Ikigai Ramen Southbridge.

Ikigai Ramen Southbridge

This room was one of Teddy Lee's own Maki & Ramen restaurants before it was an Ikigai. The group says so in as many words: The property was originally a Maki & Ramen.3

Why go

Lee already held five Maki & Ramen restaurants in the city when the second Ikigai opened here in May 2022. That is an expansion group spinning off a specialist brand rather than a new kitchen arriving in town. It is a 26-cover room. Behind the long ramen bar, the kitchen is open.3 The tables are handmade Scottish wood and the ceilings are black. Solas Neon made the neon for the room. The kitchen glosses the word over the door as reason to live.

Seven cocktails carry the idea through the drinks list, each one named for a Japanese concept: wabi-sabi for imperfect beauty, shinrinyoku for clearing your head, katsuryoku for vitality.4 Both the tea and the soft drinks are Scottish and the kitchen names them. Eteaket out of Edinburgh supplies the tea, and Bon Accord the soft drinks.

The kitchen's own account of itself is specific. Nobody outside the business has tested any of it. Current copy on the site says the kitchen cooks the broth for eight hours. It also says the kitchen makes the noodles in house every day.4 Andrew McCall put the broth at nine hours when the branch opened. The chashu is braised pork belly. McCall's framing of why any of that matters is the useful part: The process of making noodles, marinating toppings, and crafting delicious chashu (braised pork belly) and a balanced nine hour broth is not to be taken lightly and the idea that it's just soup has almost all but disappeared.3

Nobody has written down what the tare is, and the tare decides whether a bowl reads shio, shoyu or miso.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the tonkotsu (GBP 13.50 on 4 August 2026). Pork bones cooked hard for hours emulsify their collagen and marrow into the water. That is what makes the broth opaque and thick enough to coat a noodle. It is the build the rest of the card is measured against.4
• Order: the chicken tori paitan (GBP 14) for the detail that suggests somebody is paying attention: marinated wood ear mushroom on top, alongside teriyaki braised chicken and a soft boiled egg.
• Order: the truffle salt and seaweed fries (GBP 5.50). They are the descendant of the GBP 4 chips Gaby Soutar described as a stroke of low rent genius. Basically, golden skinny chips that were heaped in an obscene amount of salt and dried seaweed flakes.1
• Order: three small plates for GBP 20, which is the real ordering unit here. Build it on the miso glazed pork belly with caramelized onion and pickled daikon, and the karaage.
• Order: the vegan tonkotsu (GBP 13.50) if you are feeding a vegan. The card runs a vegan ramen section of its own, five bowls at GBP 13.50 to GBP 14. This one builds the house broth without pork, then loads it with wood ear mushroom, bamboo shoots and shredded smoky facon. The vegan yasai beside it is a soy and truffle dashi with marinated shiitake.4
• Avoid: the duck confit at GBP 19. Eight bowls on this card sit between GBP 13.50 and GBP 15.90 and the duck stands about three pounds above the top of that range with nothing published to explain why.

What locals & experts say

• Gaby Soutar, The Scotsman (July 2022), the only critic who has ever written about this address, and she was mixed. The fries were the high point. The karaage was not: it could have been a bit crispier, when it came to their chewy chicken coating.1 Her paper printed two scores on that review and no others, food 7.5 and ambience 7.5 out of ten, readable now only in the archived copy.2 Nobody has assessed the kitchen since.
• Andrew McCall, marketing director, at the opening (May 2022), made the ambition explicit, and it is the business describing itself: the kitchen wanted the bowl read as craft.3

Good to know

• Hours: unknown, and that is a real gap. No opening times or booking policy are published on the venue's site or anywhere else reachable; the contact path returns a 404 on both fetch routes. Check before you walk down South Bridge for it.
• Sites: four things trade under the Ikigai name and only one of them is on this page. This is the South Bridge branch, which the business itself numbers 二. The original at 13 West Crosscauseway is gone and the address is a Xinjiang noodle shop now. A third Ikigai on Nicolson Street runs a different, wider menu and footers itself as powered by Maki & Ramen. Ikigai Soul Food out at 92 Fountainbridge is a different business with a colliding name, a mile and a half west.
• The card: nine ramen bowls, plus the five in the vegan section. Two of the nine are built on a coconut laksa curry broth, which is a Malaysian idea sitting on a Japanese ramen list, and nobody has written down why.4
• Price: bowls GBP 13.50 to GBP 19, most at GBP 14, small plates GBP 8.50 or three for GBP 20, cocktails GBP 8 to GBP 8.90. Read on 4 August 2026. Against the prices Soutar printed in 2022, the cheapest bowl has gone from GBP 12.50 to GBP 13.50, the seaweed fries from GBP 4 to GBP 5.50 and the karaage from GBP 6.50 to GBP 8.50, while the Kanbina cocktail has not moved off GBP 8.50 in four years.
• Hygiene: the Food Hygiene Information Scheme rates this premises Improvement Required, the failing grade of the Scottish scheme, from a City of Edinburgh inspection on 22 May 2026, no re-inspection pending as at 4 August 2026. Around ten weeks old, so it is current evidence and it belongs in the same breath as any recommendation. The hygiene register numbers this unit 1942711 and the group's Maki & Ramen at 80 Nicolson Street 1942712, consecutive registrations from one operator, and that sibling's Pass of 30 June 2026 is a different premises.5
• The website: use ikigairamenuk.co.uk. The address printed in the 2022 press now resolves to a parked domain-for-sale page, so an old link will look live and tell you nothing.
• Getting there: South Bridge at the Old Town end, a few minutes from the Royal Mile crossing. The trade is student and Southside even though the door is Old Town.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: Saved with no note; the name on my list, Ikigai Ramen Southbridge, is what pins it to the South Bridge branch and not its three namesakes.

Verdict

could-visit — A competent specialist bowl from an expansion group, and the operator motive is the frame the ladder should read it through. Teddy Lee already held five Maki & Ramen restaurants when he converted one of them into this room, and the food-hygiene register records the conversion in consecutive registration numbers. A group rolling out a format carries the burden of proof on culinary edge, and this room half meets it: the kitchen claims an eight-hour broth and noodles made daily in house, the chashu is braised belly, there is a real vegan section of five bowls rather than a token one, and the cocktails are named for Japanese concepts in a room named for one. But every one of those craft claims is the operator's own and none has been tested by anybody outside the business, the only critic to eat here did so four years ago and was mixed, and nobody has written down what the tare is, which is the component that most defines a ramen kitchen. Two laksa bowls on a Japanese list go unexplained. It sits at could-visit rather than lower because the bowl is properly built and fairly priced at GBP 13.50 to GBP 15.90 with an honest vegan offer, and no higher because a current failing hygiene rating is in force from ten weeks ago and because a reader cannot even find out when the door is open. Go if you are on South Bridge and hungry.