Pierinos
Perino and Lucia Crolla opened this counter in 1983 as The Tally Tower Fish & Chicken Bar, named for the Martello tower in Leith Docks, and renamed it after the first refit in the early nineties.2
Why go
Their sons Domenico and Adriano run it now, and the Italian half of the operation never went away: there is a pizza counter beside the fryer, which is what an Italian-Scottish chip shop in Leith has always been.7 The frying is what the city's own guide singles it out for. The List sorts Edinburgh's chippies by component rather than by rank, and files this one under Best Batter.1
The award record needs reading carefully, because two different programmes are involved and only one of them sends judges to the shop. In September 2022 the Crollas took Best Fish and Chip Shop in Scotland and the South East regional title on the same night, and in August 2023 they took the regional title again.3 Those are nomination-and-vote results rather than a judged award, so they are recorded here as reported facts and nothing more. The Scottish Fish & Chip Awards is the one whose judges travel to the premises, and there this shop was a runner-up in two East categories in 20244 and a finalist in two more in 2025 without placing.6
Order this / avoid
- Order: the fish supper, for the batter. The List's description is the specific bit:
Thick without being heavy, and with plenty of crunchy extrusions, it makes for a perfect parcel.
1 - Order: a pizza if there are two of you and one wants the other thing. The family has sold both since the eighties.
- Avoid: treating the 2022 Scotland-wide title as a statement about tonight. It was won four years ago, and the programme that judges on site has placed the shop no higher than runner-up since.
What locals & experts say
- The List, Eat & Drink, Best Batter, on 11 Bernard Street:
Thick without being heavy, and with plenty of crunchy extrusions, it makes for a perfect parcel.
1 - Scottish Fish & Chip Awards 2024, runner-up, in Best Chip Shop (East) behind East Coast Eateries and in Best Fish Supper (East) behind The Wee Chippy of Anstruther.4
- Scottish Fish & Chip Awards 2025, finalist in Best Family Business and in Best Fish Supper in the East.6 The body's own winners page for that year does not carry the shop in any category.5
- How that programme decides: The Scotsman's report on the finalists describes judges visiting venues all across Scotland (the paper's account of the process, around quoted remarks from awards director Warren Paul).6 That premises-visit model is why its placings are the ones this entry leans on. CORRECTED 2026-08-07 on audit: an earlier version printed the visiting line as Paul's own words; in the cached page it is the article's narration.
- The Crollas on their 2023 win, posted the night of the ceremony:
We have won the regional award for best fish and chips. Thank you so much guys. This is all because of you.
3
Good to know
- Which award, which body. The 2022 and 2023 titles came from a nomination-and-vote programme called the Scottish Food Awards in one year's coverage and Food Awards Scotland in the next. The Scottish Fish & Chip Awards is the separate, judged programme, and it holds no 2023 roster at all.
- Getting there: Bernard Street, in the middle of Leith, a short walk from The Shore.
- Booking: none. It is a counter.
- Hours: no source cited here publishes them.
- Do not confuse it with: Periano Grill at 141a St John's Road on the far west side of the city, a separate business that registered with the council in July 2026.
- Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 5 March 2019, which is seven and a half years ago. The hygiene register holds nothing more recent for these premises, so treat it as missing information. Two other food businesses on the same postcode currently sit at Improvement Required; this one does not.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Fish and chip award winner 2023." Correct, and it is the smaller of the two. The 2023 prize was the South East regional title; the year before, the same shop took the Scotland-wide one.
Verdict
could-visit — A forty-three-year Leith chip shop that fries well enough for the city's own guide to name its batter the best, and the strongest thing on its shelf is four years old and comes from an awarding body I do not count. Both of those are true at once and they set the rung. On the good side: The List, organising Edinburgh's chippies by component, puts this one under Best Batter and describes it as 'Thick without being heavy, and with plenty of crunchy extrusions', which is a judgment about the frying and not a popularity note. The Scottish Fish & Chip Awards, whose judges travel to the premises, made it a runner-up in two East categories in 2024. The family has run the counter since 1983 and the founders' sons run it now, and there is a pizza oven alongside the fryer, which is the Italian-Scottish chip-shop lineage doing exactly what it has always done in Leith. On the other side: the Scotland-wide title was 2022, from a Creative-Oceanic-class programme that does not clear the bar for an awarding body, so it is reported and not counted. The judged programme has given it nothing since. Nobody has published a word about how the batter is made or where the fish comes from. That is a good chip shop with a real local reputation, worth stopping at if you are on Bernard Street, and it is not a reason to cross Edinburgh.