The 34 best restaurants in Edinburgh

Telegraph

2 days ago

Edinburgh's restaurant scene – inspired by Scotland 's outstanding natural larder – just keeps getting more enticing. It's now acknowledged as one of the UK 's best places to eat, with the Good Food Guide declaring the city Britain's most exciting food destination. Whether dining on day boat squid with quince and Kampot pepper or the best fish and chips in town, you're certain to find something to please every purse and palate.
All our recommendations below have been hand selected and tested by our resident destination expert to help you discover the best restaurants in Edinburgh. Find out more below, or for more Edinburgh inspiration, see our guides to the city's best hotels, bars, attractions and free things to do.
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Best all rounders
Best for families
Best for cheap eats
Best for fine dining
Best for walk ins
Best all rounders
Montrose
You're unlikely to stumble over Montrose, tucked away between Abbeymount and the top of the Easter Road, but this younger sibling of The Timberyard is the cosy neighbourhood bar/restaurant version. The look: tongue and groove panelling, top of the milk coloured walls and crumpled linen, is rustic chic; the food and drink as on-trend and sophisticated as it comes. Dine in the bar on mussels on 'nduja toast or Friggitello peppers with whipped cod roe, or head upstairs for razor clam tacos followed by duck with chanterelle and salted plum. Flavours are intense and ingredients seasonal, with the off-piste wine list majoring in small producers and natural wines.
Leftfield
This is the bistro we all wish we had around the corner: cosy (six tables and six seats at the bar), calming (all sea green and deep Pacific blue with a soothing view of the Meadows) and affordable. A half a roasted lobster with chimichurri and chips is wildly tempting, but how about slow cooked beef brisket with pommes Anna, or halibut, fennel, blood orange and new potato to celebrate the advent of spring? Vegetarian options like sumac roasted hispi cabbage, dukkah and chickpea dhal are no one's idea of a poor relation, either. Take a seat, exhale, enjoy.
Lannan Bakery
Pastry lovers (or the just plain greedy) will not have missed the media furore around this bakery in Stockbridge. With long queues from the off this tribute to excellence in viennoiserie expanded into neighbouring quarters just 18 months after opening. Expect imaginative iterations of sweet, savoury and seasonal classics made with eye-popping precision. Try the coffee and caramelised chocolate pain suisse or a quince, toasted milk rice pudding and salted almond praline. Lunch on a deeply savoury Jerusalem artichoke dauphinoise, tête de moine cheese and pickled trompette mushrooms on infinite layers of airy pastry. You'll quickly see this isn't just baking, it's craft elevated to artistry.
Ardfern
Sibling of the Roberta McCarron's Little Charthouse restaurant next door, this bottle shop/bar/cafe has an informal neighbourhood feel. Open from brunch to late, the warm use of wood and simple furnishings create a relaxed vibe making the message not just 'come hither', but 'stay'. There's an extensive but not intimating choice of wines (including some on tap) and knowledgeable staff to tell you about them. Expect comfort food with bells on served all day: perhaps a pillowy brioche breakfast bun or mouth-scalding deep-fried kedgeree fritters with curry mayonnaise. If it's a miserable wet day pray for the braised beef pie with beans on the menu: it's a first-class warm hug.
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Best for families
Loudons
Lots of good things have come from Fountainbridge, like McEwan's Export and Sean Connery – now there's Loudons. Big, bright and airy, it's so relaxed it's nearly horizontal (don't worry, there are sofas). Everything is baked on the premises, including a huge variety of delicious cakes (gluten-free and dairy-free available) and their own English muffins, which elevate eggs Benedict to an art form; especially when it's a chicken tinga or Bloody Mary Benedict. There are also savoury things on toast, 'power bowls' and burgers. Essentially it's a great place to have a chilled-out breakfast, brunch, lunch or snack.
