Edinburgh, Scottish Restaurant Guide

Launched in July 2021, Scotland’s largest food hall (and Edinburgh’s first) features a range of chef-led food stalls and restaurants. These include The Gannet East, Creel Caught, Erpingham House, El Perro Negro, east PIZZAS, Broken Clock, Joelato, Salt & Chilli Oriental and CHIX. Also houses Inverarity Morton’s boutique bottleshop.

The iconic sporting estate is launching its first ever city spinoff in Autumn 2021, taking over the old Bank of Scotland headquarters in New Town, and offering 33 bedrooms, a private members’ club and an all-day restaurant. This last is located in the former banking hall – from the visuals shared the look will be one of august, traditional beauty but, in a sign of modernism. the food offering is focused more on brunch than it is on afternoon tea, apparently.

MasterChef: The Professionals winner Gary Maclean opened his first restaurant in summer 2021 on the fourth floor of the Bonnie & Wild Marketplace: Edinburgh's first food hall in St James Quarter. The menu champions sustainable Scottish seafood, with the ‘award-winning Arbroath Smokies’ a signature dish.

2021 Review: David Howie Scott’s flagship venue at the foot of Calton Hill celebrates its 30th anniversary last year as a purveyor of inexpensive Scottish classics. The odd reporter feels that it’s “nice enough, but not the stand-out it could be”, but that’s within the context of pretty solid ratings overall. There are two spinoffs in Edinburgh and one in Aberdeen.

2021 Review: Owned by the Crolla family (who started Valvona & Crolla, Scotland’s oldest deli and Italian wine merchant – see also), this sixteenth century fine dining spot is a beacon on the otherwise touristy Royal Mile owing to its “well-cooked and well-seasoned” Scottish fare and “good value Sunday lunch”; for a truly intimate dining experience, try ‘Halo’, upstairs, which seats just four.

In 2021, Gordon Craig and wife Lucy moved their well-rated operation of five years’ standing from Raeburn Place to this new address in the New Town, on the site of Le Roi Fou (RIP). Our feedback remains enthusiastic for its innovative use of British ingredients. “There’s a market menu, which is a steal, and full tasting options if you’re feeling hungrier. Highly recommended”.

2021 Review: “Making other fine dining establishments in town look somewhat staid, out of touch and overpriced” – this April 2018 newcomer is “superb”, and some would say “the best restaurant to have opened in Edinburgh in recent times”. “A charismatic space” with “splendid service” – “the reference on its website to ‘progressive Italian dining’ is accurate” and the modern cuisine is “outstanding” – “go downstairs to see the kitchen in action”. To match the fine cooking there’s “an exceptional, mostly Italian, wine list”.

This ambitious and ultra-seasonal take on modern Scottish cuisine produces “really enjoyable” meals, served in the form of multiple-course tasting menus in a minimalist city-centre venue. Launched three years ago by chef Scott Smith and his wife Laura as the follow-up to their highly regarded Norn in Leith, it has put its early unevenness behind it and these days puts in a consistently strong performance. Scott grew up in rural Aberdeenshire and now has a kitchen garden outside Edinburgh to grow specialist ingredients. The name derives from the Gaelic for ‘true’.

2018 Review: A reliable and “quirky”, many-chambered fixture occupying a former storeroom on a touristy street in the Old Town, whose essentially classic Scottish cuisine is consistently well rated.

James Thomson’s more than 40-year restoration of a sixteenth-century merchant’s house near Edinburgh Castle has yielded one of the most “atmospheric” dining venues in the country – a gorgeous Gothic extravaganza where even lunch and afternoon tea are candle-lit. The cuisine is appropriately old-school – very “tasty”, too – and is backed up by an “amazing wine list” and whisky selection. You can eat amid the leather, wood panelling and tapestries of the dining room or in the ‘Secret Garden’, and if you want the illusion to last a few hours longer you can stay in one of the individually decorated bedrooms.

In July 2021 (after our survey concluded) this new venture took over the New Town site of Martin Wishart's The Honour (RIP). The new operator is local restaurateur Stefano Pieraccini of The Rocca Group, which also includes The Broughton and – a perennial favourite with Harden's reporters – The Seafood Ristorante in St Andrews. Italian dishes are made with locally sourced Scottish ingredients.

This “lovely neighbourhood joint, with good fish and seasonal ingredients” and “friendly staff”, is “just the kind of place you want around the corner from your house”. Chef Maciej Szymik gives good-quality Scottish ingredients a modern European treatment, and now offers a similar standard at Otro, a spinoff brasserie in the West End. Top tip: “there’s a marginally dingy basement, so avoid that when you book”.

The Radford family’s Scandi-influenced converted Victorian warehouse is “a delight for anyone looking to stray away from the beaten track” – not just for the cooking, but for its “interesting, natural and small-batch wines”. Regulars should expect significant changes, though, following the appointment late last year of head chef James Murray (ex-Lyles, Manoir aux Quat’Saisons and Nur in Hong Kong) and head pastry chef Richard Phillips (ex-L’Enclume and Waterside Inn). Chef Ben Radford, who runs the show with his brother Jo and sister Abi, is moving to a different role in the business.

Fourteen-foot ceilings add to the ambience of this summer 2021 newcomer near Haymarket, from ex-Harwood Arms GM James Snowdon and ex-Spring chef Lloyd Morse, who aim to ‘champion provenance and sustainability’ with their St-John-style ‘whole animal cooking’. The corner site houses a 60-cover restaurant, bar, bakery, coffee shop and butchery.

“This exemplary gastropub” from top Edinburgh chef Tom Kitchin “hits all the right notes” with its “Scottish-themed quality food and busy atmosphere”. It “seems to have upped its game recently – the place is buzzing, food good, service great”.

Martin Wishart's Scottish establishment, down by the water in Leith, offers “a true fine-dining experience” that’s one of the best in Scotland, founded on “classic” cuisine and “excellent, formal but friendly service”. Paradoxically, in some reporters’ eyes, “despite having a Michelin star for 20 years it is something of a hidden gem, albeit one deserving even higher accolades”. It’s also been markedly consistent over the years (“first went in 2007 and it’s still as good as ever”).