Lannan Bakery
The bakers were moved down to a new basement production floor in January 2025 because customers kept photographing them at work, and the same build doubled what the bakery could put out.
Why go
Darcie Maher left school at 15 to work as a chef and did stints at Flour Water Salt in Macclesfield, Twelve Triangles and The Palmerston before opening this in July 2023.5 The pastry ideas she developed on The Palmerston's launch team had already built her a following.3 The name is the Gaelic word for house.2 The room is a Victorian shopfront with BAKERY gilded on the glass, red tiled floors and pastries laid out in haberdashery trays. The seasonal work is where the craft shows: an apple pie built on Kissabel apples with crème fraîche custard, cinnamon sugar and a latticed croissant lid, a rhubarb, custard and almond cake on Marcona almond sponge, merguez sausage rolls with braised fennel and Monte Enebro.3 Staffing went from three to fourteen inside eighteen months.5
Order this / avoid
- Order: the custard slice. It has unapologetically retro pink icing feathered with a fern pattern, and Gaby Soutar stood at the window and watched a baker divide the tray with a tool she called
like five pizza cutters in one.
2 - Order: the cardamom bun, which Peter Simpson called
Supremely buttery and almost candied on the bottom,
sweet, spiced and chewy without being doughy.1 - Order: the pain au raisin. Simpson:
There are so many layers, and so, so many raisins,
andit snaps where you want it to, with soft layers of dough beneath,
with Earl Grey syrup running through it.1 - Order: the nduja bun, one savory thing among the pastries, built with fermented garlic honey and Murcia al vino cheese.3
- Avoid: joining the back of a long line on the off chance. Simpson's own advice after missing the last croissant is to walk away when the queue is bad:
Darcie's old gaff at The Palmerston still has excellent baked treats and far fewer hypebeasts to contend with.
1 Pre-order from the website instead.6
What locals & experts say
- Peter Simpson, The Skinny: he queued at 8.15 on a Thursday, watched the last croissant leave before he reached the counter, and still filed this:
The lamination is excellent, there's a fantastic sheen on everything,
andthese are incredible pastries, some of the best you can get in the city.
1 - La Liste, Pastry Opening of the Year 2024: one of five openings named worldwide, in a category the body describes as
impressive newcomers to the pastry scene that deserve recognition.
The other four were in Melbourne, Paris and Dubai.3 - British Baker, Bakers' Dozen 2025: third of the thirteen best artisan bakeries in Britain, a new entry that year, chosen by a vote of more than 100 hand-picked industry specialists.4
- Gaby Soutar, The Scotsman (June 2024): she set an alarm for 5.30am and got there at 7.30 to find ten people already waiting, one pair over from California.
Whenever I visit, they're either sold out, or there's a massive queue along Hamilton Place.
By 7.45 the line reached Stockbridge Primary School.2
Good to know
- Timing: the bakery runs Monday to Sunday, 9am to 4pm, and the Pantry next door 10am to 5pm.9 It opened four days a week and went to seven as capacity grew, so older listings saying Thursday to Sunday from 8am are out of date.
- The queue: real, and it has formed from three hours before the doors open. The shop sells out.5
- Pre-order: the website opens orders weekly and you place yours up to a week ahead, then collect at Lannan Pantry, which has its own entrance on Hamilton Place. The Pantry does not sell the bakery's pastries and cakes over the counter.6
- In the shop: six customers at a time, and a sign asking people not to photograph the staff at work.
- Nowhere to sit: this is a counter and everything leaves in a box. A dine-in café is the third phase of the build and was still to come as of February 2025. Hamilton Place puts you a couple of minutes from the Water of Leith walkway, and that is where I would open the box.
- Price: £3 for the cardamom bun and £3.60 for the pain au raisin in 2023, which are the only published figures.
- The Pantry: cultured butter from The Edinburgh Butter Company, meat from Bowhouse and George Bowers, charcuterie and cheese from The Ham and Cheese Company, produce from Natoora, plus an in-house butchery making its own sausages and bacon and a cellar of natural and biodynamic wine.6
- Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 27 November 2024, which is about twenty months old. That is past the point where the hygiene register says anything current about the premises, so read it as an aged check and not a clean bill.
- Getting there: Hamilton Place in Stockbridge, a few minutes downhill from the New Town.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "New bakery from insta; nominated as one of the best new bakeries worldwide."
Verdict
should-visit — Darcie Maher left school at fifteen, learned in kitchens including The Palmerston, and opened this in July 2023 with an open-plan room built for three people. La Liste gave it Pastry Opening of the Year in 2024, one of five openings named worldwide, and more than a hundred working British bakers voted it third in the country a year later, which is the vote that counts most here because it is her peers choosing her. The pastry backs it: Peter Simpson queued, missed the croissants, and still called the lamination excellent and the pastries some of the best in the city, with the cardamom bun candied where it sat on the tray and the pain au raisin snapping over Earl Grey syrup. What lifts it past a good bakery is the seasonal work, apple pie built on Kissabel apples with a latticed croissant lid, forced Yorkshire rhubarb, a nduja bun finished with Murcia al vino, and a pantry next door that now butchers its own bacon. It is not a must-visit because it is a counter with nowhere to sit, the queue is a real cost, and the range is viennoiserie done extremely well and not something you cannot find another version of.