Edinburgh restaurants: Huge queue for new pizza joint stretches down Edinburgh street and snakes round corner

To celebrate opening, new pizzeria gave away 500 pizzas, which were gone in just four hours.

Hundreds queued up to get a pizza the action as a popular restaurant opened its latest Edinburgh venue.

Neapolitan pizza restaurant MATTO is a firm favourite on the Capital’s food scene, and hordes of hungry locals flocked to its newest site on Newington Road, in the hope of being one of the 500 lucky people to get their hands on a free pizza. The queue stretched all the way down Newington Road, winding around East Preston Street.

MATTO opened its first pizzeria in Edinburgh’s Meadowbank in 2020, quickly gaining huge popularity for its authentic Neapolitan-style pizzas and becoming one of Edinburgh’s top takeaways on Deliveroo. In 2021, its second site opened in Morningside, a 44-seater restaurant with a large outdoor terrace, in one of the city’s most sought-after neighbourhoods.

Hundred of people queued on Newington Road for the launch of MATTO Pizza’s third Edinburgh site.

The new site is the largest of their three restaurants, seating up to 66 people. The spacious restaurant will boast vintage-style interiors, such as intricate wallpaper designs, with green, pink and gold accents throughout. A blanket of vibrant flowers decorates the ceiling, and large skylights flood the venue with natural light. The centrepiece is a stunning gold mirrored pizza oven, and an open kitchen for diners to watch the chefs at work.

The interiors have been designed by the MATTO team, to create a dynamic and engaging space, which will continue to bring MATTO’S unique character to life and showcase its innovative approach to pizza.

Co-owner Nel from MATTO Pizza said: “We are blown away by the support, and can’t wait to bring our popular pizzas to the people of Newington. It has been an incredible journey and we wanted to reward those who have supported us the past three years”.