With all of these new pop-ups and street food purveyors having flooded the city, to take advantage of the Festival bonanza, we shouldn’t overlook those who are ploughing a furrow at the regular Edinburgh markets.
Menu board
We’ve reviewed Bespoke BBQ, Land Foods and Pad Thai, who regularly ply their trade at the Edinburgh Market events, often outside St Mary’s Metropolitan cathedral. We’ve been meaning to review some of the stalls at Stockbridge Market, which convenes each Sunday, for a while, so took the opportunity, a few days ago, to visit Harajuku, purveyors of Japanese fare.
They offer a classic selection of Japanese dishes: miso soup, udon noodles, dumplings, and sushi. I opted for the vegetable dumplings, which come in little bundles of 4 (£3.50) or 6 (£5). The helpful stall holder told me that today’s dumplings were small, so 7 would be a fairer portion. That sounded good to me.
Kitchen
I’ve had dumplings, gyoza, pot-stickers of very varying quality, over the course of quests. I was really pleased to find that these were impressively good, with a good blend of soft top and filling, and crisply fried underside, topped off with an excellently viscous chilli and garlic soy sauce.
There’s a lot of good stuff to take in at Stockbridge Market, with great coffee from Steampunk, food from Babu Kitchen, Blue Parrot and others, and a lovely selection of fresh produce, with Tanny Gill’s excellent cheese stall a particular highlight.
Dumplings
So overall, Harajuku is a great street food option, next time you’re at the market. I hear rumours that they will be expanding to a full restaurant, in the near future, so keep your ears to the ground for that. I look forward to that happening, as the quality on offer at their stall, today, was really impressive.
