Bonnie & Wild's Scottish Marketplace
Julie Lin folds Malaysian tacos at Tacos Lah, Gary Maclean works Scottish seafood at Creel Caught, and the 400 seats between them will take a party of eight with no booking.
Why go
The hall opened in the summer of 2021 on Level 4 of the St James Quarter, and Gaby Soutar reviewed it that July across 16,600 square feet of horseshoe-shaped floor.3 Nine kitchens trade here now, along with a bakery counter, a gelato counter, a coffee counter, a bottle shop and three bars.1 Creel Caught is Gary Maclean's first and still only solo restaurant, which he opened here after winning MasterChef: The Professionals in 2016 and being appointed National Chef of Scotland, and Soutar found him working his own pass with three young chefs on a summer weekday.3 Jimmy Lee runs two counters, Salt & Chilli Oriental and Leith Woks; Julie Lin cooks Malaysian tacos at Tacos Lah; and Kochchi is the Sri Lankan business Suki Jayaratne and Shehan Fernando grew out of a converted horse box, named after a chilli pepper.14
The mechanic is why a group ends up here. You order at whichever open kitchen you want, pay there, and take a pager back to a shared table, and Soutar described the moment it goes off: When it buzzes and jumps around, like an electrocuted hedgehog, you collect.
3 Drinks come separately from the bars, so a round arrives while five different counters are still cooking your food.3 Nobody negotiates a single menu, nobody works around one kitchen's allergen list, and the house is explicit about the size it will absorb: No need to book, even for large groups. Just come to our doors and our hosts will give you a warm welcome.
2
The trader list moves, and the record of it is worth reading before you plan an evening. Soutar's 2021 visit found Macduff the butcher, the vegan kitchen Erpingham House, Chix and Rico's Pasta Bar on the floor.3 By her 2022 visit, Tony Singh's Radge Chaat and a Stack & Still pancake counter had arrived.4 Managing director Ryan Barrie listed twelve kitchens in 2023 including east PIZZAS and the IM Bottleshop, and said the point of the place was that they represent a dynamic and diverse Scotland committed to serving up the best of Scotland
.5 Of all those names, only Creel Caught, Salt & Chilli Oriental and Joelato are still trading on the 2026 list.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Arbroath smokie at Creel Caught. Soutar called it the hero dish of the hall at GBP 12.95 in 2021,
buttery and rich
, served with celeriac remoulade and skinny fries.3 That price is five years old. - Order: the Ceylon chicken curry hopper at Kochchi, a rice-flour and coconut-milk crepe formed into a bowl with an egg cooked into the base, GBP 8.50 in 2022. Soutar:
We licked the bowl clean, then ate it too.
4 - Order: the Top Dog at El Perro Negro if the table wants a burger. The counter's own board calls it award-winning and names no award, no category and no year, so read those words as the trader's.1
- Order: gelato at Joelato for the end of it, where the changing list always holds dairy-free and vegan flavors.1 Soutar rated the chocolate and sea salt sorbet above her own rum and raisin.3
- Avoid: the black pork kotthu if you want the dish at its best. Soutar found
some chunks, which were a bit fatty and feral
, and said the counter setup costs the dish its theatre, since a cook normally chops a kotthu in front of you with two blades.4 - Avoid: Chooks until the council comes back. The fried chicken counter has held Improvement Required since an inspection on 27 March 2024, and every other trader in the hall holds a Pass.6
- Avoid: turning up at 9.30 on a Tuesday expecting dinner. The kitchens stop at 9pm and the bars keep pouring until midnight.12
What locals & experts say
- Gaby Soutar, The Scotsman, July 2021, scoring the hall 17 out of 20 on Food 8 and Ambience 9:
If you don't need any more jumpsuits, I'd suggest skipping the retail therapy. Take the escalator and spend your money on Bonnie & Wild instead.
3 On the smokie she wrote,How excellent, to be able to get this dish in what's essentially a shopping centre.
- Gaby Soutar on Kochchi, August 2022, Food 8 out of 10:
The Ceylon chicken curry hopper (£8.50) is a rather beautiful thing. It's a savoury crepe, made from rice flour and coconut milk, but is formed into a little bowl with delicately frilly and crispy edges.
4 She also names what the format costs:the kitchen set up at Bonnie & Wild means you miss out on the theatrical element of this dish being made.
- National Geographic UK, March 2023, in a list of seven UK food courts:
Chef-led concepts take centre stage at Bonnie & Wild, where diners can enjoy steamed Shetland mussels and grilled king prawns from Creel Caught (the first solo venture from the National Chef of Scotland, Gary Maclean), or a delectable katsu chicken curry from Salt & Chilli Oriental (the brainchild of TV chef Jimmy Lee).
5 The Edinburgh Evening News reported that as first place in the UK; the list itself is seven entries and no ranked position was confirmed here. - Nobody has scored the cooking here since August 2022, and both of Soutar's visits predate two thirds of the current lineup.
Good to know
- Timing: daily 9am to midnight. Breakfast runs from 9am, every kitchen is open from noon, and food service stops at 9pm, or 9.30pm on Friday and Saturday.21
- Groups: the house takes large parties with no booking at all, and there are 400 seats to put them in.2
- Mixed diets: nine kitchens each run their own card, so a vegan, a gluten-avoider and a burger eater order separately and sit together. Joelato holds dairy-free and vegan gelato for the end.1
- Paying: cards and contactless only. The venue takes no cash.2
- Hygiene: the register files this address as fifteen separate premises, three bars and twelve traders. Fourteen hold a Pass, the three bars from an inspection on 16 October 2025 and Creel Caught from 2 July 2026. Chooks holds Improvement Required from 27 March 2024, which is 28 months old with no re-inspection published.6
- Getting there: Level 4 of the St James Quarter, five minutes on foot from Waverley, with a street-level escalator up from the east end of Princes Street.32
- Which counters: the lineup on 12 August 2026 was Creel Caught, Salt & Chilli Oriental, El Perro Negro, Chooks, Flùr, Tacos Lah, Kochchi, Leith Woks, Soup & Caboodle, illy Caffè, Eusebi Bakery, Chulo's Stuffed Cookies, Joelato, Rarity Bottle Shop, The Breakfast Club and the Hauf & Howff and Tryst bars. Check it before you plan around one of them.1
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: tacos lah and many good food places; top food court in the city. He also named it in conversation (2026-08-12), while he was arguing about where a group should be sent: "vs. saying going to a food truck park like Assembly George Square Gardens or to bonnie and wild market." He was correcting an answer that had put a mixed table in a single-kitchen restaurant.
Verdict
could-visit — Nine kitchens sell off nine counters into one 400-seat room, and the house says in its own words that a large group needs no booking, which makes this the simplest answer in the city to a table of eight who want different dinners. The cooking behind two of those counters has been scored: Gaby Soutar gave the hall 17 out of 20 in July 2021, calling Gary Maclean's Arbroath smokie the hero dish, and gave Kochchi's Sri Lankan counter 8 out of 10 in August 2022 for a hopper she ate after the filling. Maclean won MasterChef: The Professionals in 2016 and is National Chef of Scotland, and this is still his only solo room. Jeff sends groups here first-hand and the format is his reason, which is the strongest evidence on the page for what it is actually good at. It stops at could-visit for two reasons a reader should weigh. Nobody has scored the cooking here in four years, and the lineup has turned over twice in that time, so the counter you read about may be gone by the time you get up the escalator. Chooks has held Improvement Required since March 2024 while every other trader holds a Pass, and a fresh inspection there plus one current review of the hall would move this up a rung.