Christmas at Nectar Edinburgh: How Our Broughton Street Bar Becomes a Warm Winter Room

Every December, Nectar changes. The menu changes, the drinks change, and the room changes most of all. It is the same bar on Broughton Street, with the same team, but if you walked in expecting what you saw in September, you would stop in the doorway.

If you were with us last Christmas, you will know what I mean. The place turns into a small Christmas wonderland. If you were not, this is how it happens, and what we are planning for this winter.

It starts with my mother

Most bars would hire someone to do the decorating. We do not. My mother travels from Switzerland to decorate Nectar herself.

She arrives, looks at the room, and then she takes over. The work takes the best part of a week, and almost none of it is big. We spend those days hanging up minor details. Wreaths. Images. Small touches in corners that you only notice when you have been sitting somewhere for a while. The room does not get a theme so much as a feeling, built from lots of little decisions made one at a time.

I think that is why it works. A bar can have good lighting, good furniture and a good playlist, and still feel a bit cold. What changes that is attention. When someone has spent a week putting small things in small places, you can feel it when you walk in, even if you cannot say exactly what it is.

What a warm room of a Christmas Bar in Edinburgh is

People use the word cosy a lot, and I think it gets misunderstood. Cosy is not a pile of cushions. It is a combination of things that all say the same thing: you can stay.

It is warmth, of course, on a night when Edinburgh has turned dark by teatime. On the shortest day of the year, the sun sets at around twenty to four in the afternoon, which means that for much of December you walk to dinner in the dark. A bar with its lights on and its decorations up, a few steps off a cold street, is a very different proposition from the one you passed in the summer.

It is also pace. A cosy room does not hurry you. It is the sense that nobody is waiting for your table, and that there is no point looking at your watch. That is a matter of how the team behaves as much as how the room looks, and it is something I wrote about in What Great Hospitality Means to Us.

And it is the people. The decorations are the visible part, but the room is warm because the team makes it warm. The same people who look after you in August look after you in December, and I would put that ahead of anything we hang on the walls.

What we did last Christmas, and why we are not doing it again

Last December we ran an advent calendar. Every day, we gave away gifts from other businesses on Broughton Street. It was a lovely idea, and it gave us a reason to connect with our neighbours throughout the month.

It also disrupted service too much. Anyone who has worked on a busy shift knows that a good idea can still get in the way of the thing you are there to do. When tables are waiting, stopping to organise a giveaway is not hospitality. So we will not do the same thing this year, and I would rather say that openly than quietly drop it.

What we are doing instead is simpler. We are putting our energy into the room, the food and the drinks, so that anyone who comes in gets the full evening.

The festive menu

When the weather turns, I want different food, and I suspect you do too. At Christmas we lean into that. The food becomes warmer, and there are more soupy dishes on the menu. The idea is comfort, not complication. You come in from the cold and you want something that feels like it was made for the weather.

I am not going to announce the dishes before they are final, but I can tell you where the instinct comes from. Greek cooking has a long tradition of winter food, and a good part of it is in the bowl: fasolada, the bean soup that many people call the national dish, and avgolemono, the egg and lemon soup that tastes like a hug. I am not saying those will be on our menu. I am saying that this is the kind of cooking that makes sense in December, and that it sits naturally beside the sharing plates we serve all year.

We already change the menu with the seasons, and I have written about why Nectar has seasonal menus and changes its food every three months. The Christmas menu is that idea at its warmest. If you are new to Greek-Mediterranean food and want to know how a sharing menu works, my guide to Greek food in Edinburgh is a good place to begin.

The drinks

The same thing happens behind the bar. The drinks move towards hot toddies, and towards deeper, darker fruits.

A hot toddy is one of the oldest ideas in drinking. Hot water, a spirit (whisky is the classic), honey, and something sharp like lemon. It is what you want when you have walked a long way in the cold and your hands have stopped working. Ours are our own versions, built around warmth and depth rather than sweetness.

I will not give you recipes, because the menu is still being finalised and because I would like to keep a few surprises. If you want a sense of how we think about a warm drink, Warmth Within is the closest example we have on the current menu.

How I would spend a winter evening here

Here is how I would do it, if I were coming in as a guest rather than working the room.

Come early. Do not wait until the last minute of the evening. In December it is dark when you leave work, and the best time to walk into a warm room is when the cold is still on you. You get the first drink at its best, the room before it fills, and a longer evening.

Start with something hot. A toddy is the obvious choice, and it does a job a cold cocktail cannot, which is to warm you from the inside while you read the menu.

Then order for the weather. Share a few plates, and let the table decide what comes next. A warm, soupy dish in the middle of the table, with bread, changes the mood of an evening more than you would expect.

Stay for another. The point of a room like this is that it does not hurry you. If you are cold, it is still cold outside, and there is no prize for leaving early.

And book if it is a Friday or Saturday. December weekends fill up in a way that other months do not, and it is a shame to be turned away on a cold night. Weeknights are easier, and in my experience a little calmer.

Make an evening of it on Broughton Street

A good winter evening in Edinburgh often involves more than one place, and Broughton Street is a good street for it. If you are seeing a show at the Edinburgh Playhouse, which is a short walk from the top of the street, dinner with us beforehand is an easy plan. My pre theatre dinner guide covers the area. If you want to see the lights and the market first, I have put the city's Christmas programme in one place in my guide to Christmas in Edinburgh. And if you want to carry on afterwards, my Broughton Street guide lists where to go next.

If you would rather give someone the evening than book it yourself, a gift voucher is the easy way, and December is when they are used most.

New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve is our own party, with family and friends. Last year it got a bit out of hand, as it usually does, and we counted down to midnight together and celebrated the big bang with friends.

I am not announcing a public event here. If that changes, I will update this page.

Christmas Day, and the days around it

We are closed on Christmas Day. We are still deciding on the smaller days around it, so please check our website or send us a message before you plan around a particular date. I would rather you ask than turn up to a closed door.

If you are coming with a group

We take group bookings, and spaces are already filling up. If you would like to bring a group for a festive evening, get in touch early through our events page or by email at team@nectarbar.co.uk. For a whole room to yourselves, I have explained how that works in Private Dining in Edinburgh.

Questions people ask about Christmas at Nectar

When does the decorating happen? We spend about a week on it, with my mother, in the run up to Christmas. The room changes over that week.

Is there a festive menu? Yes. The food moves towards warmer, soupier dishes, and the drinks towards hot toddies and deeper fruits.

Are you open on Christmas Day? No, we are closed. We are still deciding on the days either side, so please check before you plan.

Is Nectar dog friendly in winter? Yes, we are a dog friendly bar all year, and I wrote about what that looks like.

Is there an advent calendar this year? No. We did one last year and it disrupted service too much, so we are putting that energy into the room and the menu instead.

Do you do anything for New Year's Eve? We have our own party with family and friends. I will update this page if that changes.

Come in from the cold

We are very excited for Christmas. The decorating week is one of the things I look forward to most, and the room feels different afterwards. If you want to see what my mother and the team have done, book a table at Nectar and come in out of the dark. We will have the lights on.

Tuesday to Thursday 5pm to 11pm Friday 5pm to 1am Saturday 12pm to 1am Sunday 5pm to 11pm Monday closed Christmas Day closed.

Please check our website for the days around it. team@nectarbar.co.uk