Oink Victoria Street
Two Borders farmers built their own roasting oven after the 1999 pig price crash, and the pig you can see through this window has been in it for fourteen hours.1
Why go
Adam Marshall farms pigs near Reston in Berwickshire and Sandy Pate farms about twelve miles away at Longformacus, and the pork carved here still comes off their land.2 They started selling it from a homemade roaster at the first Edinburgh Farmers Market on Castle Terrace, then took this shop in the summer of 2008, which makes 34 Victoria Street the original of the three. The whole business is one product. A hog goes on overnight, the crackling sets, and someone pulls and carves it into a roll in front of you, which is why the shop smells the way it does from halfway up the street. Vertical integration is a phrase people use about supermarkets; here it means the man who reared the pig is the man who owns the counter.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the roll, with haggis. The stuffing choices run sage and onion, apple sauce, chilli relish or haggis, and the haggis is the one that makes this a specifically Scottish sandwich. Ask for crackling on top. Sizes go Piglet, Oink and Grunter, so size up to the Grunter if this roll is your dinner.3
- Avoid: leaving it late. The shop's own summer hours are 11am to 6pm
or until the pork runs out
, and one pig a day is a hard ceiling no matter how long the queue on Victoria Street gets.6
What locals & experts say
- Time Out Edinburgh, best cheap eats (2024):
a tiny shop serving hog roasts, and you'll probably smell it before you see it,
sellingfluffy morning rolls stuffed with moreish roast pork, crackling and a choice of sage and onion stuffing, apple sauce, chilli relish or haggis.
3 - Adam Marshall, co-founder, to the Edinburgh Evening News (12 May 2025):
We built our own ovens, turned up at farmers markets, and hoped people would give it a try.
He also set the bar he is judged by:We've just stuck to what we know: good pork, cooked slow, served simply.
Operator testimony, printed under Roderick Holly's byline.1 - Media profile: Phil Rosenthal filmed the Netflix series Somebody Feed Phil at this address, and the Evening News names Victoria Street specifically. The same report puts Greg James and Ed Gamble among the shop's regulars.1
- Scale, for context on the queue: the company told the Evening News it was aiming to pass 250,000 rolls sold in 2025 across the three shops, on a staff of 30.1
Good to know
- Timing: 11am to 6pm in summer, and the pork can go before closing. This is a lunch and mid-afternoon shop, and it is shut by dinner.
- Booking: none. Walk up, order at the counter, carry it out.
- Sites: three Edinburgh shops, all separate premises with their own records. This entry is 34 Victoria Street EH1 2JW, the 2008 original. The other two are the Canongate shop at the foot of the Royal Mile and Hanover Street in the New Town, and the Canongate one is a good fallback when this queue reaches the pavement.
- Getting there: halfway down Victoria Street, so a minute from the Grassmarket and a couple of minutes from the Royal Mile.
- Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 24 March 2026. Current, and specific to this address.
Jeff's take (his words)
His one ruling arrived in conversation (2026-08-12): "never been to oink; don't care. it doesn't deserve a headline on the homepage."
Verdict
could-visit — The chain is real: Adam Marshall rears the pigs at Reston, Sandy Pate farms twelve miles away, the two of them built the first roasting oven themselves, and the pork on the counter at 34 Victoria Street still comes off their own land twenty-five years later. A hog given fourteen hours, carved to order at single-figure money, with haggis in the roll as the Edinburgh crossing, is honest fast food. It sits at could-visit because no critic has judged the meat in print, and because Jeff ruled it off the headline surfaces on 12 August 2026, in conversation: never been, does not care, and it does not deserve a headline on the homepage. His first-hand signal outranks a farm story nobody with a byline has tasted.