Skua.

Skua

The only dessert is three pounds, in a room holding a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

Why go

Tomas Gormley and Sam Yorke took a Michelin star at Heron at 28 and 25, the youngest chefs in Scotland to do it.1 Skua is what they opened next in March 2023, in the old Blue Parrot Cantina premises on St Stephen Street, and they built it backwards from the usual order: the fine-dining room came first, the casual one second. The two have since parted ways, and Gormley runs this one while Yorke leads Heron.8 The kitchen buys whole carcasses of rare and heritage breeds from Macduff Butcher and works them across both restaurants, which is why the small plates lean on cuts most rooms skip.7 There is a konro grill for the charcoal cooking, and it opened with cider-infused maitake mushrooms coming off it. The room is entirely black and lit by candles, and the menu arrives by QR code. Michelin awarded it a Bib Gourmand in 2025, flagged New on the guide's own full list that year, then carried it into 2026.3 The drinks list was written by Seoridh Fraser, Heron's bar manager, who also works the floor here.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the fried chicken (£10 as reviewed). Boneless pieces in a buttermilk batter that Gaby Soutar described in candlelight as resembling a topographic map, with rivulets of hot, jammy and syrupy fermented peach in the cracks.1
• Order: the pork belly sando (£10), meaty chunks with kimchi and sweet chilli in two crustless white sandwiches. Soutar wrote: This is really good grub to accompany booze.1
• Order: the trout pastrami (£6) when you want a break from the salt and heat. Layered fish on rye with taramasalata dotted over it and furikake dusted on top.1
• Order: the sticky toffee, stem ginger and miso (£3). It is the whole dessert list, and it landed in under ten minutes.1
• Order: whatever the fish plate is. The Good Food Guide's most recent visit found halibut with chicken butter, sea radish, leeks and potatoes it described as bonfire smoky, and Belhaven lobster served on a squid-ink crumpet.6
• Avoid: planning a long, well-lit read of the wine list. The room was dark enough that Soutar wrote the other diners looked like the subjects of Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters, and the toilet is outside.1

What locals & experts say

• Gaby Soutar, The Scotsman: she closed on the comparison to the starred sister restaurant. What a special place. It's the yang to the Heron yin. I have a premonition that it's going to do as well as its avian sister. On the cocktails, which she rated as adult drinking, the Any Other Name (£10) with cognac, Antica Formula, gewurztraminer, Violette, rhubarb and chocolate came out smoky, with a negroni-sized ice-cube.1
• Time Out Edinburgh (February 2026): the most recent published call on the cooking, and it lands on the craft. With an emphasis on seasonal Scottish ingredients, everything is delicately crafted and expertly cooked; each plate looks like it should be on display at the Tate Modern.5
• The Good Food Guide: rates it Very Good on every axis it scores, and describes the room as a bijou basement eatery whose flickering candlelit interiors, black walls, marble tables, banquette seating and a hip, ambient soundtrack add up to a late-night drinking den vibe.6
• Harden's survey: the reporters make the same point about the entrance, that from the unassuming outside nothing suggests the basement is less of a dive and more of a culinary gem, and they rate the drinks list world-class.8
• Tomas Gormley, on the brief for the room (2023): We wanted to create a space perfect for a late-night drink or a bite to eat. Somewhere to go with friends after work or at the weekend. He set the kitchen's terms in the same breath: Our food and drinks menus will be short and ever-changing.7
• MICHELIN Guide: Bib Gourmand from 2025, the year it first qualified, and held in 2026. The Bib is the guide's good-value award, and the plate prices are why it is here.3

Good to know

• Hygiene: the Food Hygiene Information Scheme rates this premises Improvement Required, the failing grade of the Scottish scheme, from a City of Edinburgh inspection on 27 May 2026. No re-inspection was pending as at 3 August 2026, so that is the rating in force and it is about ten weeks old. Current information, and it belongs in the same breath as the recommendation.4
• Price: every food plate on the reviewed menu ran £6 to £10, the dessert £3, cocktails £10. Those figures are from a review read on a 15 December 2025 snapshot.
• Hours: Tuesday 5pm to 10pm, Wednesday and Thursday to 10.30pm, Friday and Saturday to midnight, closed Sunday and Monday. The kitchen stops around ten and the bar carries the last two hours at the weekend, so a Friday or Saturday nightcap here is a real plan and a Tuesday one is not.5
• Booking: worth doing. A Bib Gourmand in a basement room fills up.
• Getting there: Stockbridge, at 49 St Stephen Street, a short walk along the same street from Stockbridge Eating House at number 7 and Moss at 112. eòrna is 131 m away on Hamilton Place.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: "Small plates. Good Ron McKenna review. Bib gourmand 2025. Dean banks chef rec."
• On the Bib: he is right, and precisely right. Michelin's own full Bib Gourmand list for 2025 lists Skua as New, so 2025 is the first year rather than a carry-over, and the 2026 rolls still hold it.
• On the other two: neither checks out. No Herald review of Skua under Ron Mackenna's byline has surfaced anywhere findable, including the Herald's own site search and his author profile, and no Dean Banks recommendation of this room has either. Both stay open.

Verdict

should-visit — Two chefs who became the youngest in Scotland to hold a Michelin star opened a second room where nothing on the food list clears £10 and the only dessert is £3, and Michelin gave that room a Bib Gourmand in 2025 and left it there in 2026. The buying is the reason it is good at that price: whole carcasses of rare and heritage breeds from Macduff Butcher, worked across this kitchen and Heron's, with the small plates built on the cuts most rooms skip and a konro grill for the charcoal work. The plates carry it, from buttermilk fried chicken with fermented peach in the batter cracks to halibut with chicken butter and potatoes the Good Food Guide called bonfire smoky. Time Out's current entry says everything is delicately crafted and expertly cooked, Gaby Soutar called it the yang to the Heron yin, and the Good Food Guide rates it Very Good on every axis it scores. It stops short of must-visit on two counts. The FHIS rates the premises Improvement Required from an inspection ten weeks ago, which is current information and has to sit alongside the recommendation. And no critic has yet given the room a full scored review of its own, so the case rests on a guide standing, a list entry and one 2023 review of an opening week.