23-04-2025
11 of the best restaurants in Edinburgh
Once upon a time, Scotland was famous for being the country that exported its finest ingredients abroad while its inhabitants subsisted on a diet of deep-fried Mars bars washed down with Irn-Bru. Not any longer. Scottish chefs are raiding a natural larder of arguably the world's best fish, seafood and wild game and transforming it into a cuisine that is both distinctly Caledonian and creatively contemporary. Nowhere is this showcased more exuberantly than in the Scottish capital, named as the UK's most exciting food destination in 2025 by the Good Food Guide.
True, the city's most ambitious chefs are perhaps overly fond of fine dining and tasting menus — Edinburgh has more Michelin stars than any other city in Scotland — but each month seems to bring an ever-more exciting choice of casual options too. And if you want to escape the crowds, neighbourhood-focused food scenes in Leith, Stockbridge and Marchmont offer an alternative to the big names in the city centre's Old Town and New Town.
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£££ | BOOK AHEAD | Best for seafood-leaning fine dining
Stuart Ralston already had three critically acclaimed Edinburgh restaurants to his name — Aizle, Noto and Tipo — when he opened Lyla in autumn 2023. This 28-seat dining room has cemented his reputation as the city's foremost chef and restaurateur, with the Michelin star to prove it. Ten-course suppers of the freshest Scottish fish begin over canapés in an upstairs drawing room where you can see the raw produce (fish and the meat used in one of the courses) in the dry-ageing rooms; the finished product might include a luxurious plate of N25 caviar with wild bream, black radish and sea buckthorn. It sounds super formal, but friendly staff ensure the whole experience feels relaxed, while the location in a Georgian house with views over the Edinburgh skyline to the Firth of Forth sets the scene.
£ | BOOK AHEAD | BAR | Best for a banging brunch from a star chef
A venue that has a hash brown as its signature dish is worth a morning of anyone's time but there's more to this Leith café-cum-bar than posh potatoes. Owner Roberta Hall-McCarron (above) is one of Edinburgh's most talented chefs, having represented Scotland in the Great British Menu, where she reached the finals and won the fish course. Ardfern finds her in more casual mode compared with her special-occasion restaurant The Little Chartroom next door, but still with the same focus on ace ingredients: even the sausages and bacon in the fry-up are homemade. That hash brown comes as a pair of crunchy cuboids piled with pecorino cheese and dolloped with roast onion ketchup, and you can come back and have it again on the concise evening menu too.
££ | Best for seasonal Scottish ingredients
The grand proportions of bank conversions always seem to make light and airy dining rooms but the cooking at this restaurant close to Haymarket railway station would merit attention even if the bistro-style setting were not so convivial. Many Edinburgh chefs champion Scottish ingredients but few do it as convincingly as those at the Palmerston, where whole animals are butchered in-house and relationships with farmers and fishermen are cherished. The Palmerston is also that rare thing in Edinburgh: a destination restaurant where one can have three heartily portioned courses instead of ten tiny ones. The weekday set lunch, meanwhile, is the stuff of local legend, sending out two or three courses for £21 and £24 respectively. Here earlier in the day? The bakery makes dreamy breakfast pastries to eat in or take away.
££ | BOOK AHEAD | BAR | Best for small-plate suppers and late-night libations
Small is beautiful at Skua, where a snappy menu of a dozen seasonal small plates is cooked up in a tiny kitchen. The restaurant might be short on space but not on ambition, with each perfectly balanced dish delivering a wallop of big, bold flavour — as you would expect from a place owned by hotshot chef Tomás Gormley, who also has casual fine-diner Cardinal nearby. Try his fried chicken with fermented peach hot sauce and follow with doughnuts erupting with smoked cheese and guanciale (cured pork cheek). The kitchen closes at 10pm but the bar mixes nightcaps such as the crème brûlée (a nuanced mix of oloroso sherry and white chocolate) for a couple of hours after. Who needs pudding? Walk-in space is limited, so best to book ahead.
