The Best Restaurants To Book In Edinburgh
This little city may be compact, but it's at the forefront of Scotland's food scene, with the most Michelin stars in the whole of the country. Though it's not the only marker of a great restaurant, Emma Henderson lists the restaurants worth knowing about.
Edinburgh is a city of two halves – the historic Old Town, with its pretty gothic spires, cobbled streets and narrow alleyways that lead to wonky steps like a real life maze, and the contrasting organised palatial grid of the spacious New Town.
Though one thread running through the entire city is its exciting restaurants. Edinburgh has long been where many of Scotland's best restaurants choose to open up, and along with Glasgow, the cities are both at the forefront of Scotland's innovative dining scene.
There's a few chefs in the city who have a number of restaurants, and continue to open new ventures, which are spread out across Edinburgh from Leith near the port, to the west end and cool Stockbridge in the north.
Every year, for the month of August, Edinburgh opens up to host the world's biggest and best arts festival, the Edinburgh Fringe, and though the streets are lined with food trucks and pop-ups, it's always worth booking a handful of restaurants ahead of time so you're as well fed as you are entertained. These are the restaurants worth booking now.
This dark and moody restaurant set in the basement on St Stephen's street in Stockbridge is one of the city's best new openings in the past few years.
The small plates menu is compact, but every dish is creative and with some Middle Eastern inspiration running through the menu of small plates. Must order dishes include the fried chicken is one of its signature dishes – a crispy coating and juicy meat covered in a tangy and sweet peach hot sauce, cured sea trout and the donut with smoked cheese.
During the Fringe, its popup, Chicken Coop serving fried chicken flatbreads and lobster rolls, will run on Marshall Street between 31 July and 31 August.
As the former famed 21212 restaurant with rooms, Lyla is found inside a huge Georgian townhouse on one of Edinburgh's most exclusive streets and is now headed up by chef Stuart Ralston. It's a tasting menu restaurant in super elegant surroundings – think double height ceilings, intricate cornicing and ceiling plastering, gorgeous wall lights that look like sunbeams and sophisticated dried flowers and branches which create the only decor.
Dinner starts upstairs in a small and cosy bar for pre-dinner drinks and snacks. Back downstairs in the main dining room, where the open kitchen takes up one end of the room, the menu showcases the best of local produce with a big focus on sustainably caught local fish, as well as meat from high welfare farms and foraged ingredients. It's extensive at around 14 courses, including snacks and is one best saved for a celebration.
This casual bistro style restaurant in the city's West-End sits inside a former bank with its grand features like high ceilings and cornicing. It's been brought back to life with a black and white tiled floor, moss green walls and pendant lighting over dark mahogany wood furniture.
Taking its name from the road it sits on, Palmerston Place, the food is comforting and borders on the rustic side with underused cuts from pig's ears to tripe as well as wild rabbit or duck rillettes. Other dishes might include fried Jerusalem artichokes with grumolo and radicchio or slow roast cockerel, chips, baby gem and caesar dressing. Its wonderfully spongy home-baked sourdough comes without ordering it – so good is it that it also supplies other restaurants in the city from its downstairs bakery.
Owner and chef, Roberta Hall-McCarron opened the Little Chartroom on Leith Walk back in 2018 with her husband, Shaun McCarron, just weeks after they got married.
They took a punt to open in the up-and-coming area of Leith, before it had become a popular part of town and before the long-awaited tram network finally got up and running.
It's an intimate restaurant, with just 18 seats, with a handful at the bar overlooking the chefs at work creating dishes like mackerel, topped with gooseberry, kohlrabi, and hazelnut or a hefty chunk of halibut with mussels, chorizo, and artichokes.
This year, Roberta also opened Ardfern, a casual cafe serving brunch and dinner, with a bar and bottle shop next to the restaurant with dishes like kedgeree fritters, curry mayo, cured egg or Cured sea trout, tomato dashi, fennel.
First it opened in Glasgow, shortly followed by Edinburgh, and now this mini chain of restaurants has outposts in London, Leeds, Dublin and beyond.
Owner Nico Simeone, who hails from Scotland, always offers a six courses tasting menu, and it's one the most affordable tasting menus going at around £42.