The Scran & Scallie
Scran' is a Scottish word for food, while 'scallie' is Scottish for squint-eyed – which might refer to those bemused by phrases such as 'sit ye down yer welcome' and 'nae meat, nae fish'. Don't let these excursions into tweeness send you running, because the mixture of informality and hefty portions of comfort food ensures that the joint is jumping seven days a week; as popular with locals as it is with visitors. Start with haggis and neeps, then perhaps rib-sticking fish pie followed by sticky toffee or bread and butter pudding – sheer gluttonous heaven. Small scallywags have a hearty menu of their own.
Canonball Restaurant & Bar
Close to the gates of Edinburgh Castle and named for the cannonball lodged high in an outside wall, this restaurant is where experienced Edinburgh restauranteurs Victor and Carina Contini have created a bright, simple dining room in a former schoolroom, serving Scottish comfort food elevated to luxury status. A tasting menu might feature haggis and confit fennel, grilled herring with gooseberries, and roe deer with blackcurrant jus. Or you can just nip in for a cocktail and a nibble – a few oysters or a steak, ale and pickle pie.
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Best for cheap eats
Ting Thai
This is as close as Edinburgh gets to real Thai street food: hot, sour, sweet, crispy, comforting and utterly addictive. It is food for sharing – and fighting over. It comes in cardboard boxes and you can't book, but who cares when it all tastes so good? If you don't like perching on high stools at communal tables you can order takeaway, but either way be prepared to wait. And if you're not in the Old Town (or the restaurant's full), there's another branch on the Lothian Road.
Mary's Milk Bar
Who knew there was a Gelato University in Bologna? Mary Hillard: graduate and owner of Mary's Milk Bar, obviously did and spent her time there to good effect. Her retro Grassmarket shop with its pretty pistachio and vanilla décor has queues out the door. Mary makes everything from fresh ingredients with inventive seasonal ice cream and sorbet flavours like Assam tea and milk biscuit, lavender and honey or chestnut choc chip – changing every day. She makes fabulous chocolates and other treats too, but be sure to arrive early if you want a seat at the little counter for a gloriously gluttonous sundae, affogato, heavenly hot chocolate or ice cream float.
L'Alba D'Oro
L'Alba D'Oro has been dishing up the best fish and chips in town for almost 40 years and have the accolades to prove it (all those Edinburgh taxi drivers parked outside the door can't be wrong). As well as the standard menu items there's squid and chips or fish of the week: maybe monkfish, pollack or halibut. The chips are fat, fluffy and come in a distinctive cardboard box which ensures they never go soggy on the way home – if you can wait that long to eat them. Don't fancy take-away? There are a few seats at the counter.
Mussel Inn
If you happen to be shopping on Princes Street and need a quick lunch, head to Mussel Inn on nearby Rose Street. It's small, popular with locals so usually crowded, always noisy, and consistently good value. Grab a bowl of the seafood chowder or mussels with crisp salty fries on the side and a glass of white wine, or push the boat out and have a dozen oysters or a seafood platter – perhaps with a glass of something fizzy.
Twelve Triangles
Is your idea of heaven a bakery using only slow fermentation sourdough made from local flour? That makes its own ricotta, preserves and custards for passionfruit and ricotta or coconut caramel custard doughnuts? Or do you believe that the best thing to do to a croissant is fill it with peanut frangipane and banana? How about yieldingly sticky pistachio cardamom buns? Rosemary pecan spelt bread or a half-baguette filled with salami and fig with pumpkin chutney? Choice is sweet agony but with five shops around the city, you're never far from bakery bliss.
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Best for fine dining
Number One at The Balmoral
Dine at Number One knowing you're in the safe hands, head and heart of chef Mathew Sherry, whose cooking is an exquisite exposition of flavour, understanding and respect for provenance, setting the standard for the rest of an always stellar meal. Take advantage of a truly first-class sommelier and relax in the glow of great food and impeccable service in the classiest restaurant interior in the city, where red lacquered walls, an intriguing selection of modern art, warm oak floors, deep banquettes and generous space between tables all add up to a delicious feeling of old-school glamour and ease.
