Café Milk

Awesome place for breakfast — opens earlier than most at 730am on weekdays and 830am on weekends. Had the chorizo burrito and my cousin had the full breakfast. Everything was great and make sure to try the cakes as well!

Lovely setting, friendly staff. The mushroom burrito I had was bland for my taste, but I’d still recommended the place and will happily come back here anytime.

I love the retro vintage décor of café milk and the staff very friendly however I feel there are things they could improve on like the seating arrangements, the tables are very small and very close together that I kept elbowing the guy behind me. I ordered the full English breakfast and all I really enjoyed were the fried mushrooms and the egg, everything else was too greasy and fatty and the bread to thick. The cake I had, had rose petals on it which was nice but very very rich and it was all a little too expensive. So I tried it, tested it, and wasn’t impressed.

Dropped into Milk for a Long Black — it was very good, and got sidetracked in spite of my best intentions by their cake selection :) It’s a little off the beaten track, but well worth checking out. I’ll be back :)

While in Edinburgh for the weekend I was looking for a nice place where to brunch on Sunday close to my hotel.
The positive Unilocal reviews I read for Café Milk convinced me to get there.
We arrived around noon and got a table for 2. The menu was mouth-​watering, it was very hard to make a choice.
While my husband went for a classic English (full) breakfast, I went for the chorrizo burrito served with mixed rice and salad. Less than £6, I was very worried with what I was about to get…
But it was a very very good surprise. Plate was a full meal and delicious. I was expecting a half dry burrito difficult to eat, I got a smooth and tasty plate.
Except maybe for the service (average) the place is one of the best option in the neighbourhood for a brunch/​lunch/​tea time!
Thank you Unilocal for the discovery :)

When it comes to desserts, I have no self-control…Especially for something really chocolatey! Normally I eat pretty healthy breakfast, but sometimes I do forget my morning ritual. Like this time… I couldn’t resist ordering the chocolate stout brownie cake. I finished it all as my first meal of the day!
Warning: the cake is rich, super Rich but moist with a hint of bitterness from stout. It is something to die for! However… One man’s meat is another man’s poison. I hope you will like it as much as I do.

Excellent service, clean and bright atmosphere, and DELICIOUS healthy food, all for a reasonable price. Recommend the broccoli, pea, and feta fritter salad for a refreshing yet filling lunch.

Really nice little café. We nipped in for a quick bite to eat on the way home. My cheese sarnie was lovely. Chutney was full of flavour and the bread was delicous. It would all make a really nice rarebit combo as well.
Service was great, staff member on duty was friendly and the playlist music wise was fab. our quick stop off here was a nice end to our wee adventure.

Breakfast burrito tasted fresh, healthy, and warm. Stopping by here after landing in Edinburgh after a two flight trip was a relief. Cute cozy place safe from the rain. Definitely wanted to try some other things on the menu. Hope to come back.

Excellent for breakfast! We are staying at the Waldorf Astoria and walked the half mile to eat here. Although the actual restaurant is small, the food has huge flavor. This was a perfect little place to have breakfast. We will be here next time we’re in the city!

Stopped by on my way to the EICC for a breakfast sandwich and coffee. The latte was nice enough, as was my sister’s cappuccino. The food was where it earned the four stars though — we had the sandwiches which were doorstops of fresh seeded bread filled with crispy bacon or a fantastic herby sausage.
I would definitely recommend this place and plan to pop by on my way to work soon to try out some of their sandwiches which look delicious!

Great fresh breakfast. Our family ate the flat bread burrito, full breakfast and muesli. All were wonderful.

Just arrived in Edinburgh, and wanted to grab a more local breakfast (as opposed to the hotel fair). Awesome little café. Staff is very friendly, she suggested the Chorizo burrito, which was outstanding. Latte was also great. Check this place out if you want something healthy, quick and good.

What an awesome little café.
Found on Unilocal when trawling the streets of Edinburgh for brunch. Don’t let the initial look put you iff (as it nearly did me). My companion ushered us in and what a delight.
Friendly staff, good food, great price.
Liked it so much, went back the next day for breakfast!

We ate breakfast there 2 days in a row while visiting Edinburgh. The staff was so friendly, especially the red headed young lady. She made an effort to find something for our super picky son to eat. Food and drinks were delicious! I would eat there again in a heart beat!

I went over here with my partner and his dad for brunch before the big rugby match between Scotland and Italy! It was a perfect spot as it was hidden from the Main Street near the Haymarket train station.
The café is quite small and furniture quite compact as well so if you’re a big person like me, prepare to squish a little if the place is crowded.
Ordered a veggie breakfast, which was at the perfect portion for me (also for my partners dad). Filled me with energy for the game and was scrumptious. Also had their caffe latte which was good for a pick me up.
My partner ordered the vegetarian coffee chilli which was very particular but he really liked it! With a side of a salad pot!
Overall, a nice cozy place with good options of food!

We came here for lunch on New Years Day, and I was disappointed to find they were running a special menu instead of the delicious one that I saw online! Still, we pulled up to a low table and decided to make the best of it. Milk is a very cute little café where they make everything fresh, and it’s a very cosy place to spend an afternoon. I had a pot of peppermint tea while my fiancé had a latte, and I eventually ordered poached eggs on chunky bread with spinach salad, which came with a juice. I think we got the lemon and ginger juice (or was it lime and mint??) but either way it was so refreshing and lovely. The eggs were just perfect, and the thick bread underneath was just gorgeous. A big, hearty piece from an artisan loaf. Spinach was lightly dressed with a tangy dressing. A simple breakfast, but very well made. My fiancé got the slow-​roasted pork wrap in flatbread with herbs and slaw, which was nice of them to make since it wasn’t on the special menu that day but he’d been looking forward to having it. We both enjoyed it, the meat did have a nice flavor, but he found the wrap too small and not quite as good as he’d hoped. He had to grab a healthy little carrot-​nut muffin (which was quite scrumptious) to-​go afterwards since he wasn’t full up!
It’s a bit out of the way, but they have such a cool café menu. Great stop if you’re on the way to the Modern Art Gallery and want something cheap, cheerful, and homemade. Very friendly staff as well, though there aren’t many of them and it can take quite a while to get your food and drinks on a busy day.

