Broughton Street Edinburgh: A Local's Guide to the Best Independent Street in the City

I have been on Broughton Street every day for the better part of a year. I walk it in the morning before we open, I walk it late at night after we close, and I have eaten and drunk my way along almost every stretch of it in between. That gives me a reasonably strong opinion about what makes it one of the most interesting streets in Edinburgh for food and drink, and an equally strong opinion about what it is not.

It is not the Royal Mile. It is not a tourist route, not a destination you arrive at by following a map, and not a street that needs to sell itself. The people who know Broughton Street tend to know it well, come back to it regularly, and talk about it with a particular kind of loyalty that neighbourhood streets earn when they are genuinely good rather than merely convenient.

This guide covers the full length of the street, from the top down to Picardy Place, with honest recommendations for where to eat, where to drink, and how to spend an evening here properly. I have my obvious bias, which I will not pretend otherwise, but I have also tried to give every venue on the street the same honest treatment I would want if someone else were writing about Nectar.

What Broughton Street actually is

Broughton Street runs from the top of Leith Walk at Picardy Place up through Edinburgh's New Town, cutting through a neighbourhood that sits slightly apart from the more obvious tourist infrastructure of the Old Town and Princes Street. It is a ten minute walk from Waverley Station, a ten minute walk from the Edinburgh Playhouse, and a ten minute walk from the east end of Princes Street. In terms of geography it is well-positioned. In terms of character it is something else entirely.

What makes Broughton Street distinctive is the concentration of genuinely independent businesses along its length. There are no chains here in the way that George Street or Princes Street has chains. The restaurants, bars, and shops are all owned by people who have made a specific decision to be on this particular street, and that decision tends to produce a different kind of venue to one that has been placed somewhere by a property portfolio.

The street has also quietly become one of Edinburgh's more interesting fine dining clusters. Lucky Yu recently received its Michelin Guide listing. Taisteal has been running a serious tasting menu for years. Lescargot Bleu is one of the finest seafood restaurants in Scotland. Vinette, from Stuart Ralston's Aizle Group, the same group behind Michelin-starred Lyla, sits directly across from us. That is a concentration of recognised culinary ambition on a single stretch of road that most cities would be pleased to spread across an entire neighbourhood.

Starting at the top: Taisteal

Taisteal sits near the top of Broughton Street and represents the most serious fine dining option on the street. The name comes from the Gaelic word for travel or journey, which tells you something about the ambition of the cooking: dishes that draw on influences from further afield than Scotland, executed with the kind of technical precision that earns a restaurant its reputation through word of mouth rather than marketing.

The format gives you a choice that most fine dining restaurants do not offer: a full tasting menu for those who want the complete experience, or an à la carte for those who want something more relaxed without sacrificing quality. That flexibility is unusual at this level and it makes Taisteal genuinely accessible in a way that tasting-menu-only restaurants are not. If you are new to the street and want to understand what serious cooking looks like here, Taisteal is the place to start.

Lucky Yu and the Michelin recognition

Lucky Yu is the most recent addition to the street's growing culinary reputation, and the Michelin Guide listing it received is the kind of recognition that changes how people talk about a neighbourhood. A Michelin-listed restaurant does not appear by accident. It appears because the food is consistently excellent, the sourcing is serious, and the kitchen has a point of view that is worth paying attention to.

The format is Asian fusion small plates: handmade gyoza, bao buns, yakitori, and a cocktail list that takes its drinks as seriously as its food. The style is informal and social, built around sharing and ordering more things than you planned to. It is one of those restaurants where the bill at the end consistently surprises people because the experience felt considerably more relaxed than the cooking quality suggested.

The Michelin listing puts Lucky Yu in a select group and it puts Broughton Street on the culinary map in a way that matters. For context on what that means for the street as a whole, consider that you now have a Michelin-listed restaurant at one end, a venue connected to a Michelin-starred group in the middle, and a level of independent culinary ambition across the full length that Edinburgh's more famous dining streets would struggle to match.

Frenchie

Frenchie at number 14 is a wine bar and restaurant that takes French culinary sensibility as its starting point and builds something more contemporary around it. Small plates, natural and interesting wines, and a room that manages to feel both considered and relaxed simultaneously. It is the kind of place where the cooking rewards attention without demanding it, which is harder to achieve than it sounds.