The Witchery by the Castle
As much a destination as a place to eat, this outrageously theatrical restaurant at the top of the Royal Mile looks like a hectic cross between a church and a bordello – all lush leather and gilding, tapestries and oak carving. If you like your décor just as romantic but a little less darkly gothic, ask for a table in the Secret Garden. It's not necessarily the best cooking in Edinburgh, but it is (mostly) reliably Scottish (roast loin of Cairngorm venison), if occasionally slightly worrying (Witchery haggis, curried pineapple), and the service is as polished as the brass candlesticks.
Nàdair
Nàdair is Gaelic for 'nature' and keen foragers Alan Keery and Sarah Baldry have used their passion, skill and experience to create the restaurant we'd all love to have in our neighbourhood. The look is charmingly informal; comfortably understated in tile, white paint and worn wood, focusing all the attention on the joyous business of being led to good things to eat and drink. Foraged ingredients sing throughout the menu (a grapefruit and pine martini, gnudi with alexanders, halibut with wild leek) in a perfectly judged six-course tasting menu that is neither too much nor too little. Or come at lunch-time for two or three courses – it's an absolute steal.
Lyla
Eating at Michelin star-holder Stuart Ralston's Lyla – a calm, white space dedicated to food, could be described as a Zen-like experience so hypnotically intense is the open kitchen, so attention-demanding the cooking. It's a formal experience, starting with sophisticated cocktails and 'snacks' before tasting menus (ten courses for dinner, five or seven at lunch) focusing primarily on first-class fish and sea food (think langoustines, turbot, etc). Meticulously composed and inventively flavourful, you'll be thinking about you've eaten for days. But if you can't get a table don't despair, try sister restaurants Noto (imaginative East Asian meets New York) or Tipo (punchy, Italian pasta and charcuterie): both offering small plates with big flavours.
Timberyard
The Radford family at Timberyard were early adopters of Scottish-Nordic cooking, and today they continue to re-purpose ingredients to great effect without ever lapsing into preciousness. Try the mutton tartare, with sorrel, egg yolk, and smoked oil, and you'll forever scorn the steak version. The cleverly converted former warehouse is surprisingly intimate, with a wood-burning stove and rugs for winter and a sunny courtyard for summer. Add in breezy but efficient service and a genuine focus on sustainability and it's pretty close to perfect. You can go for a drink and small plate in the bar, but frankly, you would be mad not to go the full monty.
Wedgwood the Restaurant
Chef Paul Wedgwood is a master of combining flavours and textures with subtlety and skill, producing food that is a quietly sophisticated pleasure to eat. Expect Scottish meat, fish and game with perhaps a whisper of Asian flavours along with foraged and cured elements in perfectly cooked Shetland scallops, Douglas fir cured salmon and wild Scottish Borders grouse ham. You will be warmly welcomed, skilfully looked after (do ask for recommendations for wine) and never feel rushed as the tables are not turned in this small, unpretentious but smart restaurant offering tantalising glimpses into the quiet kitchen where all those good things come from.
Palm Court at The Balmoral
There are times in life when a mug of stewed tea and a tired rock bun just will not do. Times when you need a sparkling chandelier, a silver teapot and a waiter who produces boiling water more efficiently than a Victorian midwife. This deliriously pretty sanctuary of elegance and ease is just the ticket. Work your way through the daintiest of sandwiches and savouries, devour warm scones, and ascend to the top tier of cakes, tarts and delicate patisserie. Have a glass of champagne too. Why wait to get to heaven to hear harps while you eat your egg and cucumber?
The Colonnades at the Signet Library
Possibly the best afternoon tea in Edinburgh is served in this neoclassical library. Sit amongst the towering shelves of legal tomes, where light dances on polished silver and sparkling glass. The only sounds are the crackle of starched linen, the clink of teaspoons on china, and the soft murmur of contented voices. Dainty savouries such as tiny poppy seed and smoked salmon éclairs are particularly good, but don't neglect pear and salted caramel frangipane tarts with whisper-light pastry. It's an escape to a delightfully civilised world you thought no longer existed; just remember to wear something with an elasticated waist.
