Dalry, Italian Restaurant Guide

“Great Italian food” is served in “beautiful rooms” – a collonaded Georgian banking hall modelled on a Florentine palazzo – at this 20-year-old operation from a Scottish-Italian catering dynasty. It’s “quite noisy, but fun”, and is open for breakfast (when ‘Aberdeen butters’, flat Scottish croissants, are served).

“It’s a bit out of the way down Leith Walk” and “you have to go into the shop to find it”, but it’s “worth a detour” to discover the café behind this “Edinburgh legend” – a deli and wine merchant that’s been going strong since 1934, and where diners profit from a truly miniscule (£6) corkage fee on any of the fine wines available in the store. Also on the menu, “great coffee (as you‘d expect) and a wide variety of Italian dolce and snacks” (“if the pizza is on at lunchtime, have it – you won’t regret it”).