Chorrito Sauce Co, Leith
New to Leith Walk, some of Chorrito's tacos are excellent – but they, quite literally, come at a heavy cost
Leith Walk is back! You can get the bus up *and* down the road! Let the good times roll! Seemingly endless roadworks and development have seen a whole bunch of changes in Leith, and in many ways those changes are typified by Stead’s Place. The sandstone block near the foot of the Walk has been a symbolic battleground in the push and pull between community and business – property developers Drum bought the building and the land around it a few years ago looking to knock it down and start again, while the Save Leith Walk campaign, with Leith Depot at its head, resisted. And resisted. And resisted. The result is a building that’s been refurbished rather than razed to the ground, some chastened developers sloping off with their tails between their legs to redo their plans, and a bunch of new neighbours for the Depot.
One of those neighbours is Chorrito, makers of some pretty impressive all-natural hot sauces. Their space – a bright room with a long open kitchen decked out in metro tiles – pulls double duty, serving as a production kitchen two days a week and a taco restaurant the rest of the time, and it’s a hive of activity when we pop in on a Saturday lunchtime. A handwritten menu board is full of rustic, minimal tacos and other tortilla-based dishes, all served on incredibly nice and (warning) surprisingly heavy tableware.
From the board, the huevos rancheros is a perfectly fried egg topped with some fresh pico de gallo. The black bean and feta taco is a bit on the plain side, but the refried beans are a pleasing stodge-on-stodge combo of earthy beans and chunks of fried potato, with a spicy salsa kicking in from bite to bite. The chorizo quesadilla has a nice sweetness to it, courtesy of some pickled pineapple ketchup, but it’s also a typically oozy, gooey delight with paprika and sausage fat slowly turning the tortilla bright red. We haven’t had the best of luck with what we’ll call ‘slightly off-centre hot dogs’ recently, but Chorrito’s venison dog is incredibly meaty and unctuous, sitting on a smear of homemade salsa verde. You’ll dribble all over yourself, but you probably won’t regret it.
And yet, how do we put this? Friends, pals, comrades… it’s all far, far too expensive. On our visit, a taco set us back between five and seven pounds. Not a pair of tacos, not a plate of tacos – one (1) taco. Our quesadilla – remember, with the oozing and the gooing – was £6.50, and it was gone in about three bites. We aren’t naive to the fact that small, independent food businesses are at the front of the queue for a kicking from capricious energy companies, or that rising costs of raw materials are least able to be borne by brand new folk on the scene. We also note that, since we published this in print, there have been some positive changes to the menu and pricing (depending on when you go and what you want). At the same time, we aren’t going to sit here and say “£6 for one taco, that’s a good deal” at a time when inflation is running wild and budgets are stretched thin, particularly when there are other independent places across town serving very similar dishes which are just as good for literally half the price.
The folk at Chorrito are nice, and it’s a cool place to be, but it’s also a tricky recommendation to make. The Leith Walk roadworks famously suffered from endless, almost comical teething problems and issues before they were finally finished – hopefully for Chorrito, the bumps in their road ahead can be smoothed over.
126 Leith Walk, EH6 5DT
Thu-Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun-Mon, 10am-3pm
chorritosauce.com