As well as the decent menu price, its other USP is that the menu changes every six weeks and is based around a theme. It's often a nostalgic take on something from Nico's youth, like the "chippie" menu, taking inspiration from the humble chip shop of his youth. It's full of fine dining take on classics like chips and cheese – a crisp potato terrine with curry oil and parmesan, to Nico's version of a steak pie made with 24-hour cooked beef shin, burnt onion ketchup and mushroom duxelle.
Chef Stuart Ralston is another Scot that's opened a flurry of restaurants in and around the city in a short time. First came aizel, and then came Noto found on Thistle street in the New Town's centre. It dishes up Asian-inspired small plates and takes its cues from New York, where Stuart had been living and working prior to coming home to Scotland. The restaurant is even named after his old NYC roommate, Bob Noto.
On the menu, think bao buns filled with the likes of juicy duck or barbecued miso monkfish with sweetcorn and soy and leave room for the chocolate and miso pudding. While the whole restaurant features calming cream and beige tones and minimal decor, which has become a running theme in his restaurants.
It was only open for a year before this restaurant earned its first Michelin star, which says everything you need to know about deciding whether to go to Heron (spoiler, it's a big yes). It's a neighborhood restaurant down in Leith overlooking the port, but with a fine dining aesthetic, excellent food, and service to match, though it's certainly not stuffy and keeps it relaxed.
Whether you choose the tasting menu or a la carte, you'll get the same level of excellent cooking and often unexpected ingredient pairings like the hand-dived Orkney scallops with chipotle, mussels, and squash dish, while others include the perfectly cooked turbot with crab, lovage, and courgette.
On Hanover street, Tipo is the third opening from Stuart Ralston and this one is an ode to the Mediterranean, specifically Italy which is obvious from the huge yellow neon sign lighting up the townhouses' dark staircase. It depicts a big bowl of spaghetti (taking notes from the pasta emoji), indicating what's to come.
And that's dishes such as chunky ribbons of homemade pappardelle with a creamy crab sauce or delicate pieces of strozzapreti pasta with rich mangalitza pork. The perfectly smooth pipped duck liver parfait is a menu signature and is topped with chopped figs or other seasonal fruits, while plates of salumi, the lamb fritte, and cured mackerel are usually on the menu and should be ordered too.
After moving from its former location at nearby Portobello, Edinburgh's beach just a few miles from the city centre, Eleanor is the second opening from Roberta Hall-McCarron.
Inside, the compact restaurant is simple, with clean off-white interiors and high tables with stool seating. It's a set menu at both lunch and dinner time, with thoughtful cooking cleverly traversing the lines between Asian inspired dishes, French pastry and local ingredients. Expect dishes like crab croustade with cucumber and bernaise sauce, or raw scallop, with ham consommé, ginger and pak choi.
Hopefully when you visit the tirami-choux, a fun mash-up pudding, will be on the menu, as it's become one of the restaurant's most talked about dishes. It's created from choux pastry, mascarpone, coffee ice cream that's doused in chocolate.
Down in Stockbridge, the city's coolest little pocket, eòrna is another fine dining restaurant that very quickly after opening earned itself a mention in the Michelin Guide.
It's as intimate as it comes, with just 12 seats around a curved bar overlooking the open kitchen. Run by Brian Grigor and Glen Montgomery (who are also the sole team, the chef and sommelier/server, respectively) they're experimental and only serve a tasting menu which really is the only type of menu that really suits the chef's table experience. Dishes might include, fillet of wild turbot with broad beans and vin jaune and finish with something like Perthshire strawberries with creme fraîche and sweet cicely, another dish that's been a firm favourite with diners.
©Tim Drew
The Spence, Gleneagles Townhouse
Another former bank that's been given a new life in hospitality is the Gleneagles Townhouse, a hotel and restaurant. The Spence restaurant is part of the fabulous Glenages family, and this is the only offshoot of the brand. The main hotel in Perthshire has many 'best hotel' accolades, and so its little sibling has big shoes to fill. Inside The Spence, (which is open to non-guests too) takes up residency in the former banking hall and ticks all the boxes. It's a contemporary and cosmopolitan take on Glengages's traditional aesthetic with plush seating in fun pastel colours, an Art-Deco style central bar, booth seating and an enormous cupola and columns that just ooze elegance.
On the menu there's dishes like scallop ceviche with jalapeño salsa, or charred monkfish with sriracha and pickled slaw. Though if it's just a cocktail (or two) you're after, pair them with snacks like cornbread with indulgent whipped chicken butter and crispy skin.
