Edinburgh: Mimi's Bakehouse, City Art Centre

Mimi's Bake house rates highly in our memories of our last trip to Edinburgh.  Even Sylvia remembers the delicious slices and hot chocolates.  We went to the Royal Mile bakehouse one day but it was packing up.  So we made sure to include a trip to the City Art Centre bakehouse in our week.  It was much bigger, closed later and overlooked Waverly Railway Station.

Inside the City Art Centre bakehouse had the cinematic gaiety of black, white and pink umbrellas suspended from the ceiling.  It seems to correspond to the colours of the seating.  There was a lot of seating compared to the cute and cosy Royal Mile bakehouse where we had gone last time.  (In fact it had so few seats when we went the Royal Mile one earlier in our trip that I thought they must have made it smaller since we visited in 2016 but I was assured they hadn't.)

I went to the counter to order and found the service really friendly and helpful.  I really wanted a scone but was told that they had just sold out.  It seemed the woman in front of me had ordered a bag of them.  She was kind enough to let me have one.  I then I had a discussion about if there were any peanuts in the macaron that topped the special hot chocolate.  I don't think it had peanuts but people get very wary about any nuts if they are unsure about which ones are in a product.  Even if with kids like Sylvia who can cope with all other nuts and traces of peanut.

In the end she did not have the macaron on her Raspberry hot chocolate with whipped cream and candy hearts on top.  It was very nice and we could taste pleasant raspberry flavours in the drink.  Sylvia was very pleased to have one of the monthly special hot chocolates.  I had the Cranberry apple riot herbal tea.  I could not taste the flavour well but I did drink it quite hot because it was cold outside.  Our drinks came in eggshell blue crockery that matched the colour on the walls.

I had planned to get a cheese scone but the options were a plain scone or a fruit scone.  I chose the fruit scone and really enjoyed it with butter and raspberry jam.  The scones were warm and soft.  The jam was wonderfully fruity.

Sylvia ordered the Avocado Toast from the All Day Brunch section of the menu.  I had order envy!  The plate came with two decent slices of wholegrain toast, a generous serve of avocado smashed with lime, fried squares of halloumi, tomatoes, mixed greens, crispy onions, a drizzle of vinaigrette and a generous sprinkle of chilli flakes.  It was amazing.  The crispy onions and halloumi were excellent but perhaps a little restraint on the chilli flakes would have been better.

I liked the cute cakes and cake boxes in the window.  We could see people going back and forwards to the railway station just across the road.  And in the background was the grand building which is currently the Balmoral Hotel but is remembered by some older locals by the original name as the Great North British Hotel.

As we found on our previous visit, the slices at Mimi's are wonderful.  I had already been to the Edinburgh Farmers Market that morning so I had already indulged enough and Sylvia was full from the extreme avo toast.  It was not easy to resist.  There weren't lots left as we arrived at the end of the lunch rush but they looked adorable.

We had more plans for the day so once we finished we walked through to the City Art Centre and checked out its gift shop.  E remembers that there was another cafe linked to the City Art Centre before Mimi's.  I don't remember it but Mimi's is artistic enough with is food to be linked.

One last look of admiration at the purple lit thistle street art outside the City Art Centre and then we set off up the steep steps of one of the closes up to the High Street.  It was pretty tiring.  Hard to believe I used to go down Cockburn Street at lunchtimes when I worked at the Edinburgh Council Chambers and then would head back up those steps before returning to work.

Mimi's Bakehouse
City Art Centre
1 Market Street Edinburgh EH1
Open 7 days a week 9am-5pm
https://mimisbakehouse.com/