Stories from Nectar Bar Edinburgh

I have written about Nectar's cocktail competitions before, and they have mostly been stories about getting close. Panos reaching the Bumbu Originals final. The jalapeno syrup that came out of preparing for the Patron Margarita Challenge and ended up living permanently in Warmth Within. Those articles were about the process of competing, win or lose. This one is different, because for once the story is not about how we did in a competition. It is about how we never actually g

A few weeks ago, a customer got in touch and asked something we had not been asked before: could Nectar would be willing to organise a Cocktail Pop Up in Edinburgh, for a private party, somewhere other than Broughton Street. We said yes. It was our first pop up, and I want to write about how it actually came together, because it closes a loop that has been sitting open since before we even opened the bar. Why having a cocktail pop up in Edinburgh has been on our mind since be

Before entering a cocktail competition for the first time, I had no real idea what the actual structure looked like. A year and ten entries later, I understand the shape of it well enough to map it out properly, and I think it is worth writing down, both for anyone considering entering their first one and as a record of what we have actually been doing behind the bar at Nectar. Stage one: the written submission Almost every competition begins the same way. The host brand rele

I spent a decade in a corporate marketing career before opening Nectar. I have presented to executives, pitched to clients, stood in front of rooms where a significant amount of money hinged on the next fifteen minutes. I assumed that background would carry me reasonably well through a cocktail competition final. It did, to a point. But presenting at the Franklin and Sons final taught me things about presentation that a decade in a boardroom never had the opportunity to teach

Once a year, Edinburgh's own hospitality industry stops and recognises itself, at the Edinburgh Bartenders Ball. It is a genuinely different kind of occasion to the other awards we have been part of this year. There is no national judging panel assessing us against businesses from unrelated industries, no black tie ceremony in a London hotel. The Bartenders Ball is smaller, local, and from everything we have heard about it, it is really just the people who work across this ci

Since opening Nectar, I have entered ten cocktail competitions. Diplomatico Artisans of Taste. The Altos Margarita Challenge. The Honkaku Shochu and Awamori Contest. The Patron Spicy Margarita Challenge. Franklin and Sons Flavour in Motion, where I made the final ten in the UK. World Class GB. Bumbu Originals, where I reached the Scotland heat stage. The Bacardi Daiquiri Challenge. Meister Hunter, our Jägermeister entry. And The Open at Ben Lomond, which I am still waiting to

Some dishes you know are going to become a favourite the first time you taste them. Tigania Pan fried Pork was one of those for me. It was on our very first menu at Nectar, back before any of us knew whether the concept was going to work. I remember eating it for the first time and thinking, quite plainly, that I could not imagine ever getting sick of this kind of food. A year and a half later, that has held completely true. It has been off the menu for a while now, deliberat

Yes, we do vouchers at Nectar. It is one of the most straightforward things we offer, and one of my favourite things to be asked about, for a reason that has nothing to do with the transaction itself. You decide the total value. You decide what we write on it. And you decide whether you want it as a physical voucher or an electronic one. That is genuinely the whole process, and it is deliberately simple, because the actual point of a voucher has very little to do with the mec

This was our second Edinburgh Fringe at Nectar, and it looked almost nothing like the first. Nectar's birthday falls on 1 August, which means our first Fringe and our first year of existing at all began in the same breath. That timing made last year genuinely hectic in a way I don't think we fully appreciated until we had a second Fringe to compare it against. We opened at lunchtime and stayed open until 1am, every single day, convinced we had the energy and the capacity to s

Here is the first thing worth knowing about fava, and it is the thing that confuses almost everyone the first time they encounter it: there are no fava beans in it. In Greek, fava refers to yellow split peas, not the broad beans that the word fava means in English. The dish is a thick, smooth, golden purée made from those split peas, slow-cooked with onion until they break down completely, then blended with olive oil and lemon into something that sits somewhere between a dip,

Edinburgh is one of the most walkable cities in Britain, and I mean that in a specific way rather than as a generic compliment. You can genuinely walk almost anywhere in it, if you are prepared to. From the Meadows to the foot of Leith is roughly an hour on foot, and that distance is entirely doable if the mood takes you. The real question is not whether you can walk it. It is whether what you are looking for is somewhere along the way. That question is the whole point of thi

Every menu change at Nectar involves a tasting session that most guests never know about. When we are considering a new wine for the list, our supplier brings samples. Several bottles, sometimes more, representing different options across the category we are trying to fill. We open them, we taste them alongside the food they are intended for, and we make a decision. The process is not complicated, but it is never purely internal. We invite guests who are in the bar at the tim

A guest told me something once that I have not stopped thinking about since. They said that finding a Malbec that is actually French is uncommon, and that if you do find one, it has a story behind it worth asking about. I did not know at the time how right they were. Most people who order a Malbec anywhere in the world are drinking something from Argentina, and most people, understandably, assume that is simply where the grape comes from. It is not. Malbec is French. It was n

Everyone asks whether Edinburgh changes after the Fringe. The honest answer is that it gets less hectic, but the city itself does not go quiet. That is a misunderstanding of what Edinburgh is. The Fringe brings an extraordinary concentration of energy to every street and every room for three and a half weeks in August, and when it ends there is a very specific feeling in the city, not deflation exactly, but relief. The relief of a city that has been hosting something enormous

We did not win. I want to say that plainly and immediately, rather than burying it three paragraphs down. Nectar was shortlisted for New Bar of the Year at the Scottish Bar and Pub Awards, we went to Glasgow, we did not take the prize home. What actually mattered about that day had very little to do with the result, and I want to explain why, honestly, rather than write the version of this article where a loss gets quietly reframed as a secret win. Everything that happens bef

We have written about cocktail competitions before on this blog. This one was probably the biggest thing that has happened to Nectar's drinks programme so far, and I want to write about it honestly, because the honest version is more useful than the version where everything goes well. I did not place in the top three. But before I get to that, I want to be clear about the part I am genuinely, deeply proud of, because it is easy for a loss at the final to overshadow everything

On Wednesday 30 September 2026, Panos and I will leave Broughton Street for one night. Nectar Bar will have a takeover of Dalí's Bar in Zurich, and I want to tell you exactly why this is happening, because the reason is more personal than most bar takeover announcements tend to be. Alfred, the owner of Dalis Zurich Alfred and I grew up together in Zurich. Secondary school, the particular kind of friendship that forms when you are young and slightly reckless and convinced that

We get this question more than almost any other at the bar. Do you have a dry white wine? The honest answer is yes, several, and most of the whites on the Nectar list are technically dry. But over the course of the first year I have understood what this question actually means, and it is not a question about sugar content or winemaking technique. It is a question about feeling. The person asking it wants something light, crisp, clean, and easy to drink. Something that feels l

There is a particular smell that I associate with summer in the Mediterranean, and it involves a grill. Not a gas grill. A proper charcoal grill, somewhere outside, with the kind of heat underneath it that takes time to build. And on that grill, at some point, zucchini. Sliced open lengthways, brushed with olive oil, seasoned with salt and dried oregano, placed directly on the bars and left to char at the edges while the inside softens and sweetens in a way that nothing else

I want to tell you about the most frustrating moment in the development of the Nectar cocktail menu. We were in the final days before opening. One cocktail still needed to be finalised, the one that would pair with the prawns that were on our opening menu at the time. We had been working across multiple drinks, Panos and I, running infusions, tasting, adjusting, the way you are supposed to develop a cocktail. I had spent weeks getting to the point where I understood the logic