Review: Stockbridge Eating House, Edinburgh

Editor Richard Bath visits the former site of the much-loved Bell’s Diner to run the rule over the Stockbridge Eating House, the new venture of Gardener’s Cottage co-founder Dale Mailley.

For many Edinburghers, endless chat over burgers at the tiny, intimate surroundings of Bell’s Diner in Stockbridge – often following a visit to one of the many excellent pubs nearby – was a rite of passage.

So when this iconic Edinburgh restaurant finally closed its doors last year after decades of providing affordable comfort food, it felt like the end of an era.

But the news that from October this much-loved site on St Stephens Street would continue to house a restaurant was strangely reassuring.

This was doubly the case when it emerged that the man who would take it on was Dale Mailley, who founded the Gardener’s Cottage back in 2012 and ran the highly-regarded restaurant for a decade.

Mailley was determined to bring the same virtues to Stockbridge that caught Michelin’s attention after he converted the former public loos on London Street into a small but relaxed and award-winning restaurant.

Those virtues include an almost fanatical focus on locally sourced ingredients and an evolving menu to provide unbeatable freshness and variety.

Those elements have become almost de rigueur, but Mailley was always ahead of the game, which is one of the reasons why Gardener’s Cottage garnered rave reviews from food writers as diverse as AA Gill and Jay Rayner, with the latter suggesting it was ‘too good to be true’.

The most obvious similarity between Mailley’s former billet and his new venture is scale: the Gardener’s Cottage was bigger than the 18-cover Stockbridge Eating House, although not by much. The space that once housed Bell’s Diner has been cleared to accommodate three rows of tables, with space for six diners on each row.

Open for dinner on Thursday to Saturday, lunch on Thursday to Sunday, and breakfast at the weekends, in theory this comfortable but spartan space accommodates walk-ins, but we visited on a Thursday in mid-January and the place was rammed, with hopeful diners having to be turned away.

The reason for this popularity soon became apparent. The menu was largely dictated by that day’s deliveries, and was gloriously eclectic.

To start we sideswerved dishes of bone marrow, charred leek with ricotta, and squid with bacon, and instead opted for the monkfish cheeks and the scallops with sausage. Both dishes were surprisingly substantial.

Monkfish was once on virtually all menus but is now something of a rarity, but this dish was a wonderful advert for its virtues. All three cheeks were huge and perfectly cooked cheeks, encased in breadcrumbs and served with a tartare sauce that had a slightly metallic aftertaste.

It was, however, only a minor caveat, and when it came to the scallops there were no misgivings. Three outsized and succulent specimens had been cooked in their shells and came with small squares of what looked like diced chorizo. It’s difficult to make such a ubiquitous dish stand out, but this one really did.

Our two mains of lamb kidneys and mackerel proved that the starters were no flash in the pan. I love offal, and these kidneys came on a doorstopper of toasted bread, lathered with a stunningly rich reduction. Marvellous. One of the biggest mackerel I’ve ever seen was served with celeriac and was also spot on.

Pudding was solid – a nice tarte tatin with a lovely honey ice cream and a decent slab of morbier cheese with crackers – but by then we’d long since made up our minds.

Mailley has lost none of his touch since moving across town, and has created another mini restaurant of undeniable quality and authenticity. We’ll be back.

Starters: £10-20. Mains: £24-29. Puddings: £7 (cheese £8). Stockbridge Eating House, 7 St Stephen St, Edinburgh EH3 5AN. www.stockbridgeeatinghouse.co.uk

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