Urban Fox

Where Hewat’s traded for many years before moving to their current Royal Mile venue, the Urban Fox has taken over. I popped in at lunchtime to give it a look.

The place has had a full refit with the decor now full of dark browns, aubergine and tobacco. Chunky wooden tables are matched with banquettes made from refitted pews. 

The menu is a mix of cafe fare and pub grub with burgers prominent. It was a little hard to work out where their strengths might be, but I eventually decided to give their burger a try as I hadn’t eaten one in quite a while.

Their house burger brought together a beef patty with haggis, bacon smoked cheese and onion rings. With the onion rings removed to munch separately – they were very good – the burger could just about be attacked by the shove faceward method.

The burger patty had some good aromatic seasoning but was very light on fat content which made for dry and crumbly eating. The toppings just about held things together for decently enjoyable mouthfuls but there was definite room for improvement.

The accompanying fries were decent and the slaw very good. I’d added a side of mac n cheese which was also pretty good. Portion sizes were routinely beyond excessive so a reductive rethink is needed there.

Overall, Urban Fox has its work cut out to make this challenging location work for them. With fairly minor tweaking and development, their food offering should be strong enough to please. But their main issue is getting punters through the door and in that regard I think their menu needs a bit of reworking to provide a stronger lure.

I ate: Fox burger, fries, slaw, mac n cheese

I drank: water

I wore: muted tones

Total bill: £17