Modern bistro Well worth shelling out for a trip to this little restaurant that’s a big draw

I’VE BEEN in The Walnut for, oh, five minutes and it’s already blindingly obvious this place is a victim of its own location. I’ve booked, everyone else in here has booked. The few empty tables over there are fully booked. It’s only just after half-five. But the sole waiter is being driven quietly demented by the steady stream of people drifting in from the tourist river that is Leith Walk.

Three camera-toting visitors just wandered in and sat down when his back was turned. What follows is one of those Fawlty Towers moments where everyone is speaking at the same time in different languages and nobody is understanding anything, before the waiter manages to politely shoo them out again.

Couple after couple pop up and linger at the door. A man even comes right in and begs for a quick dinner and won’t take no for an answer. Even when he’s told people are coming soon to fill those tables. I’ll only have the main course, he insists. I have to be at church for half-six.

The mention of church springs us eavesdroppers upright. I’m thinking loaves and fishes. There is, after all, still salmon on that menu. And the counter is loaded with giant freshly-baked focaccia on greaseproof paper. A staff confab takes place at the door of the kitchen. We wait. The chef: he say yes. But be quick. The diner then orders the short rib. Ah, well, I’m on a tick-tock clock myself, having been told they will need the table back at quarter past eight. No problemo.

I am keen to get out of Dodge before the Festival starts and not even the staggering number of Edinburgh road closures I navigated on the way in is going to stop me.

That focaccia, then. Good. It’s one of this evening’s drawbacks that pretty much everything is gone from the blackboard menu by the time I arrive. Just that short rib dinner, some scallops, salmon, pea soup, risotto. Oh, and half chickens. Was that skate wings that have been rubbed out? Damn.

I take the scallops to start. Appetisingly seared to sticky on the outside, clean, fresh and fading from pink to white at the centre, sitting on top of a caponata that’s all pine nuts, capers and mild Scottish zing, sliced firm green tomatoes underneath. I like it, and consider the £2 supplement on the £17.50 for two courses reasonable in Edinburgh.

Now there’s not much more summery than this steaming bowl of sweetly-in-season pea soup, shavings of soft ham hough bobbing around, a poached egg drifting in the middle and a drizzle of truffle oil to liven things up. Putting aside the question of whether there is ever any actual truffle in truffle oils, it’s a nicely balanced dish. I’ll pause here for a moment simply to say this lone waiter is terrific. He’s setting tables,

PHOTOGRAPH: GORDON TERRIS The short rib at The Walnut on Edinburgh’s Leith Walk was a crisply caramelised chunk of Scottish beefiness, a 21st-century version of a traditional Sunday lunch