About us
Nine tables and a five-kilo roaster
We are a cafe with a roaster in the back room and a baker who starts at half four. Nine tables, one long counter, and a kettle that has been on since 2014.
Our story
How the roaster ended up in the back room
Cafe Edinburgh began as an argument about where to put the grinder. Two of us had spent a decade working in other people’s cafes and wanted one of our own: dark walls, good light, no queues out of the door, and coffee that was worth walking down the Royal Mile for.
We took on a unit on Holyrood Road that had been a printworks and, before that, part of the Canongate’s brewing trade. The stone walls stayed. We added a roaster, a pastry bench, and a second, entirely separate bench for gluten-free work.
We roast a little lighter than the Edinburgh tradition and brew patiently. The menu changes with what the market on Castle Terrace has that week, which is why the soup is never quite the same twice.
How we work
What we care about
Roasted here, every Tuesday
Green beans arrive from a small importer in Leith and go through our 5kg drum roaster in the back. Nothing is more than ten days old when it reaches the grinder.
A gluten-free kitchen that is not an afterthought
Separate boards, separate utensils, separate fryer. Our gluten-free menu is as long as the main one because there is no reason for it not to be.
Scottish where it counts
Milk from a dairy in Ayrshire, fish smoked in Eyemouth, bread from our own bench, and vegetables from growers we can name.
No rush, no minimum
One coffee buys you a table for the afternoon. There is no music loud enough to hurry you and no laptop ban, ever.
Old Town
Our patch of Holyrood
Holyrood Road is a strange, good corner of the city: the Parliament on one side, a royal park on the other, and the oldest part of Edinburgh running uphill behind you.
The close we walk through every morning
Our milk comes in through a close that has been a right of way since before the Union. It is dark, it is steep, and in February it is genuinely unpleasant — but it is the same route the brewers and printers took to work here for three hundred years.
We kept the flagstones, the ironwork and the cold store door, and we have tried not to add anything that fights with them.
Our neighbours, mostly on foot
Parliament staff at eight, climbers heading up Arthur’s Seat at nine, students from the Canongate and a steady stream of people who have walked down from the Royal Mile and want to sit down.
In the evening the room turns over to the other side of the menu: whisky, wine, and the pale ale brewed a mile away.
If it is your first time, sit at the window. If it is not, you already know where the good light is.