Stories from Nectar Bar Edinburgh

If there is one bottle I genuinely love opening at Nectar, it is our Assyrtiko. Not only because of how it tastes, but because every time the cork comes out, it starts a story at the table. On our menu we describe it in three words. Crisp. Citrus. Lively. Those three words capture exactly what happens in the glass. It feels bright and energetic, refreshing without being simple, and perfectly suited to the way we like to eat and drink. The Crystals Everyone Asks About One of m

Some cocktails start as an idea behind the bar. Others begin much earlier, shaped by memories that stay with you long before Nectar ever existed. Drops of the River is one of those drinks. This cocktail is a tribute to summer days in Zurich, my hometown, where the River Limmat runs straight through the city. In the warmer months it becomes a place to swim, meet friends, have a drink and slowly drift into the evening before heading out for the night. I wanted to create someth

There is a specific memory that comes back to me every time I look at the Montepulciano Castelvecchio d'Abruzzo on the shelf. I am in the back seat of a car somewhere in central Italy. I am eight, maybe nine. My brother is next to me. Between us is a laptop, and we are watching Gladiator, because that was the film we watched on every long car journey in that period of my childhood and neither of us ever got tired of it. Outside the window, the Italian countryside is doing wha

There is a particular kind of pleasure that comes from a wine that misleads you slightly before it delivers. Not in a dishonest way. In the way that a great film does, where the first scene sets an expectation that the second scene quietly and deliberately overturns. The Wide River Shiraz from Robertson, South Africa does exactly that. It announces itself one way on the nose and then arrives quite differently on the palate. That gap, small but meaningful, is the thing that ma

People often ask me where I like to go for drinks when I am not at Nectar. It is one of my favourite questions to answer, because Edinburgh has quietly become one of the most exciting cocktail cities in the UK, and the honest answer changes depending on what kind of night someone is after. I have been working in hospitality for years, first in Zurich, then in Edinburgh, and I have spent a lot of time in a lot of bars. I know what separates a good cocktail from a great one, an

I did not grow up eating Greek food. I grew up in Zurich, in a household where the cooking was good but Swiss and Central European in its character: hearty, precise, built around the kind of ingredients that suit a landlocked country with cold winters. Mediterranean cooking was something I encountered on holidays, in restaurants, at other people's tables. It was always appealing but it felt like it belonged to somewhere else. Then I moved to Edinburgh, met Panos and Margarita

One of the most common questions we hear at the bar is simple enough: “What’s the best cocktail on the menu?” The honest answer is that there isn’t one. Every cocktail on our menu is designed to stand on its own. No drink is meant to compete with another, and none is intended to be better than the rest. Each cocktail is an individual contribution to the menu, created to express a specific taste, mood, or idea. The real question is not which cocktail is best, but which one is

When a table is filled with shared plates, choosing the right wine can feel more complicated than it needs to be. At Nectar, food is designed to be ordered generously and enjoyed together. That means your table will often feature vegetables, meat, fish and cheese all at once. Rather than trying to find a wine that perfectly matches everything, we recommend a simpler and far more enjoyable approach. Start by deciding which dish you want to be the focus , and let that lead your

Edinburgh has no shortage of cocktail bars. Some focus on theatre, some on classics, some on atmosphere. Over the years, working behind bars and visiting many more, I’ve started to notice that the places people remember are rarely defined by one thing alone. When people ask me what makes a great cocktail bar, the answer is never just about the drinks. It’s about how everything comes together. The room, the menu, the service, and the feeling you walk away with at the end of th

At Nectar, food is meant to be shared. Our menu is designed to encourage conversation, variety and enjoyment around the table, rather than following the traditional structure of starters and mains. If this is your first visit, here is the easiest way to approach ordering and make the most of the experience. A Menu Built for Everyone at the Table One of the first things you will notice is how the menu is laid out. On the left-hand side , you will find vegan and vegetarian dish

At Nectar , our wine list follows the same philosophy as our food and cocktails. Every wine has a purpose. Rather than offering multiple bottles that compete with one another, our list is designed so that each wine stands on its own , pairing naturally with different styles of food. These pairings are not always written on the menu, but they are carefully considered when the list is built. The result is a wine selection that encourages exploration and conversation, whether yo

Frequently asked questions about Nectar in Edinburgh, covering dogs, vegan options, sharing plates, cocktails, wine pairings, bookings and what to expect.

Like many stories that began during COVID, ours started in close quarters. During lockdown, everyone who now works at Nectar found themselves living together in the same flat. With time on our hands and the world temporarily paused, conversations naturally turned inward. Like so many others, we began asking ourselves what we wanted to do differently with our lives. With a strong family history in hospitality, opening our own place was not a far-fetched idea. In many ways, it

Greek food has a reputation problem in the UK, and the problem is familiarity. Most people have a fixed image of what Greek food is. A gyros from a late-night takeaway. A Greek salad with a block of feta. Hummus from a supermarket shelf. Maybe a taverna meal from a holiday in Rhodes fifteen years ago, where the view was better than the octopus and the house wine arrived in a carafe without a label. None of those things are wrong. Some of them are genuinely good. But they repr

When Panos and I first started talking about what the bar at Nectar was going to be, the easiest version of the conversation would have been to agree on a list of well-executed classics and a handful of crowd-pleasing signatures. Something approachable, something that would not confuse people, something that would move quickly on a busy Friday night. We did not do that. What we wanted to build was a cocktail programme that had a genuine point of view. Not drinks designed to l

Nectar has been open on Broughton Street for 6 months now, offering specialised cocktails and greek food.