Memed Barbecue Grill & Meze Bar
The grill list runs to küşleme, çöp şiş and charcoal liver shish, which is an ocakbaşı card and not a doner counter's.7
Why go
Beside the küşleme there is çöp şiş, small pieces threaded on a thin skewer so more of the surface meets the charcoal, and a charcoal liver shish, with Arnavut ciğeri sitting separately on the meze list for anyone who wants their liver fried and dressed cold. Two offal preparations and a thin-skewer Aegean cut on one menu is a kitchen telling you what it can do. The çiğ köfte names Urfa biber by its own name, which is a buying decision: Urfa is dried in a two-stage sweat that leaves it dark, oily and raisin-sweet, and a menu that names it is not reaching for generic chilli flakes. The sharing platters arrive under a dome of balloon bread.7 There is also a real rakı shelf, priced by the 25ml and by the bottle, which is not something a kebab shop bothers with.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the küşleme, GBP 25. The card calls it the finest cut of lamb, and it is the least forgiving thing on a grill: small, lean, and a minute too long over the coals leaves nothing in it to save you.7
- Order: the çöp şiş at GBP 22.50 if you are eating with someone taking the küşleme, so the table gets both a thin skewer and a thick one.
- Order: the charcoal liver shish, GBP 20.50, which comes with sumac onions, and put the Arnavut ciğeri, GBP 9, beside it. The kitchen fries that one and dresses it with onion, tomato, parsley and pomegranate syrup. Liver over coals and liver out of a pan are two different dishes and this kitchen runs both.7
- Order: the weekday lunch if the bill matters. Twelve to five, GBP 12.50 for one course, GBP 16 for two, GBP 19.50 for three.7
- Avoid: ordering the six-person platter without reading the price. It is GBP 195, and at that number you are buying the whole grill list at once.
What locals & experts say
- British Kebab Awards 2024, Best Kebab House in Scotland, shared win. The Edinburgh Evening News reported the result and named the co-winner, Shawarma King in Glasgow.1 The same paper had printed the shortlist a month earlier: five Edinburgh names went forward, Ada, Daika Kurdish Grill, Kurdish Best Kebab House, Verdo and this one.2
- How that title is decided matters, and the two sources disagree on emphasis. The programme credits a judging panel, and STV calls it
the fan voted category.
4 So read it as half a public poll and half a panel decision, which is a popularity result with a jury attached and is not a critic's verdict. - It went back the following year and placed again. Memed was a finalist in a ten-name Scottish field at the 2025 ceremony on 26 February, where Shawarma King took the title for a fourth consecutive year.3 STV reported Memed as highly commended without naming which category the commendation belonged to, so the placing recorded here is the one the paper documents.
- No critic has reviewed this restaurant. The Scotsman, The List, The Skinny, the Edinburgh Evening News and Bite Magazine have all written nothing about it; the Evening News has covered it three times and every one is an award story. Everything above about the cooking is the menu describing itself.
Good to know
- Hygiene, and it is a fail. The Food Hygiene Information Scheme rates this premises Improvement Required, the failing rating in the Scottish scheme, from a City of Edinburgh inspection on 12 August 2025. No re-inspection was pending as at 4 August 2026, so that is the rating in force and it is twelve months old. Current information, and it belongs in the same breath as the recommendation.8
- Price: dinner mains run GBP 20 to GBP 30 and the platters GBP 58 to GBP 195. The weekday lunch is a different restaurant financially, at GBP 12.50 to GBP 19.50, and there is a GBP 9.50 kids' plate.
- Drink: rakı by the 25ml from GBP 6 for the Yeni up to GBP 8.50 for the Tekirdağ Göbek, and GBP 65 to GBP 90 for a 70cl bottle. Turkish wine by the glass, Efes on draught at GBP 6.45 for 500ml, şalgam and ayran at GBP 3.95.
- Hours: the venue's own contact block says sit-in service runs 11am to 11pm.5
- Booking: the restaurant takes bookings through its own form, for parties from one to twenty or more, which is a better answer on group fit than the platter sizes are.6
- Groups: the booking form goes to twenty or more, and the platters are sized for two, three, four and six.6
- Getting there: South Clerk Street in the Southside, on the same run as Kebab Mahal and a few minutes from West Preston Street.
- Name: the FSA files this premises as Memed Grill & Meze Bar, without the Barbecue that the venue's own site uses.5 Same address, same business.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Best kebab Scotland 2024".
- He is right, and the body is the British Kebab Awards, a programme that has run since 2011. The exact category is Best Kebab House in Scotland, the year is 2024, and what his shorthand leaves out is that the title was shared with Shawarma King in Glasgow.
Verdict
could-visit — The card here is written by somebody who has stood at an ocakbasi. Kusleme is on it, the tenderloin cut a Turkish grill cook shows off with and almost no British Turkish restaurant carries. So is cop sis on a thin skewer so more surface meets the coals, a charcoal liver shish with Arnavut cigeri sitting cold on the meze list beside it, and a cig kofte that names Urfa biber by its own name. There is a real raki shelf, GBP 6 to GBP 8.50 by the 25ml and GBP 65 to GBP 90 by the bottle, which is a buying decision a kebab shop never bothers with. Every word of that comes off the venue's own menu, and that is exactly where the case stops. No critic has reviewed this restaurant anywhere we can cite, so nothing about execution is on the record. The award does less work than it looks. British Kebab Awards, Best Kebab House in Scotland 2024, shared that year with Shawarma King in Glasgow, credited to a judging panel by the organisers and called a fan voted category by STV. Half poll and half jury is a popularity result with a panel attached, and it never reads up into a critical verdict. Then the hygiene line, which is current. The Food Hygiene Information Scheme rates this premises Improvement Required from a City of Edinburgh inspection on 12 August 2025, with no re-inspection pending as at 4 August 2026, confirmed against the register today. Under the hygiene-weight rule a finding in force is a reason to keep a venue out of somebody's first three sends, and it does that here. So: go if the Southside is already your evening, go at weekday lunch where three courses run GBP 19.50, order the cuts nobody else in this city grills, and read the hygiene date before you book.