PIGGS Bruntsfield

The owners' father opened Iggs on Jeffrey Street in 1989, one of the first Spanish restaurants in Scotland.4

Why go

Daniel Campos opened the first PIGGS on the Canongate in 2019 with his father Ignacio, who had retired in 2015 and closed both his own rooms, Iggs and the Barioja Tapas Bar next door to it. Ignacio stepped away again after about two years, and Daniel runs the business now with his brother Victor. This is their second room, open since 20 April 2024 in the premises Saffron had held since 2021, with a few tables outside.3 Daniel was explicit about why it is here. The Canongate room is obviously more with tourists and for this one they were looking to open in a more local area.2

The kitchen cooks straight Spanish tapas and the menu prints its own instructions: two to three tapas a head, or a platter plus a couple, and each one cooked to order and sent when it is ready.4 The technique claims are modest and specific. The kitchen triple-cooks the potatoes under the bravas, sets the tortilla deliberately runny over confit onion, braises the chorizo in cider, finishes the rump with a Pedro Ximenez reduction and carves the Ibérico by hand. The kitchen buys the bread in from Company Bakery and the menu says so. There is a blackboard of daily specials and, Monday to Friday between noon and 5pm, a short bocadillo list that runs alongside the tapas.

The charcuterie and cheese boards are built to feed a table. Both are £42.50 to share and both come with banderillas, olives, guindillas, almonds, walnuts and picos. The business trades as PIGGS Wine Bar and the wine is Spanish: Gaby Soutar's review records a Spanish wine list and a glass of Castillo de Perelada Brut Cava at £7.95 in May 2024.1 The menu prints the fortified list in full, four sherries by the 70ml glass from a Barbiana manzanilla up to a San Emilio Pedro Ximenez solera, vermut by the 50ml, and four Spanish brandies.4

Order this / avoid

Order: the tortilla Española, £9.95. Free-range eggs, confit onion, and set soft and runny in the middle on purpose.4
Order: the pollo al ajillo, £9.25. Gaby Soutar got it as a bonus dish and it was the best thing she ate: feathery soft chunks of chicken thigh in a bowl of broth-like and very garlicky white wine and rosemary sauce. It felt nurturing, like a Spanish twist on Jewish penicillin.1
Order: the filete con salsa PX, £11.95, which is 100g of rump under a Pedro Ximenez sauce, and the huevos rotos at £7.95 with either chorizo or Reserva jamón.
Order for a table: the Spanish charcuteria platter at £42.50, which runs jamón Reserva, chorizo, salchichón, lomo and sobrasada. The cheese board at the same price is Manchego, Mahón, Al Vino and Picos Blue with membrillo.
Order at the end: the Baraquito, £9.95, the Canary Islands coffee built on condensed milk and Licor 43. It is the most distinctive thing on the drinks list.
Avoid: the chorizo a la sidra if you want the sausage to do the work. Soutar found the pieces quite nondescript tasting with most of the flavor coming from the cider sauce.1

What locals & experts say

Gaby Soutar, The Scotsman, May 2024, reviewed this room three weeks after it opened and was measured about it. Her verdict line ties the cooking back to the family: The food here is pretty decent overall. It's all in the genes. The Scotsman scores the whole visit across five axes and she marked it Ambiance 8, Drinks 7.5, Food 7.5, Service 7 and Value 8.1
Soutar on the octopus, which is the sharpest thing anyone has published about this kitchen: The pulpo (£11.95) was slightly disappointing, as the pieces of sliced tentacle were rather chewy - not quite McCowan's Highland Toffee level, but nearly. She had the same complaint about the garnish: The plate also featured about six thin slices of potato, though the menu had said 'boiled baby potatoes'.1 The same dish is £13.95 on the menu read on 4 August 2026, two pounds up on what she paid.4
Soutar on the room and the fit: It's very stylish inside, with window booths, pale wood and bare brick walls. You're slightly cheek to jowl with other diners, but they've made the best of a property that's as narrow as a strip of streaky bacon. On the neighborhood, she wrote that the venue seems like a perfect fit for Bruntsfield, which is as close as Edinburgh gets to La Rambla.1
On the record, no award. This room holds nothing in the three cached Scottish rosters, nothing in the Michelin caches, and no place on the Good Food Guide's 100 Best Local Restaurants for 2024, 2025 or 2026. That is worth saying next to a family name with 35 years in the city.

Good to know

Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 12 November 2024, no re-inspection pending as at 4 August 2026. That is about 21 months ago, so it sits outside the eighteen-month bound and is not a current reading of the kitchen.5
Hours: noon to 11pm, seven days, with no closed day. Stable across two years of first-party sources.4
Booking: taken online, capped at ten people for this room against seven at the Canongate one, with larger parties handled by email.4 The room seats 42.3
Price: tapas £4.95 to £14.95, bites and salsas £2.75 to £6.75, sandwiches £13.50 to £16.50 on weekday afternoons, platters £42.50 and £47.50, desserts £8.50 to £13.95. Beer £5.15 to £6.75, sherry £7.95 to £8.95 a glass, cocktails £10.50 to £10.95. Service is 10% and discretionary. Read off the venue's own menu on 4 August 2026.
Seating: window booths, pale wood, bare brick, and mostly high chairs. The venue says plainly that it cannot guarantee a lower-backed chair, which matters if you are settling in for three courses.
Sibling premises: the original is PIGGS at 276 Canongate on the Royal Mile, which opens at 9am and runs as a coffee room into a wine bar. It has its own menu, its own hours and its own hygiene record, and nothing here transfers to it.
Getting there: Bruntsfield Place at Montpelier, about 30 m from Montpeliers and 232 m down the hill from FIN & GRAPE at Holy Corner. Black Ivy is 475 m the other way.

Verdict

could-visit — A dependable neighborhood tapas bar carrying a family name, with nothing on the evidence that makes it a trip. The pedigree here is continuity. Ignacio Campos opened Iggs on Jeffrey Street in 1989, one of the first Spanish restaurants in Scotland, and Barioja next door, both closing in 2015, and his sons Daniel and Victor run this room. No source ties a dish or a method in this kitchen to either of those, and the line doing the connecting belongs to Gaby Soutar: it is all in the genes. Her May 2024 review is the only bylined read of 171 Bruntsfield Place, written three weeks after opening and now 27 months old, and it scores Food 7.5 out of 10 while marking down the two most technical plates, the pulpo for chewy tentacle and for a menu that promised boiled baby potatoes and delivered about six slices of one, the chorizo for tasting nondescript under its cider sauce. The technique the kitchen does claim is modest and stated plainly: triple-cooked potatoes under the bravas, confit onion in a tortilla set runny on purpose, a Pedro Ximenez reduction on the rump, Iberico carved by hand, with the bread bought in from Company Bakery and the menu saying so. There is no award of any kind, audited against three cached Scottish rosters, both Michelin caches and the Good Food Guide 100 Best Local Restaurants for 2024, 2025 and 2026. Tapas at £4.95 to £14.95 across 42 covers, noon to 11pm seven days, is a good Bruntsfield dinner and it is a standout on no axis.

PIGGS Bruntsfield.