Stockbridge Eating House
The green Bell's Diner sign is still hanging over the door, and behind it is an 18-cover bistro serving hare and devilled mussels.
Why go
Bell's Diner slung burgers on St Stephen Street for five decades and closed in 2024. Dale Mailley took the premises, and he arrived having lost both of his previous Edinburgh restaurants, The Lookout and Gardener's Cottage.1 The room now seats 18 at rows of communal tables with a couple of two-tops at the window, painted white, with checkered cloths, pillar candles, paper napkins and the menus chalked on boards. Gaby Soutar wrote the most useful line about the cooking: I'd describe their style as Enid Blyton meets Noma.
The starter list is longer than the main list, and hare turns up on the online menu, which almost nothing else in the city does. It is not in the 2026 MICHELIN guide.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the squid seeds and bacon (£14 in April 2025), and read the name as a list. Warm sauerkraut underneath, then fat salty lardons, cavolo nero, white sheaths of squid and a heap of pumpkin and sunflower seeds. Soutar:
Not an obvious combination, but it really shone, and was a huge plateful.
1 - Order: the sausage-wrapped stuffed olives (£14). Fat Gordal olives clad in pork mince, panko crumbed, in a slightly spicy tomato sauce full of fennel seeds. The construction is a Scotch egg's, scaled down to a ping-pong ball.1
- Order: the whole brill (£68) if there are two of you and it is spring. It came
absolutely heady with wild garlic and swimming in butter,
with vermouth-poached fennel and wild-garlic-buttered ratte potatoes on the side.1 - Order: the rice pudding with blood orange (£7), described as "school dinners made luxe," if the puddings are still coming off a spoken list. They were not on the boards.
- Avoid: filling up on mains. There are more starters than mains here and the kitchen puts its ideas into them.
What locals & experts say
- Gaby Soutar, The Scotsman (April 2025):
There wasn't a dud among any of our courses. Each was a total winner.
She also named the front of house: Eddie,easily the best restaurant manager in town,
who told them what the puddings were, since they are not written down. And she was honest about her own bias, having never eaten at Bell's Diner:I'm sorry, I'm just not a burger fan. This place is much more up my strasse.
1 - Gaby Soutar, The Scotsman (November 2025): it made her own shortlist off 43 new-restaurant reviews for the year.
It just celebrated its first birthday, but we visited in April of this year, and had a stellar meal.
She named the venison mince on Company Bakery toast as what she would order off the list at that date.2
Good to know
- Hygiene: the Food Hygiene Information Scheme rates this premises a Pass, from an inspection on 21 May 2026, with no re-inspection pending as at 3 August 2026. Current.3
- The cheap way in: a set three-course lunch on Thursdays and Fridays at £14.95 a head, with a carafe of wine for another £10.50. That was the price in April 2025, so confirm it.
- Price otherwise: starters £14, lamb chops £29, bavette for two £55, whole brill £68, puddings £7. Same date.
- Booking: 18 covers. Book.
- Groups: the seating is mostly communal tables, and two of the mains are built for two people, so a larger table works better here than the cover count suggests.
- Getting there: 7 St Stephen Street, at the Stockbridge end. Skua is at number 49 on the same street and Moss at 112.
Jeff's take (his words)
The case for it is Gaby Soutar reviewing it with no dud course and then putting it on her own year-end shortlist off 43 reviews.
Verdict
should-visit — Dale Mailley lost The Lookout and Gardener's Cottage, then took over Bell's Diner, a burger restaurant that had held the same St Stephen Street address for five decades, and left the old green sign hanging above the door. What he put inside it is 18 covers of communal tables and a menu Gaby Soutar read as Enid Blyton meets Noma: devilled mussels on toast and hare alongside squid over warm sauerkraut with lardons and seeds, and Gordal olives wrapped in pork mince and panko crumbed like a Scotch egg. She said there was not a dud in any course. The kitchen also runs a three-course Thursday and Friday lunch at £14.95, which is the cheapest serious cooking in this batch. It stops short of must-visit because the evidence is one critic at one masthead, Michelin's 2026 directory does not carry it, and the standout lunch price is fifteen months old.