MIRIN.

MIRIN

This kitchen ran a broth for over sixty hours a batch, and then stopped, because the guide says the watching eventually took its toll.1

Why go

Sharif Gergis and Elizabeth Elliott opened this address in November 2020 as Gulp Ramen and built a following on that broth.3 In 2023 the room reopened as Mirin with a small-plates card, and the guide now calls it one of the most innovative Asian eateries in Edinburgh.1 The new name is a pun the kitchen explains itself, an Asian cooking ingredient and a traditional Gaelic name at once, and its own description of the cooking is deliberately inauthentic, a mixture of deranged junk food and delicate cooking.7 What that means on a plate is Scottish larder run through Asian technique, and the card moves: roe deer and pork shoulder in a chilli and kaffir lime broth, a dumpling of smoked fish, chilli crunch noodles.8 Sharif Gergis names the supply chain that feeds it, and the unusual word in his list is the one that explains the game on the menu. We will continue to seek out the most delicious and interesting produce from our incredible network of farmers, gamekeepers, fish merchants, foragers, shopkeepers, brewers and wine suppliers.5 Roe deer and sika deer are both on the August 2026 card, alongside reestit mutton and a barbecued wood pigeon with haggis, which is what a gamekeeper and a forager in the supply chain look like once they reach a plate.8 Ramen is coming back at a second address, 126 Leith Walk, announced in February 2026.3

Order this / avoid

• Order: the Cullen skink dumpling. The Good Food Guide calls it fat, chewy parcels of smoky fish in a puddle of chilli-infused coconut cream, which is a Scottish soup taken apart and rebuilt as a dumpling course.1
• Order: the hand-ripped noodles if a ragu is on. The guide caught them under wild boar and Stornoway black pudding; the card rotates and was not carrying that version on 4 August 2026. Ripping the noodle by hand gives an uneven edge that holds a heavy sauce, and the black pudding is doing the job pork blood does in a Sichuan braise.1
• Order: the kombu-cured halibut, GBP 18 on the August 2026 card. Kombu curing is a dry-brine with glutamate in it, and on a lean white fish it is the difference between clean and flat.8
• Order: at least two plates each, because the kitchen sets that as the minimum. Chilli crunch noodles run GBP 16, barbecued monkfish cheek GBP 17.50, veal tongue GBP 17, dumplings GBP 8.50 to GBP 9.8

What locals & experts say

• The Good Food Guide puts the trajectory in one sentence and it is the best line written about this room: What began as a hip little ramen spot on a side street off Leith Walk is now one of the most innovative Asian eateries in Edinburgh.1 The same entry is blunt about getting in: It's hard to get a table, so you must book ahead – also bear in mind your sitting time, as they run a tight turnover.
• Stuart Smith, chef-patron of FIN & GRAPE, picked it in the Good Food Guide's interview series and declared his interest in the same sentence, which is why the quote is carried whole: My wife and I love Mirin on Leith walk. It's our very close friends who own it but as much as we love to go to support them (which we do regularly), our main reason for going is that the food is absolutely delicious…2 He runs the kitchen that took the Good Food Guide's Best Local Restaurant for Scotland in 2024, so the palate behind the pick is on the record even with the friendship declared.
• The Good Food Guide's own banding, which it publishes on four axes: Very Good for deliciousness and warmth, Good for uniqueness and for strength of recommendation, at ££.
• Harden's Review of the Reviews (February 2026) is the one place a Times critic's opinion of this room surfaces, and it surfaces sideways. Writing up a Chitra Ramaswamy review of a different restaurant, Harden's describes the chefs Hugh Brown and Finlay Colvin as formerly of a trio of Chitra's favourite restaurants, Fin & Grape, the Palmerston and Mirin.6 That is Harden's summarizing her, in a piece about somewhere else.

Good to know

• Booking: essential, and it is the single most important fact here. The guide says tables are hard to get and the venue assigns a sitting time.
• Hours: dinner only, Wednesday to Monday, 5pm to 10pm with last orders at nine, closed Tuesday.7
• Price: two pound signs on the guide's band. Two or three plates at GBP 8.50 to GBP 18.50 puts a meal around GBP 35 to GBP 55 a head before drinks, on prices read 4 August 2026. The menu page labels itself a sample and the card moves, so treat those as the shape of a bill.
• Groups: benches and counter stools, and no more room than that. It works for one, two or three.
• Drink: low-intervention wine, in the kitchen's own description of the room.7
• Allergens: the kitchen publishes a hard limit on what it can work around, naming crustaceans, molluscs, gluten, egg, sesame, soya and lactose, and it puts the room's size as the reason. Read that before booking.8
• Where it actually is: Albert Place is on upper Leith Walk, about a kilometer uphill from the Shore, so a Leith address here does not mean a waterfront walk. The Evening News prints the street as Albert Street; the statutory register and the guide both say Albert Place.
• Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 24 September 2025, FHRSID 1274942. Ten months old and clean.9

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: "Times rec".
• Unresolved, and left open. No Times or Sunday Times piece about this restaurant could be found. The Times feature everyone means is its April 2025 Edinburgh eleven, reprinted in full by the Edinburgh Evening News: LYLA, Ardfern, The Palmerston, Skua, The Witchery, Hendersons, Alby's, Montrose, Avery, The Scran and Scallie and Kanpai.4 Mirin is not among them, so that is not the piece he means.
• The best remaining lead is Chitra Ramaswamy, who reviews for The Times in Scotland and who Harden's records counting Mirin among her favorites. Confirming it needs her own words under her own byline, and nothing in reach carries them.

Verdict

should-visit — They ran a broth for over sixty hours and then killed it because the watching was killing them, and the Good Food Guide says the room that replaced it is now one of the most innovative Asian eateries in Edinburgh. That superlative is the case, and what sits under it is specific. The cooking is the Scottish larder put through Asian technique: an Asian take on Cullen skink the guide describes as fat chewy parcels of smoky fish in a puddle of chilli-infused coconut cream, and hand-ripped noodles coated in a spicy wild boar and Stornoway black pudding ragu. Sharif Gergis names gamekeepers and foragers in his own supply chain, and roe deer, sika and wild boar on the card is what that buying looks like once it reaches a plate. The guide bands deliciousness and warmth Very Good, its higher band, on the two axes that matter most for a room this small. Now the limits, and they are real. There is no award, no Michelin standing of any kind, and the guide's own uniqueness band is only Good, which sits awkwardly beside its innovation line. The one working chef who picks it declares in the same breath that the owners are close friends, so that pick carries almost nothing standing alone. Jeff's Times rec went unresolved after twelve query shapes. That leaves one unbylined guide entry doing most of the work, which is why confidence is medium and why this lands at the bottom of the rung. It still clears it. Skua and the Athletic Arms hold this rung on a Bib Gourmand and a national trade title, and the could-visit rooms below them in this city are places whose freshest verdict is 2009, or 2017, or covers a daytime counter only. Mirin has a current verdict, a dish nobody else in Edinburgh is serving, and a counter you have to book to get onto. Go, plan two plates each because the kitchen sets that as the floor, take the dumpling, and read the allergen notice first because the kitchen publishes that it cannot work around seven things.