Date Night - Origano

Last Thursday was our second Leith based date night and we headed down the walk to our local Italian restaurant Origano. The restaurant has recently move down and across the road from 277 to 236 to a larger premises. I’d been eyeing it up before they had moved as we had been out exploring Leith, the shutter had a really nice mural on it and was always pretty busy. It was quite quickly put on the date night list.

As date night rolled back around this month we decided it had to be Oregano, one of the ladies in the office had been with family and recommended it, she said the portions were large which is always a good selling point with us!

I got home after work and curled my hair and popped in some wee victory rolls, pulled out my H! by Henry Holland navy dress with red and white swirls on it (I love it because the swirls look like sweets), my red cardigan and my vintage satchel.

We headed down Leith Walk to Oregano for 8:15 (we booked earlier that day and it was all we could get) We were greeted at the door by a man who appeared to be one of the managers/owners who took my name and lead us to two tables and gave us the choice, obviously I chose the window seat. The restaurant was very busy and but the tables weren’t crammed in so we didn’t feel as though we were crushed in. The place was dimly light with large lamp shades and red candles in old bottles. The interior was warm and welcoming with the kitchen open for everyone to see the beautiful purple pizza oven in the far corner.

We ordered our drinks, a large glass of house red for me and an Appetizer for the fella. We settled on 4 cheese garlic bread to share as a starter, the bread was fluffy baguette style with gooey, melty, garlicky cheese on top, it was amazing and the house red tasted superb with it. For our mains we both ordered pizza’s (Martyn took a long time deciding between pizza and lasagne), I had the Origano with tomato, mozzarella, onion, mushroom, red pepper, black olives, santos tomatoes, garlic and parsley and he had Vesuvio  with tomato, mozzarella, diced pancetta, pepperoni, nduja, onion, jalapenos, chillies, garlic, grana padano and parsley. We both ordered the 14” pizzas as it was the middle size, I’d assumed that the couple next to us were having the same size by looking at them… I was wrong! Two massive pizzas turned up at our table pretty speedily, both oozing with cheese and smelling amazing. They were huge, big enough to share between two with a side salad and the 16” were big enough to feed a family of four! I managed 2/3 of the pizza in front of me and had to stop, mostly because I still wanted to leave room for dessert, Martyn managed ¾ so the lovely waitress boxed up our left overs for us and took our gluttonous pudding orders, I had the most moist and creamy tiramisu and Martyn ordered a great slab of lemon cheesecake with a scoop of raspberry sorbet, both were beautiful.

After we had finished our desserts our plates were cleared and we still had our second round of drinks to finish, Martyn was on the Jack and coke by then, we were left to enjoy our drinks. It must have been after 9pm and people were still arriving for dinner and the place was still buzzing with chatter and flickering candle light. We didn’t feel rushed to finish up and free up the table and the staff were lovely and charming, we paid up and grabbed out left overs box and slowly made our way back up the Walk.

Overall Origano was a relaxed and very tasty dining experience. Great atmosphere, friendly staff and good value for money. We’ll be back! 

Origano - 236 Leith Walk EH6 5EL - 0131 554 6539