Why Leith Is Edinburgh’s Most Captivating Waterfront Neighbourhood

I was walking down Bernard Street in Edinburgh’s trendy Leith district recently when I popped into a pub. Once inside, I was reminded of a scene from the 1996 movie Trainspotting, set in the same area, where a hapless American tourist walks into a bar to use the facilities—only to be set upon by a gang of drug-addled hooligans, one of whom is played by a young Ewan McGregor. My experience was far tamer, a sign of how much Leith has changed since local boy Irvine Welsh wrote the infamous novel upon which the movie was based. Once Scotland’s gritty main port, Leith now features hip coffeehouses and even a few Michelin-rated restaurants.

The harbour’s stars today are the Royal Yacht Britannia—Queen Elizabeth II’s former vessel turned floating museum, and a one-time tender turned luxury floating hotel. “Brittania is visited by over 350,000 people every year and has put Leith on the map,” says Paddy Fletcher, co-founder of the Port of Leith Distillery. “Those visitors have helped improve the transport connections between Leith and the city centre, but the neighbourhood has lost none of its charm or vibrancy. Leith is the perfect antidote to chain shops and bland food.”

Food and drink, in fact, have been instrumental in Leith’s transformation. Fletcher and his partner, Ian Stirling, opened the world’s tallest distillery in 2023, reviving a whisky tradition that dates back to the 19th century, when Leith was a Scotch blending and bottling hub. “It was never a question of where to build,” Fletcher says. “Leith was the only place that made sense.”

That sense of belonging also drew early culinary pioneers like chef Martin Wishart, who opened his acclaimed establishment, Restaurant Martin Wishart, there in 1999. “My wife and I loved the waterside feel,” he recalls. “We’d lived in Amsterdam, and Leith reminded us of that.”

Located on the Shore of Leith—the historic waterfront promenade that runs along the Water of Leith, Edinburgh’s main river, just before it empties into the Firth of Forth—Wishart’s restaurant applies classic French cooking methods to distinctly Scottish ingredients, resulting in such inventive dishes as tartare of sea bream and John Dory Murat with lemon, artichokes and pommes cocotte. In 2001, the elegantly appointed restaurant—think blond wood walls, marble-topped tables and sculptural leather-covered club chairs—was awarded a Michelin star, which it has held continuously ever since. What continues to impress the French reviewers every year is the “great skill” with which Wishart’s restaurant executes its Scottish-Gallic menu, a pairing that isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem.

“[It’s called] the Auld Alliance,” chef Tom Kitchin, another of the neighbourhood’s culinary stars, says of the Scottish-French connection. Before the United Kingdom was formed, the Scots had a long history of siding with France against the English—a strategic partnership in which Leith, as Scotland’s main port, was an integral part. In 1561, for instance, Mary, Queen of Scots, returned from a long sojourn in France through Leith to claim the Scottish crown. Many of Leith’s warehouses were often filled with French wine, which became popular in Scotland.

“We’re located in a whisky bonded warehouse, which back in the day was where whisky was stored,” Kitchin says of his highly regarded restaurant, the Kitchin, which he opened on Commercial Quay with his wife, Michaela, in 2006. Like Wishart, Kitchin “presents modern British cuisine influenced by French cooking techniques,” which these days translates into dishes such as baked Orkney scallops with a deliciously boozy vermouth sauce, and poached Scrabster monkfish with pomme purée. In 2007, the Kitchin was awarded its own Michelin star just six months after opening. It has also held onto it every year since.

As Francophile as they may be, however, both restaurants are unmistakably products of Leith. In its description of Restaurant Martin Wishart, Michelin singles out its unpretentiousness, noting that its dishes “deliver the flavours they promise, with nothing unnecessary on the plate.” The Kitchins, for their part, are proud of their proximity to an older, edgier Leith. “We [have] always liked the vibe of the area,” Tom says. “There are still a fair few old pubs and bars along the Shore, which is about a minute’s walk from where we are.”

