‘A confident restaurant to make Leith proud’

I sauntered down the long avenue of Leith Walk, dinner in prospect, the Edinburgh skyline of spires, chimneys, domes and clocks striking against the clear sky of dusk. The flapping, hammering din of car tyres on cobbles subsides as the intermittent, familiar clanking bell of the trams rings through the cool evening air. It’s great to walk through this fine, handsome city, and the crowds deplete as you edge closer from New Town to Leith. The buildings become less dramatic, less imposing – although many still loom out of the coming darkness in their heavy, sootblackened sandstone.

Heron comes as a slight relief (the street lights diminish as you get close to the ports, where it wouldn’t surprise me if a few people slip into the Water of Leith having imbibed of a wee beverage). It’s a smart corner building, strutting out into Leith’s Shore. Once an Indian place called The Raj, Heron opened in 2021 and received a Michelin star earlier this year.

The entrance and bar is on the ground level, the dining room on a raised dais with a swirling balustrade and one’s eye is taken to a grand staircase. The place is beautifully lit – my kind of lighting – gentle, warming, flattering, enhanced by the glowing orange of the backlit bar. It’s soft and light enough so you see what you want to see: menus, the person next to you. In my case this was Dan, an old pal from university, and we spent much time amusing ourselves recalling the days, months, years even, spent at the pub opposite Canterbury West train station. The landlord – who installed a pulpit to satisfy our preposterous youthful confidence – had one rule. If you stayed late (very late) you had to be back at the bar at 9am…

We started with a pair of canapés of raw langoustine, delicate little things in a pastry casing, wolfed down with a louder crab butter and warmed sourdough. Then I had a dish of Orkney scallop, similar in texture to the langoustine but providing a crescendo of flavour with a fat dollop of caviar on top and a large crisp embedded with hazelnut and flecks of spice.

Dan guzzled two strips of partridge with a smooth cherry sauce, which kept him happy. Then came an intercoursal dish, but the plate of the night. A Hasselback potato – those outdated, finedining wretches from the ’70s, the only thing I think to come out of Sweden besides Abba and Ikea; morsels invented to torture students at cookery school, a sort of starchy toast rack for a Minpin. But in this case the most marvellous vessel for an original dish of Cumbrae oyster, whipped with crème fraîche and poured around the potato, with a green swirl of dill oil and further crunch from some crisps inserted in the gaps of the Hasselback. It was intense, sweet, smooth and glorious.

My main course saw two rich little roundels of sika deer, a fine advert for venison (we should all pledge to go beef-free for a few months…) with bits of celeriac, little mushrooms, the odd grape and some walnuts; well balanced, well cooked, tempered. Dan was less happy with his sea bass: ‘Not warm enough and overcooked,’ he grumbled. It did have more the texture of welldone mackerel and I wasn’t going to let an argument dampen the laughter.

We shared a rich pud of raspberry, cream and pastry, and some softish Gubbeen cheese with a complex pile of garnishes on a thin rectangle of bread; we agreed on the need for a cracker…

But Heron does make Leith proud. Like Dan in his dim and distant youth, up in the pub pulpit: confident, charming and extremely decent…

A Hasselback potato is the most marvellous vessel for an original dish of whipped Cumbrae oyster