Small, but a large window overlooks the busy street, and it doesn’t feel claustrophobic like other places would. The mushroom and rosemary burrito is absolutely delicious. What flavor! My only quip is that it was mostly bread and not much filling. But what you do taste inside is so flavorful … mushrooms, tomatoes, eggs, cheese… amazing! Worth trying.

Beautiful breakfast this morning! Everything is so fresh and tempting. In the end, I went for the Bircher muesli and was not disappointed. The coffee is of a good standard as well… something I find hard to come by, having lived away from Melbourne for a year now.
I am planning to go back for lunch at some stage during my Edinburgh visit. The sandwiches looked amazing!

Had breakfast here this morning and it was fantastic!
The place is small but it makes up for that with some awesome food. I had the breakfast sandwich and found it hard not too buy a second. Not that 2 would have set me back much as this place is cheap (although we live in London so all things are cheap away from there). We had breakfast and coffees for two for £16!!!
Highly recommended if you’re in this part of Edinburgh.

Love this place. This little place has great coffee and also good breakfast. I love the bread that they serve, which makes something as simple as a bacon sandwich really good.
The service isn’t fast or anything, but not slow. But if you’re in a great hurry, it might not be the place for you.

I have passed Café Milk a few times and liked the look of it from the outside. The old syrup tins with cutlery in them on the tables always looked quirky and fun. I wanted to try somewhere new for my lunch and went in for a sandwich. There was only one pre-​made vegetarian sandwich so that made that choice. I couldn’t see any prices on the sandwiches and when the lady rang it through the till it was £3.90! I thought that was a bit expensive for just a sandwich to take away, especially since across the road you can get a fresh made sandwich /​crisps and a juice for £3.50. The sandwich was nice but not nice enough for me to want to go to regularly.
Check out my picture too.

Great eggs! We ordered them poached, and they came in perfect little circles about 1.5 inches. Golden yolks, and fresh ground pepper with sea salt. They were served on to of hearty artisan bread. Perfect start of the day. The arugula salad on the side was perfectly dressed. Yum!
Had the coffee as well. Very meticulously made and delicious!
A lot of customers were walking through the door at 0830, so it wasn’t super fast, but overall, I was very happy

This is only a partial review as I haven’t tried the coffee there. Yet. Stopped by for breakfast on way to the station but was already full of coffee so did not really want any more.
Ordered the breakfast sandwich, which is absolutely lovely, with spinach and cheese. Will certainly go back again, to try their coffee this time!

Pretty underwhelming. We summed it up: «Café Milk has a likeable charm to it, and is good at what it does. However, it didn’t really wow us like it could, and perhaps should, have. There’s an opportunity being lost here, by an over-​commitment to „meek chic“. It works for the setting, but the food needs to be much bolder because, as it stands, it’s not that memorable.»

For my full review of Milk (and photos!) you can check out my blog post here if you fancy
but honestly, don’t wait another five minutes before visiting this place it completely knocked my socks off!
It may be on a nondescript road far from anything particularly overwhelming, but if their bircher muesli isn’t the best reason to visit Edinburgh, then I don’t know what is. Everything about the café was perfect the décor, the menu design (I’m a horrible design snob, I know), the service, the food (oh, the food!) and the very affordable prices.
If I lived in Edinburgh, I’d probably eat breakfast here five days a week. Then nip back for lunch, too.

After hearing several disparate people say «I’ve heard Milk’s quite good…» I thought, well, there’s only one way to see if that’s true!
There are two things that Milk do outstandingly well — the first is the «50s updated» feel… the laminate tables and bench seats, the recycled golden syrup tins with silver cutlery, the cooked-​from-​scratch-​out-​the-​back food and rectangular wall tiles.
The second was that the vegetarian options were incorporated into the menu — not added like some «if we must» section at the end, in a designated list of bland quasi-​dishes. Actually integrated into the offerings, as if it’s perfectly normal to want some vegetable content. Wonderful!
Mind you, the carnivorous options were pretty good, too… I was severely tempted by the Moroccon stew… in fact, I’m having a little lunch-​time fantasy about that right now…
On the occassion I visited Milk, though, I had ducked in to avoid any further drenching and found the staff a little distracted, sorting various logistical things that must have been important, but overall, were pleasant and helpful.
I ordered the butternut squash soup, which came with bread so light and airy it was like eating a cloud. The soup was thick and definitely home-​made, a good comfort meal even if I wasn’t 100% sold on the combination of roasted garlic garnish — it was just a little too sweet/​startling to the tastebuds in a not-​so-​smooth way to be perfect. But, having said that, it was still tasty enough that I managed to get my spoon to scrape noisily on the bottom of the bowl!
After half an hour or so of pleasant working, I also ordered a latte and carrot cake. The latte? Frikkin perfect. The cake? Substantial and light at the same time, and filled with nuts and fruit and wonderful things that one wouldn’t necessarily expect in carrot cake. Delicious although, again, the lemon and vanilla icing will surprise tastebuds indoctrinated to expect cream cheese icing! (But in a good way!)
All in all, an excellent first experience. I will definitely be making regular appearances at Milk, in order to try the Mull Cheddar with Pear and Ginger chutney, Harissa chicken and other delights.