For Broughton Street specifically, Frenchie fills a gap that the street's other venues do not quite cover: the European wine bar experience, done properly, with food that is worth ordering beyond the bread and olives. The wine list in particular is worth spending time with. If you are the kind of person who asks questions about what you are drinking, the team here will give you answers worth hearing.

L'escargot Bleu

Lescargot Bleu is one of those Edinburgh institutions that people who know it talk about with a particular reverence. A French seafood restaurant that has been on Broughton Street long enough to have earned the kind of regulars who have been coming for years and will continue to do so regardless of what else opens on the street around it.

The cooking is classical French in its approach to seafood: precise, respectful of the ingredient, and built around the understanding that a piece of fish treated well does not need to be complicated. The escargot, as the name suggests, is done properly. The fruits de mer are the kind of thing you find yourself thinking about later.

In a street that has become increasingly known for its contemporary small plates and cocktail culture, Lescargot Bleu is the counterpoint that reminds you that classical technique and serious sourcing produce a different kind of satisfaction to more fashionable cooking. It is not trying to be modern. It does not need to be.

Vinette and Vivien

Directly across the road from Nectar at 36 Broughton Street, Vinette is Stuart Ralston's take on a Parisian bar à vin, and it carries the same commitment to quality that defines everything connected to the Aizle Group. Ralston is the chef behind Lyla, which holds a Michelin star in the 2025 Guide, and Vinette operates with the same intelligence and precision applied to a considerably more relaxed format.

The cooking sits in confident European bistro territory: French-influenced, Scottish-sourced, short menus that change regularly and reflect genuine seasonal thinking rather than seasonal marketing. The burger has developed a following since they opened that tells you everything you need to know about how seriously this kitchen takes even its most informal offering.

Downstairs, Vivien is the cocktail bar. Named after the poet Renée Vivien and run by Rebekah George, who is one of the most respected figures in Edinburgh's bar scene, it is an intimate and atmospheric space that operates at a different register to the room above it. Candlelit, considered, and serving drinks that reflect the same level of thought that the food upstairs receives. If you want to understand what Edinburgh's cocktail culture looks like at its most refined, Vivien is one of the answers.

The relationship between Vinette and Nectar across the road is one of the better examples of what Broughton Street does at its best. Two venues with genuine points of view, operating in close proximity without competing directly, and between them offering something for most moods and most evenings.

Thamel and The Blind Tiger

A few doors down from us, Thamel operates alongside The Blind Tiger speakeasy in the same building, and the combination makes it one of the more complete evening options on the street. The food at Thamel is the kind of cooking that rewards specific knowledge: if you have been before and you know what to order, every visit confirms why you came back. If you have not been before, the straightforward recommendation is to get the olives. That is not a throwaway line. The olives at Thamel are consistently the thing people mention when they describe eating on this street, and they arrive quickly and disappear quickly in equal measure.

The Blind Tiger is the other half of the equation. Live jazz on Fridays, a DJ on Saturdays, and the kind of late-night atmosphere that the street needs to keep the evening alive after the restaurants have finished their last covers. It is a genuinely atmospheric space that suits a Broughton Street night better than most late venues suit their neighbourhoods. You can book through thamel.co.uk, which is worth doing on weekends when it fills.

Pickles

At 56 to 60 Broughton Street, Pickles is a wine bar that has been on this street long enough to be considered an institution by the people who drink there regularly. The format is the kind of thing that Edinburgh does well when it does it properly: serious wine, charcuterie and cheese boards, a room that feels like it has always been there without feeling tired.

Pickles occupies a particular position in the Broughton Street ecology that none of the other venues quite replicate. It is the place you go when the evening does not need to be anything specific, when you want a good glass of something and something to pick at and a room that will not hurry you. For a street with as much culinary ambition as Broughton Street now has, Pickles is the reminder that the best evenings are not always the most ambitious ones.

The local pubs: Mathers, Barony Bar, and Cask and Barrel

Every good neighbourhood street needs its local pubs, and Broughton Street has three of them that are worth knowing about for different reasons.

Mathers at the top of the street is the oldest pub in the New Town, trading since 1903, and it looks and feels exactly like a pub that has been there for over a century should. No reinvention, no craft beer curation, no small plates menu. Just a proper Edinburgh pub that serves its regulars well and has been doing so for longer than anyone on the street can remember. It is the right place to start an evening before moving somewhere else, or to end one when the mood calls for something uncomplicated.

