The Nook
Everybody called it The Nook, so in January the owner stopped arguing and renamed it that.1
Why go
Gary Quinn built the old name out of his own surname and his partner Julia Oh's, mirrored: OQO. He explained to Deadline News why it is gone: OQO was the name – my partner's name is Julia Oh, and my surname is Quinn – and it was a kind of mirror image, OQO – but no one understood it.
The tagline did the work the name could not. The tagline was The Coffee Nook, and everybody just called us The Nook. So now, as the reiteration, we're just coming back as The Nook, because that's what everyone knows us as.
1 The shop reopened under the new name on 17 January 2026, same door, same owner, after a redesign he did himself with regulars helping. He did it because the room was putting people off: customers had told him the old art deco fit-out looked posh and left them intimidated, so the shopfront came back a punchy yellow and red and the back wall got a mural of a woman in spectacles. Quinn studied theater, and before he ever opened he and his partner acted out the conversations customers would have across the counter.1
The coffee is a single house pour and the shop is honest about how narrow that is. The house bean is a Santu Brazilian single origin, and the shop's own tasting note for it is dark chocolate and caramel with a soft finish.3 Santu roast in Edinburgh, and the reason a cook cares is how they buy: the founders spent eighteen months on a farm in Espírito Santo before starting the company, they ship the green beans over themselves, and Washington Vieira says the farmer gets paid up to double what anyone else would pay and that they can tell you precisely who grew the bean.4 Quinn runs one grinder, a Eureka Zenith 65HS, and one machine, a Conti MC Ultima, and pulls everything through them, with no batch brew, filter or pourover on the list at all. The bean, the tasting note and the kit all come off the shop's own pages as they stood before the January 2026 refit, and it has not republished them since, so they are the last thing it said about itself. Deadline News reported that the reopening kept the same coffees and cakes
, which is the whole of the evidence that the Santu pour survived the refit.1
The baking splits the same way. Cakes, cookies and scones come out of the shop's own oven, and the croissants come in from Au Gourmand, which the menu prints in plain sight.
Order this / avoid
- Order: a flat white on the house Santu. It is the only bean the shop pours, so it is what the machine and the grinder are dialed in for, and a milk drink is where a chocolate-and-caramel Brazilian does its best work.3
- Order: the Scottish breakfast if you are in before three, and take the haggis on it. The kitchen runs 9am to 3pm and stops.
- Order: the shakshuka. Eggs poached into a baked tomato stew, crème fraîche, toast, and the best thing on a kitchen card that does not overreach.
- Order: whatever came out of the oven that morning. The shop bakes the cakes, cookies and scones on the premises, and the reopening kept them exactly as they were.1
- Avoid: the croissants, if a croissant is the errand. The shop buys them in from Au Gourmand and says so on its own menu.3
What locals & experts say
- Tazmyn-Mei Gebbett, The Skinny (July 2026), naming it in a Q&A about where she goes:
My favourite cafes I've discovered since moving to Edinburgh are The Nook (previously Oqo) on Haddington Place and The Whispering Kettle on Albert Place.
She had lived in the city under two months when she said it, and that is the whole of the endorsement record for this shop.2 - No critic has ever reviewed this shop, and no coffee-specialist publication carries it.
Good to know
- The name: the sign says The Nook. Maps, the food-hygiene register and the shop's own website all still say OQO, so search either.1
- Hours: 8am to 6pm, seven days. The kitchen is 9am to 3pm; sandwiches, soup and drinks run all day.3
- Price: nobody publishes one. The board behind the counter is the only place a number appears.
- Hygiene: the Food Hygiene Information Scheme rates this premises Improvement Required, the failing grade in the Scottish scheme, from a City of Edinburgh inspection on 24 June 2026, with no re-inspection pending as at 4 August 2026. Six weeks old, so it is current evidence, and it lands five months after the refit, which means it rates the room as it stands now. It goes in the same breath as the recommendation.5
- Opening year: unknown. Nobody dates the original shop, so no founding year is recorded here at all. The 17 January 2026 date above is the reopening under the new name, on the same premises and under the same owner.
- Working here: unestablished either way. No source says whether laptops are welcome, so ask before you settle in with one.
- Getting there: the top of Leith Walk at the Elm Row end. The Cookbook Shop is next door at 19a and Spry Wines is at number 1, at the far end of the same block.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: Saved with no note; I saved it under the old name, OQO - Your Coffee Nook.
Verdict
could-visit — THE RUNG MOVED THIS ROUND, from listed, and the reason is one sourced fact the round-1 entry could not carry. Its roaster relationship was an unsupported claim reffed to a page that did not make it; it now rests on a Scotsman profile of Santu, whose founders spent eighteen months on a farm in Espirito Santo, ship the green beans themselves and say the farmer is paid up to double. A one-bean espresso bar pouring a roaster who buys like that is doing something specific, and the shop is honest about how narrow the offer is: one grinder, one machine, no batch brew, no filter, no pourover. It bakes its own cakes and buys its croissants from Au Gourmand, and prints which is which. Against the shipped Edinburgh coffee rooms, Lowdown and Papii both ship above this and both have a critical record; this shop has none at all, and its only endorsement is one clause from a writer who had lived in the city under two months. It stays at could-visit rather than higher for that reason and for one more: a current failing hygiene rating from six weeks ago, taken five months after the refit so it rates the room as it stands. Under ADR-0022 that discloses and does not disqualify, and it is a real reason not to send someone across town. Go if you are on Leith Walk.