What: An all-day restaurant, wine bar and bottle shop just off Leith’s main drag. In the space that was once home to natural wine bar Mistral, Ardfern offers breakfast and lighter food in the daytime before switching to heartier dishes as night falls.
Who: Ardfern is the latest Edinburgh restaurant project from The Little Chartroom and Eleanore chef Roberta Hall McCarron and her husband Shaun McCarron. One of Scotland’s most exciting chefs, Hall McCarron’s cooking CV includes a stint with Tom Kitchin at The Kitchin and six years at Castle Terrace by Dominic Jack (she left as head chef). She launched her flagship The Little Chartroom in 2018 but moved it to a larger location in Leith in 2021. The same year, she launched the more casual Eleanore just down the road. The Little Chartroom is currently ranked 45 on Restaurant’s list of the top 100 places to eat in the UK. Ardfern brings the pair’s total number of restaurants in the Scottish capital up to three.
The food: Breakfast items include merguez sausage muffin, cheese and egg; a full Scottish breakfast with thick-cut bacon, homemade haggis and tattie scones; overnight oats with fig raspberry and almond crunch; and cooked-to-order filled doughnuts. Lunchtime options include mortadella and cheese, crackers and rose wine jelly; and oysters served either as is or with a seaweed hot sauce. Evening options are more substantial, including the likes of chicken kofta with date molasses, egg yolk purée and crispy chicken skin; fish finger sandwich, seaweed gribiche, shoe string fries; and ox cheek flatbread, fermented carrot, chilli and sesame.
To drink: Adfern offers 100 wines to drink in or takeaway (national delivery will soon be available) alongside a tight selection of cocktails and beers. As at Mistral, the majority of the wines offered are low intervention.
The vibe: Adfern takes its name from and is partly inspired by Hall McCarron’s childhood memories of a village in Argyll and Bute. The interiors reference the landscape and colour palette of the coastal village, ‘evoking a feeling of warmth and comfort’. A mixture of counter and table seating is available (the latter can be booked).
And another thing: Hall McCarron will publish her debut cookbook The Changing Tides later this year.
A full interview with Hall McCarron will be published next month
10-12 Bonnington Road, Edinburgh EH6 5JD