The Barony Bar sits further down the street and brings live music into the equation on certain nights, which gives it a character that the other pubs on the street do not have. The kind of place that can be genuinely excellent on the right night and genuinely reliable on all the others.

Cask and Barrel is the third of the trio and does what it says: a well-kept selection of cask ales in a room that suits people who think seriously about what is in their glass without making a performance of it.

Worth watching: Potions and Rations and Edens Kitchen

Two recent additions to the street are worth noting for different reasons.

Potions and Rations has opened in the space where Ruma used to be and brings something entirely new to Broughton Street's offer: a boardgame bar concept where the experience is as much about what you are doing as what you are eating and drinking. It is a format that has worked well in other cities and the Broughton Street location gives it a neighbourhood audience that is well-suited to the concept. It is too new to assess properly, but it represents exactly the kind of independent operator that makes this street interesting and it is worth watching.

Edens Kitchen brings pizza to the street in a format that sits naturally alongside the existing range of options. There are evenings when what you want is a properly made pizza and a glass of something simple, and Edens Kitchen understands that without trying to make it more complicated than it needs to be.

The late night option: Uno Mas

Around the corner from the top of Broughton Street, Uno Mas is the natural continuation of a Broughton Street evening for anyone who is not ready for the night to end. Open until three in the morning, it is the venue that the street's restaurants send their guests to when service is finished and the evening still has energy in it. The drinks are good, the atmosphere is right for the hour, and it understands its function in the neighbourhood ecosystem without apologising for it.

Nectar Bar

I said at the beginning that I have an obvious bias and I will not pretend otherwise. But I will also try to describe what we do with the same honesty I have applied to everywhere else on the street, because the things that make Nectar work are worth explaining rather than simply asserting.

We opened in August 2024 as a Greek-Mediterranean sharing plates and cocktail bar, which is a concept that did not exist on this street before we arrived. The food comes from Margarita's kitchen: sharing plates built on genuine Greek culinary tradition, produced by someone who has been cooking this food in Edinburgh for her whole career. The chicken skewer is the bestselling dish and it earns that position every service. The cheese filo pastry is the thing I recommend to every table regardless of what else they are ordering. The meat platter is how most people find their way into the menu.

Panos's cocktail list is built around Greek and Mediterranean flavour in a way that produces combinations you will not find anywhere else in Edinburgh. The Tzatziki Martini arrives clear in the glass and tastes like nothing the name prepares you for. The Drops of the River is the one I would order if I wanted something that tasted like what this street feels like on a warm evening. The Warmth Within is the bestselling cocktail and has been since we opened.

We have entered multiple cocktail competitions in our first year, reached the Scotland Finals of the Bumbu Originals and the advanced rounds of the Patron Margarita Challenge, and built a team that takes the craft seriously in a way that shows up in the glass rather than in the marketing.

We are open from 5pm Tuesday to Friday and from noon on Saturday and Sunday. Booking in advance is worth doing for Friday and Saturday evenings when the room fills quickly. The bar takes walk-ins throughout the week and the terrace is worth knowing about when the Edinburgh weather cooperates, which happens more often than visitors expect.

Book a table at Nectar Bar and use this guide to plan the rest of the evening around it.

How to spend a full evening on Broughton Street

The best Broughton Street evenings tend to have a shape to them that you do not plan entirely in advance. A drink somewhere to start. Dinner at whichever of the above fits the mood of the group. A cocktail after at a bar that keeps the evening going rather than closing it down. And occasionally, on the right night, a discovery: something you walked past and decided to try on instinct, which turned out to be exactly what the evening needed.

That is what neighbourhood streets do when they are genuinely good. They reward the people who spend time on them with the kind of experiences that planned evenings at destination restaurants rarely produce.

Broughton Street is genuinely good. Come and spend some time on it.

Book your table at Nectar Bar and we will tell you where to go next.

Opening hours Tuesday to Thursday: 5pm to 11pm Friday: 5pm to 1am Saturday: 12pm to 1am Sunday: 12pm to 11pm Monday: Closed

Nectar Bar, 73 Broughton Street, Edinburgh EH1 3RJ