It is this judicious blending of historic and new, innovative and unadulterated, that makes Leith so unique. To be sure, many a gentrifying neighbourhood has attempted a similar balancing act—only to see its past swept away in the rush toward modernity. How has Leith managed to become a model of urban renewal without jettisoning its historic identity or losing its long-time edge?

For one thing, the community goes to great lengths to preserve local traditions. Among them is the week-long Leith Festival, which started as the Leith Gala in 1907 and today showcases local art, music and food over seven days each June. The whole thing kicks off with a colourful pageant down Leith Walk, a major street that connects the port area with central Edinburgh.

“The pageant is headed up by the Mock Lord Provost, a lighthearted poke in the ribs to neighbouring Edinburgh,” organizers say, explaining that “many in Leith were against the assimilation with Edinburgh” back in 1920. “The Mock Lord Provost is usually a well- known figure in Leith, often a publican, and is adorned in a gown that was handmade and embroidered over 50 years ago. It’s these little historical details that really make the Leith Festival special. For Leith, by Leith.”

At the same time, institutions such as the Scottish Historic Buildings Trust, which oversees historically significant buildings such as Leith’s 213-year-old Custom House, strive not only to restore and maintain them, but also to animate the structures through new functions and users, thereby fully integrating them into the evolving landscape.

“My favourite parts of Leith are the hidden industrial pockets where a real maker community has flourished in recent years,” says distiller Fletcher. “The industrial sheds house craft breweries, bakeries, whisky blenders, coffee roasters, tea merchants, artists.”

Leith’s “mix of architecture, which ranges in scale as well as age, leaves space for people to inhabit it in interesting ways,” adds Hugo Macdonald, who opened Bard, a chic design shop and gallery on Customs Wharf, with his husband, James Stevens, in 2022. “There’s room for life.”

I observe this myself as I nurse a latte at Williams & Johnson Coffee Co., a bustling café and roastery that’s part of Custom Lane, a design and maker centre comprising studios, a gallery and event space. Custom Lane occupies a portion of Leith’s imposing Custom House, which is currently undergoing a review focused on its potential repurposing as a landmark hybrid-use facility incorporating Scotland’s first fully digital museum. Not far away is one of Leith’s best-known retrofits: the Fingal Hotel, that ship turned floating pleasure palace that perhaps best embodies the marriage of the neighbourhood’s past, present and future.

Moored at the Alexandra Dock, the Fingal is without a doubt one of the most luxurious hotels on water, stationary or otherwise, anywhere in the world. Its 22 cabins—some covering two levels— feature extra-large beds, clubby furniture and moody recessed lighting, with several of the suites boasting free-standing bathtubs and private decks. Its award-winning restaurant, the Lighthouse, embraces seasonality and locally sourced ingredients, such as North Sea crab and foraged mushrooms; the salmon on offer is smoked onboard.

My very first glimpse of the Fingal is through a window on one of the new trams that now connect Leith to central Edinburgh. As more flats, offices and infrastructure are introduced into Leith, there is some concern among locals that the balancing act it has so far pulled off with aplomb may be thrown off-kilter, threatening its “it” factor. Others, though, are less bothered.

“I have had connections to Leith for three decades and have seen it develop a lot,” Bard’s Macdonald says. His three-year-old shop, which is devoted to Scottish craft and design, is in keeping with the neighbourhood’s long commercial history. Today, he and Stevens sell £685 (about US$900) varnished-oak candlesticks by Edinburgh artist Jonathan Freemantle, just as previous merchants marketed French wine or whisky. The neighbourhood, in his view, goes on.

“The grittier aspects and characters are visible and evident still,” he says. “They are part of Leith’s DNA, baked into its bones and blood, and they will never be replaced or pushed out. Leith is like Copenhagen with edges, we always say.”

As I walk around Leith on a gloriously sunny day, from the Royal Yacht Britannia to the pubs and bars of the Shore, I do detect some similarities with the Danish capital, although you’d be hard-pressed to find haggis and such a wide range of single malts in Copenhagen.

“Like all good city ports, there’s a multicultural, mildly lawless feeling in Leith, which lives on and is impervious to any gentrification,” Macdonald tells me. May that feeling never slip away.