When I look back at the photographs and videos from the very first days of Nectar Edinburgh in Year One, I feel something that takes a moment to identify properly. It is not nostalgia exactly, though there is some of that. It is more like the specific feeling of looking at a version of yourself that was trying extremely hard at something it did not fully understand yet. The energy in those early images is obvious. The uncertainty, in retrospect, is equally obvious, even if no

Edinburgh is a city that does international food well. That is not something that gets said often enough, partly because the conversation about Edinburgh's food scene tends to focus on its Michelin constellation, its Scottish produce credentials, and its newest openings. All of that is worth the attention it receives. But running quietly alongside the tasting menu narrative is a city that has always been genuinely good at representing cuisines from elsewhere, not in a diluted

There are dishes on a menu that you eat and enjoy. And then there are dishes that you find yourself thinking about on the way home, that come to mind when the weather turns cold and grey, that you order first on a return visit without looking at anything else. Prawn Saganaki is the second kind. It has quietly become one of the most talked-about dishes at Nectar, and the more time passes, the more I understand why. What Saganaki Actually Means The word saganaki does not refer

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

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

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