Pizza Geeks.

Pizza Geeks

The founders call this room The Tardis, because their first one had no space and this one seats about forty.1

Why go

The pin is 7 Commercial Street, on the Shore, and it is the biggest of the four Pizza Geeks rooms in Edinburgh. They took it in 2021 from East Pizzas, put their Stormtrooper mask logo in the window, and opened it as a licensed restaurant with a small bar.12 Patrick Ward's own account of the difference: While The Mothership has limited space, the new restaurant has seating for up to 40 and a small but supremely well-equipped bar.1

Ward and Finlay Clarkson taught themselves off well into double figures worth of YouTube videos watching people make dough and pizza from all over the world, then ran the ovens at Edinburgh street-food markets for two years before the first restaurant opened on Dalry Road in 2018. Clarkson set the kitchen's terms early. We think pizza is pretty simple, he said, and the reason was that the dough is only four ingredients after all. On the base: we've always tried to adhere to the fundamental Neapolitan style as closely as we can.6 The menu that came with them to Leith is the same one, in the operator's own words at the time: it will be the same across all locations.1

Ward runs the company alone now. He told the trade press in January 2024 that a decision he was too stubborn to admit I was wrong about damaged the friendship with his co-founder, that it was patched about eight months on, and that Clarkson then moved to another company.7 The other thing this business does at scale is give food away. Pizza for the People started in August 2018, one pizza donated for every one of that month's chosen variety sold, and by the tenth birthday Ward put it at around 65,000 pizzas and about GBP 200,000 raised.13

Order this / avoid

• Order: the Braveheart, which is the one pizza here you could not buy in Naples. Soutar had it at Dalry Road as blobs of mozzarella on a tomato base, oily and porky discs of salami Milano, crumbled peppery haggis and ashy Stornoway black pudding, and called it Satisfyingly burly.4 Clarkson's own trick with it is to crumble the heavy toppings and slice the salami wafer thin so no mouthful is all offal.6
• Order: the Mario, the house margherita and the bestseller across every branch. At Easter Road, Soutar had it as tomato sugo under a pillowy layer of fior di latte, at album size.5
• Order: the White Walker if you want heat. Ward describes it as 'nduja and pickled chillies, so you get that deep, spicy warmth with a sharp kick, and it is his own current pick.3 'Nduja runs deep in this kitchen's taste: Clarkson gave it, with harissa, as his favorite ingredient in 2022.8
• Avoid: the starters. Soutar's verdict on the antipasti at Dalry Road was Not the most exciting starters, but it's all about the main event here, and she said of the dough balls that she had never understood why anyone orders them before a pizza.4

What locals & experts say

• Gaby Soutar, The Scotsman (March 2021), on this room as it opened: the team had just moved into their newest and biggest location at 7 Commercial Street, in the former premises of East Pizzas, with a window carrying the Stormtrooper mask logo. She reports the room rather than judging the food.1
• Gaby Soutar, Scotsman Food and Drink (November 2018), scored review of the Dalry Road restaurant: Ambience 8/10, Food 7/10. She rated the base, On their Neapolitan style base, with that pine-coloured crusty rim, and she was specific about where it fell short on the Wildling: it would have been nice to have a bit more goat's cheese, since there were only a few milk teeth sized blobs.4
• Gaby Soutar, Edinburgh Evening News (May 2026), on the Easter Road branch: eight years on, the base is still what she rates, their signature tortoiseshell blistered and chewy Neapolitan crust, and of the Wildling, the garlic rosemary oil pizza with goat's cheese and butternut squash, it remains my number one.5
• Patrick Ward, to Gaby Soutar (April 2026): on why the comic-book names are not the point, We've always loved the playful side of naming and storytelling, but we never want that to be a gimmick, the pizza has to stand up on its own. He was also blunt about trading conditions: The toughest time is actually right now, with the wider struggles in hospitality.3

Good to know

• Timing: Monday to Thursday 17:00 to 21:00, Friday and Saturday 12:00 to 21:30, Sunday 12:00 to 21:00, per the operator's own page for this site. There is no weekday lunch here.2
• Booking: take a table. The operator books this room online, and it has the space for a big group, which the counters do not.2
• Sites: four trade in Edinburgh. This one on Commercial Street, the Dalry Road original that the operator labels Haymarket, Easter Road, and a street-food window on Little King Street by St James Quarter. The FSA register holds seven premises under the name, including a company address and an unassessed row. This entry is 7 Commercial Street EH6 6JA. The company also runs sites in Glasgow.39
• Price: no published price for this room. For scale, the sit-down pizzas ran GBP 11.50 to GBP 16 at Easter Road in May 2026.5
• Hygiene: this premises holds a Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 10 January 2024 (FHRSID 1345469). That is about thirty-one months old with no re-inspection published, so read it as a pass on its date rather than as a current reading. The other six premises listed under this name hold their own ratings on their own dates and four of them are Improvement Required, so check the address before you read a rating onto a door.9
• Getting there: the Shore end of Commercial Street, a few minutes from the Water of Leith.2

Jeff's take (his words)

The case for it rests on a Neapolitan bake from a business that started on market pitches, a crust the Scotsman's reviewer has rated twice across eight years at its other rooms, and a haggis pizza that exists nowhere else.

Verdict

could-visit — Jeff's pin is 7 Commercial Street, the Leith restaurant the founders nicknamed The Tardis, and this ruling covers that room alone. It seats about forty, it is licensed, and it took the former East Pizzas premises in 2021. The menu is the same one the business has run since Dalry Road, so the Braveheart is here, salami milano with crumbled haggis and Stornoway black pudding, and so is the Mario, which is the bestseller at every branch. What holds the ruling back is that nobody has reviewed this kitchen in print: Gaby Soutar's two scored verdicts are Dalry Road's in 2018 and Easter Road's in 2026, and under branch discipline neither transfers. The register gives this address a Pass, though the inspection is from January 2024 and nothing has been published since. Book if you want a table on the Shore; note that it does not open until 5pm from Monday to Thursday.