Eórna
It's small (twelve astonishingly comfortable high seats along a curving marble counter top); it's elegant (stormy blue walls and sophisticated lighting); it's just two men seamlessly going about the business of producing a set menu of exquisite plates of food alongside glorious things to drink. It's not precious or gimmicky, its a relaxed, convivial evening of vivid, clean, intense flavours and textures modestly described (like 'Heritage tomatoes/raspberries') but delivering mind-bending levels of complexity. All calmly, engagingly presented with a finely judged instinct for the level of interaction and information desired. A rare example of the best kind of hospitality.
Purslane
This tiny, below stairs Stockbridge restaurant serves fine dining dishes in a casual atmosphere with relaxed service. Menus are arranged under simple ingredient headings, which expand into terse but tempting descriptions. Think crab bonbons with saffron aioli and crab bisque; fillet of sea bream with squid, confit pepper and fennel compote; and prune and armagnac rice pudding with candied rosemary. You can't help but admire a chef who combines beef faggots and foie gras in the same dish, to the detriment of neither.
Restaurant Martin Wishart
Awarded Edinburgh's first Michelin star in 2001, chef Martin Wishart was a fine-dining pioneer in Leith, training and inspiring a generation of chefs. And the magic continues in plates composed with luxurious restraint, delivering layers of flavours in complex but clear harmony – whether in a ceviche of halibut brightened by rhubarb and crème fraîche or the bosky intensity of truffle and hazelnut pesto amping up a bronzed scallop. Add warm, efficient and knowledgeable staff to the quietly smart surroundings and you may never want to leave.
The Kitchin
Michelin-starred chef Tom Kitchin doesn't just talk the talk when it comes to his 'nature to plate' philosophy. Ingredients here are mostly seasonal and primarily Scottish, as seen on the map of provenance you are invited to peruse while you sip an aperitif or glass of champagne. Choose between three tasting menus and a tempting à la carte offering both the indulgent (Wagyu Highland beef tartare with caviar) and inventive (scallops with smoked butter and wild garlic on a seaweed crumpet). It's pure theatre, from the view of the shining kitchen to the legion of smart, friendly waitstaff gliding around the stone and deep sea blue dining room as if on roller skates.
Eleanore
This tiny space on Leith Walk is where it all started for Chef Roberta Hall-McCarron. Now it's a younger sibling with an identity all its own, as relaxed as the vintage soft rock and counter-top tables with high stools. A Japanese aesthetic weaves its way through the set menu – a dainty Spenwood cheese tart with a umami-slap of walnut ketchup precedes a pork belly and langoustine bo samm, while a bowl of egg, sweet smoked eel, hollandaise and wild garlic is a subtle riff on chawanmushi. This is cooking that bemuses, beguiles and delights in equal measures.
The Little Chartroom
Roberta Hall-McCarron stormed onto the Edinburgh food scene, a tiny gastronomic typhoon stirring up the city's restaurant scene. The Little Chartroom is now a bigger chartroom; a comfortably restrained, zen-like space at the end of the Bonnington Road. Once diners manage to distract themselves from the open-kitchen ballet, they can attend to a menu with three choices in each of three courses. Choosing is agony: succulent guinea fowl with wild garlic and pickled pear, or Vacouvan dauphinoise pie (remembering this is the woman who elevated savoury pies to celestial levels). Happily you can't possibly go wrong, so set sail soonest.
Heron
It's a brave chef who opens a fine-dining restaurant by the Water of Leith at the Shore, overlooking Restaurant Martin Wishart, the Michelin star holding elder statesman of the Edinburgh restaurant scene, located just up the street. But this delightfully relaxed restaurant is open and bright, and has its own Michelin star. The menu is a roster of good Scottish ingredients: Orkney scallops, Cumbrae oysters and Sika deer, with the occasional exotic, like plum with langoustine or koji bringing a mysterious umami boost to turbot, grape, almond and salsify, but look out for supplements on the tasting menus.