££ | BOOK AHEAD | Best for candlelit meals à deux
If all the new Nordic and Scandi-chic restraint that's emblematic of Edinburgh's contemporary dining scene begins to pale, embrace your inner maximalist and sense of gothic romance at this gloriously OTT restaurant with sumptuous suites at the summit of the Royal Mile. True, the location by the gates of Edinburgh Castle makes the Witchery catnip for tourists, but the 16th-century dining room provides eye-popping fireworks to equal the city's famous Tattoo, from tapestries and oak panelling to flames flickering in tall brass candlesticks. The cooking, thankfully, is simpler than the surroundings and at its best in Scottish ingredients handled with a light touch — a tartare of aged Scotch beef rather than haggis with pineapple chutney, say. Accompaniments such as duck fat crumpets will make you grateful that the walk home is downhill — if you're not bedding down in one of the opulent rooms upstairs, that
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££ | Best for plant-forward modern classics
Janet Henderson opened her trailblazing New Town address in 1962; by the time it closed during the pandemic, it was the UK's longest-established vegetarian restaurant. Her grandson Barrie revived the family name one year later in new digs on the other side of town, but this is no exercise in nostalgia: Henderson junior has an MBA in hospitality and has updated the menus for 21st-century tastes in clean-lined, contemporary surrounds. So while there are still signatures like lentil lasagne and vegan haggis, the old-time classics have been joined by jackfruit tostada and miso aubergine. Organic ingredients are used wherever possible, and lots of the menu is either vegan or has the option to be.
£ | Best for next-level sandwiches
'Big hot sandwiches' (their words) of deep-filled focaccia are the house speciality at Alby's, ranging from the relatively healthy — pan-fried mackerel with dill aïoli and matchstick chips, say — to the anything but. Still, it's hard to feel guilty about eating a sweet-and-sour chicken sandwich when the battered chook slathered in sesame and Chiu Chow chilli mayo tastes so damn good, plus the doorstop sarnies clock in around the £13 mark, which feels good value when you consider the scale. Veggie alternatives such as fried courgette with garlicky skordalia dip are similarly sledgehammer-subtle on the flavour front. In the unlikely event you're still hungry, sides like corn ribs with chimichurri won't inflict too much damage on the modest bill. There's another equally cheerful Alby's in Southside, but only the Leith original takes bookings.
££ | BOOK AHEAD | BAR | Best for natural wines and ingredients-led simplicity
It's a game of two halves at Montrose, the Radford family's follow-up to their smash-hit Timberyard in the Old Town. Upstairs is closer in spirit to its Michelin-starred sibling, where diners at seven white-clothed tables are treated to a four-course menu showcasing wild and wonderful Scottish ingredients prepared with the sort of simplicity that lets the natural flavour do the talking: aged mallard with morels, wild garlic, grains and amontillado sherry, say. There are vegan and vegetarian menus, too. Downstairs, though, is more fun, a wine bar where on-trend small plates such as Korean fried quail with kimchi and pickled turnip are matched to a well-curated drinks list featuring not only low-intervention wines but also fermented soft drinks like kombucha.
£££ | BOOK AHEAD | Best for Edinburgh's most intriguing tasting menu
In a city not short on myths and legends, American chef Rodney Wages has his own compelling story to tell. So smitten was he by the Scottish capital when he visited on holiday that he closed his Michelin-starred restaurant in San Francisco, re-located his family to Edinburgh and opened a new version in a Georgian townhouse in Stockbridge, complete with bold Victor Reyes artworks transported from California. The gamble paid off: Michelin awarded Avery a star nine months after opening. The tasting menu is scrawled in handwritten block capitals with terse descriptions on stiff parchment paper; 'haggis' turns out to be the offal of a barley-fed pigeon served with whisky sauce and cherries. There is, of course, Californian wine, but just as much of a focus on saké, champagne and non-alcoholic cocktails.
££ | BOOK AHEAD | BAR | Best for family-friendly cheffy thrills
Even if you didn't know that this gastropub was owned by celebrity chef Tom Kitchin, the rustic-chic decor and homemade vegetable chips on each table would be the first signs that this is not two pints of lager and a packet of crisps territory. The chefs here follow the same nature-to-plate ethos as the Michelin-starred The Kitchin in Leith. For grown-ups that means classic pub grub based on superior ingredients from fish and steak pies to Highland wagyu burgers, Islay oysters and Orkney scallops. Children get their own 'scallies' menu with sausage and mash and macaroni cheese, finishing with build-you-own sundaes and the whole lot washed down with milkshakes. If the play area doesn't do the trick, burn off any excess energy with a stroll around the nearby Royal Botanic Garden.
££ | Best for lip-smacking sushi
Glasgow may have the more notable reputation for the strength of its Indian and Chinese dining scene, but when it comes to Japanese, Edinburgh wins hands down. The city's sushi cognoscenti reckon the raw fish is better sourced and more expertly sliced at this serene restaurant in the shadow of the castle than at anywhere else in the Scottish capital. Two chefs work in an open kitchen preparing a menu split into five sections: sushi, tempura, teppan, classics and specials; if the choice feels overwhelming, simply order one dish from each. Not everything is raw, the likes of tuna and scallop have their flavour amplified by a quick flash on the grill; and not everything is fishy, arguably the best thing of all is the grilled aubergine flecked with sweet miso sauce.
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