the night (Edinburgh is at 56 degrees north — in June, it does not fully darken until after 11pm), makes a long dinner at the waterfront one of Edinburgh’s most memorable experiences.
The Leith lunch-walk circuit: Take bus 22 from Princes Street to The Shore, arrive around noon, walk the Water of Leith path upstream (west) to Stockbridge (about 4km, 50 minutes at a comfortable pace), stop for coffee or a late lunch in Stockbridge, and return to the Old Town by bus or continue on foot. This combines Leith’s food culture with Edinburgh’s most beautiful urban walk.
Leith’s food history: why the waterfront matters
Leith’s identity as a food destination is not a recent invention. The port has been receiving imports of wine, spices, and exotic foodstuffs for centuries, and the working dockside culture that surrounded it produced a tradition of unpretentious, substantial food that contrasted sharply with the more aspirational dining of the city on the hill. The fishwives of Newhaven (the fishing community west of Leith) were famous in Victorian Edinburgh for selling fresh fish door-to-door from creel baskets, and the tradition of eating fresh seafood close to the water has survived in the current Shore restaurant culture.
The renovation of the Leith waterfront from the 1980s onward transformed what had been a declining industrial area into one of Edinburgh’s most desirable neighbourhoods. The Shore and the adjoining Commercial Street and Commercial Quay became the natural home for the quality restaurants that were emerging from a new generation of Edinburgh chefs — the rent was lower than the New Town, the atmosphere was different, and the connection to fish deliveries and the dockside supply chain was immediate.
Brunch in Leith
Leith has developed a strong brunch culture that provides an alternative to the Old Town café circuit for visitors who want a morning experience outside the tourist centre:
The Roseleaf (covered above) is the clear leader for weekend brunch.
Smoke and Soul (36 Bonnington Road, technically in the Bonnington area adjacent to Leith) does an excellent weekend brunch with a more cosmopolitan menu — good eggs, interesting sides, strong coffee.
Meze Grill (The Shore) does a Mediterranean-influenced brunch that is an interesting alternative to the full Scottish format.
The best Leith brunch circuit is to arrive at the Roseleaf on a Saturday or Sunday morning before 10am (to avoid queuing), eat at leisure, then walk through the Shore area and along the Water of Leith toward the city.
Wine bars and natural wine in Leith
Edinburgh’s natural wine scene has found a home in Leith more naturally than anywhere else in the city. Several Leith wine bars have built wine programmes specifically around small-producer, low-intervention wines from France, Italy, Georgia, and beyond:
Hame (Henderson Street) is a small wine bar with a focused, carefully chosen wine list and snack plates that pair well with what they pour. The approach is serious without being intimidating.
Westport Bar and Kitchen (35 West Nicholson Street — technically Southside but popular with Leith regulars) mixes natural wine with more conventional options.
The Leith-based sommelier community has been influential in establishing Edinburgh’s broader natural wine culture, and several of the Shore restaurants have improved their lists substantially in recent years under the influence of this community.
Shopping for food in Leith
Real Foods (37 Broughton Street, on the Leith Walk corridor between the city centre and Leith) is Edinburgh’s best health food shop and has an excellent Scottish product selection. Worth combining with a Leith restaurant visit.
Welch Fishmonger (historically one of Edinburgh’s best fishmongers, operating from the Leith area) supplies several of the Shore restaurants and occasionally sells directly to the public. Fresh Scottish fish of this quality — the same supply that goes to Fishers and The Kitchin — is rarely available at comparable quality or price elsewhere in the city.
Leith Market (various locations near Ocean Terminal, Saturdays) is smaller than the Castle Terrace farmers’ market but has a strong fresh fish and seafood emphasis that reflects the neighbourhood’s dockside character.
The Leith dining itinerary
For visitors who want to make the most of a half-day or full day in Leith:
Morning: Walk down Leith Walk from the east end of Princes Street (40 minutes) or take the number 22 bus (20 minutes). Arrive around 10am, pick up coffee at a café on Leith Walk or at Project Coffee near Assembly Roxy, then continue to The Shore.
Late morning: Visit the Port of Leith Distillery tower for the morning tour and views over the Firth of Forth.
Lunch: Fishers for reliable seafood, or the King’s Wark for pub food with character.
Afternoon: Walk along the Water of Leith path (the riverside path runs west from Leith toward Stockbridge and then Dean Village — about 4km and one of Edinburgh’s best urban walks). End in Stockbridge for coffee.
Evening: Return to The Shore for dinner, booking The Kitchin, Martin Wishart, or the more casual Shore Bar if you want a more relaxed ending to the day.
See the two-day Edinburgh itinerary for how Leith fits into a broader visit programme.
Frequently asked questions about eating in Leith
Is Leith safe to visit in the evening?
Yes. Leith has a longstanding reputation in older Edinburgh mythology as rough, but the reality in 2026 is a thriving neighbourhood that is extremely pleasant in the evening, especially around The Shore. Exercise the same common sense you would anywhere in a city at night. The restaurant district along The Shore is well-lit and busy most evenings.
Can I combine a Leith restaurant visit with the Royal Yacht Britannia?
Easily. The Britannia is at the Ocean Terminal end of Leith, about a 20-minute walk from The Shore restaurants. A good sequence is Britannia visit in the afternoon, dinner at one of the Shore restaurants in the evening. See the Royal Yacht Britannia review for how long to allow for the visit.
Do the Michelin-starred restaurants require smart dress?
The Kitchin and Martin Wishart both request smart casual — no shorts, trainers, or sportswear — but neither enforces a strict formal dress code. Business casual is appropriate and comfortable.
Are there good options in Leith for groups?
Yes, particularly Fishers (they have a private dining room that seats about sixteen) and The Shore Bar and Restaurant (decent for groups of up to ten). The starred restaurants are less well-suited to large groups due to their small size.
Is there parking in Leith?
On-street parking is available in Leith, though it can be limited on weekday evenings and weekend lunchtimes. The Ocean Terminal car park serves the Britannia end of Leith. Most visitors from the city centre come by bus, which is easier and cheaper.
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