Aizle
Located in the garden room of the Kimpton Charlotte Square hotel, Stuart Ralston's ethos of ever-changing strictly seasonal ingredients always delights – particularly now you can choose between a tasting menu or three-course à la carte. Despite the reverence afforded the hand-churned butter, Koji fermented rice and all things aged, this is an adventure, not a sermon. Duck with damson, chicory and pistachio is a gloriously skilful melding of flavours, while a pudding of pumpkin, milk sorbet and popcorn custard is a home-run of fun. And don't overlook the cocktail list, which features a formidable sorrel, gooseberry and vodka concoction.
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Best for walk ins
Skua
Under the stairs but definitely not under the radar this tiny, informal Stockbridge restaurant is all about moreish cocktails and mostly small plates; the sort of place you'd come for a drink and find yourself wanting to stay all evening. The menu is short, but the food is punchy – start with an oyster dialled up with blackcurrant leaf vinegar and you may find yourself moving on to fried chicken with fiery choritto hot sauce or dial it down with lamb skewers scented with pine and soothed by labneh. Or just come for a burnt honey and zabaglione doughnut.
David Bann
This attractive restaurant with its serenely zen-like look is not good-in-spite-of-being-vegetarian; it's just plain good. The menu encompasses a world of different cuisines, from Thai fritters to Moroccan black-eyed bean stew, all fresh, light and bright tasting. The same menu is served from midday until late and though options may not change much from season to season or year to year, this is a reassuringly consistent restaurant.
Hendersons Restaurant
The original Hendersons café opened in 1962, when people still crossed the street to avoid vegetarians. The city mourned until a new generation opened a stylish vegetarian/vegan restaurant so good you'll probably not notice the absence of meat and fish on the menu. Expect zhuzhed-up old standards like nut roast alongside banana blossom pakoras and cauliflower jerk steak; or crème caramel with sea buckthorn sauce and the original, much loved chocolate mousse. Try lunch, or a nibble and a blackberry and rosemary sling in the afternoon. Or just make an evening of it – you won't go wrong.
Mother India's Café
Always order too much in Indian restaurants? Then the tapas-style menu at Mother India's Café is your answer. The smaller sizes mean you can try lots of dishes, but be sure to ask your waiter to try to stagger your order if you don't want to run out of room on your table. The food is both authentic and inventive with dishes such as spiced haddock and baby aubergine, as well as the more traditional saag lamb. It's always busy, but it can be easier to get a table for lunch. They also do great takeaways.
Café St Honoré
The auld alliance is alive and well in this charming little bistro hidden down a lane in the city centre. Dishes such as North Sea coley brandade and Gartmorn Farm confit duck leg show how the restaurant combines French and Scottish cooking (what would a Frenchman would make of an Ecclefechan tart?). The wine list is more widely travelled, with a good selection by the glass. There is an attractively priced 'café classics' menu as well as a daily menu, but be warned - the tables are close together here, as you might expect in a traditional bistro, so leave any arguments outside the door.
Holyrood 9A
If you're hungry and at the foot of the Royal Mile don't return the same way. Walk up Holyrood Road instead to find this roomy, high-ceilinged bar – all dark wood panelling and dripping candlewax. Beer enthusiasts will be pleased with the local choices on offer, but you're really coming here for the burgers. They don't call them 'two-handed' for nothing as they are more than generous. Try the eponymous 9a (a steak burger with smoked bacon, onion rings, smoked applewood cheese and beer mustard mayo) or The Scotsman – a haggis and whisky peppercorn mayo burger). Good veggie and vegan options too and also a decent breakfast.
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How we choose
Every restaurant in this curated list has been tried and tested by our destination expert, who has visited to provide you with their insider perspective. We cover a range of budgets, from neighbourhood favourites to Michelin-starred restaurants – to best suit every type of traveller's taste – and consider the food, service, best tables, atmosphere and price in our recommendations. We update this list regularly to keep up with the latest opening and provide up to date recommendations.
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About our expert
Linda Macdonald
Somewhere between New Town ladette and Old Town doyenne, I have a passion for tunnock's teacakes and a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde personality, making Edinburgh the perfect city for me.