A new creative hub that opens next week on the Leith Shore in Edinburgh’s docks has three separate food and drink offers, including an outlet from the team behind the city’s highly regarded restaurants Timberyard and Montrose.
Brown’s of Leith has taken over a late-Victorian engineering works which as George Brown & Sons was one of the few remaining links to Leith’s industrial past until it closed down last year.
The transformation is the brainchild of architect Gunnar Groves-Raines (right in picture). He has recruited Michele Civiera (left), who is opening a branch of his Civerinos New York-style pizzeria; Ewen Hutchison (centre left), who will be running seafood spot Shuck Bar from ShrimpWreck (formerly of Portobello); and Timberyard’s Joseph Radford (centre right), who is launching Haze, an all-day bar serving small-plates, coffee and wine.
Gunnar says: “They’ll all have shared dining space, so it’s something between a restaurant and a foodhall, though we have more space for them to expand into for production. We want to bring people together to have that creation and inspiration overlap, and that’s already happening.”
The founder of multifunctional design outfit Customer Lane, Gunnar had been discussing a potential collaboration with the Radfords for some time before the opportunity came up at Brown’s.
For the Radfords, Joseph says of the new project: “We think Haze captures that gentle blur between day and night, coffee and wine, morning ritual and evening unwind. It also has a connection to place, with a subtle nod to the sea and the coastal haar that rolls inland.
“The idea behind Haze is to bring a similar level of quality in sourcing and product as our other venues, but in a more approachable, everyday way. We want to really focus on that blurring of lines between morning coffee and evening wine – how the two offerings can work in synergy together. It will be very simple and honest with great coffee, proper wine, cheese, and tinned fish. We’re taking a kind of rustic approach inspired by some of our favourite continental wine bars.
“Haze will be focused on that everyday approachability. We want to make sure the price point feels sharp so that people who want to come in, sit down, and have a full spread of food and drink are just as welcome as those popping by for a takeaway coffee, a retail bottle of wine, some coffee beans, or tinned fish. It will very much become a sit-in and retail hybrid model. And there are plans further down the line to build on that so we can add new elements that allow for growth within the business, for our customers, and for our team in terms of career development.“
Other businesses at Brown’s of Leith when it opens next Thursday 27 November include Woven Whisky, a blending studio that sources single malt and grain whiskies from around the world, and Pyrus flower market. There are also plans for a gelateria, a bakery, and a furniture-making workshop among others.
