Mezze for Two in Edinburgh: What to Order at Nectar and Why Sharing Plates Change the Whole Dinner

One of the questions we get asked most often, across every kind of table and every kind of evening, is: what should we order?

It is a genuine question and it deserves a genuine answer, which is usually some version of: look at the menu, find everything you want to try, and order those things. Not because we are avoiding the question, but because the best version of a sharing plate dinner at Nectar is the one built around what you are actually curious about rather than around what someone else told you to eat.

The format makes this possible in a way that a traditional three-course menu does not. If you order a starter that does not move you, you are stuck with it. At Nectar, if a dish arrives and it is not the one that defines the evening, something else will arrive soon enough, and you can keep ordering until you find what it is. The only limit is your appetite.

That said, there are dishes that consistently show up at tables for two, dishes that travel particularly well across the format, and a logic to the order of things that makes the evening more satisfying than simply choosing at random. This is what I know about how that works.

Why two is the ideal number for this format

There is an argument that sharing plates are best suited to large groups, because more people means more dishes, and more dishes means more of the menu covered in a single evening. That is true. But there is something about a table of two that sharing plates serves particularly well, and it is not about quantity.

When two people share a dish, they both experience exactly the same thing at exactly the same moment. The reaction is simultaneous. The conversation that follows is immediate and specific, not a comparison of two separate plates but a shared response to one thing. That dynamic is different to any other format, and for a dinner where the point is the conversation rather than the food alone, it has a quality that is genuinely hard to replicate.

For a new couple especially, that shared response to something unexpected does more to break the ice than almost anything else a restaurant can offer. The question of whether you both love the cheese filo pastry, or whether one of you discovers they do not actually like olives, or whether the cocktail pairing takes the whole table in a direction neither of you expected: these are real conversations, not manufactured ones, and they tend to go somewhere more interesting than the usual first-date repertoire.

For couples who have known each other long enough that the usual conversations come easily, the food gives the evening a different kind of focus. Not a distraction from each other, but a shared object of attention that opens up a different register of conversation. What you order, what you like, what surprises you, what you want more of: all of it is new information, even for people who know each other well, and new information is the thing that keeps a dinner alive.

What to order

People often come to Nectar with a plan: they will look at the menu, decide what seems interesting, and order that. Then the menu arrives and the plan becomes considerably more ambitious than they intended.

The menu is not designed to be ordered in its entirety, but it is designed so that most things on it genuinely appeal across most moods and appetites, which is why tables for two that planned to order modestly tend to keep adding things as the evening progresses. This is not a failure of self-control. It is the format working as it should.

For a table of two approaching the menu for the first time, here is what I would suggest as a framework, not a fixed order, but a direction of travel.

Start with the cheese filo pastry. It is the dish that best introduces the logic of the menu: crisp filo, melted cheese, honey, sesame, the specific meeting of savoury and sweet that runs through Greek cooking and that most people encounter here for the first time. It arrives quickly and it sets the tone for everything that follows. If you are the kind of person who finds yourself talking about what you are eating rather than simply eating it, this is the dish that starts that conversation.

Add the chicken skewer. It is the bestselling dish on the menu and it has earned that position through the simplest possible mechanism: it is cooked exactly right, every time. Marinated, grilled over direct heat, served hot. There is nothing complicated about it and nothing about it that fails to deliver. For two people who have never been to Nectar before, the chicken skewer is the dish that most reliably becomes a reference point for the rest of the evening.

The prawns in tomato sauce is the dish that surprises people most consistently. It looks like something familiar, prawns in a rich, spiced sauce, and it tastes considerably more specific and more considered than that description suggests. The sauce has depth and warmth and a slight sweetness that the prawns absorb rather than compete with. It is also the dish most likely to prompt someone to ask what is in it, which is always a good sign. For a table of two, this is the dish to add after the first round has arrived and you are feeling more confident about what the evening is.

Zucchini fries alongside everything else. Not as an afterthought, but as the thing that gives the table something to pick at between the more substantial dishes and that provides a crispness and lightness that balances the richness of the prawns and the depth of the skewer. There is a reason they appear on almost every table we serve. They are simple, they are consistently excellent, and they fill the role on a Greek table that bread fills on a French one.

From there, the vegetable stew from the vegetable sides is the addition I would always recommend if the table wants to go further. It is the quietest dish on the menu and the one that most rewards attention: slow-cooked, deep in flavour, built on olive oil and fresh vegetables that have had time enough to become something more than the sum of what went into them. For two people who are eating slowly and talking well, it is the dish that suits that pace.

The discovery element

One of the things I notice most consistently from the floor is the moment when someone at a table tries something they would not have chosen for themselves and realises it is the best thing they have eaten all evening.

It happens with the olives more than anywhere else. Kalamata olives are not the olives most people in Scotland have grown up eating, and the assumption tends to be that one olive is much like another. The table orders them as an afterthought, they arrive, someone tries one without much expectation, and the conversation pauses. The depth and richness and specific savouriness of a properly cured Kalamata olive is a different experience to a green cocktail olive, and that difference is immediately apparent even to people who have decided they do not particularly like olives.

This happens with the halloumi too. People who have had bad halloumi, rubbery and unsalted and served at the wrong temperature, approach it with qualified enthusiasm and leave planning to order it again next time. The dark forest fruit chutney alongside it is the element that most surprises them, because the combination of grilled savoury cheese and a deep, slightly tangy fruit sauce is not what they expected and is precisely what the dish needs.

These discoveries are part of what makes the format work for a dinner for two specifically. The shared experience of tasting something for the first time and both reacting to it at the same moment is a genuinely good thing to do with someone, whether you have known them for three weeks or ten years.

Cocktails and wine alongside the food

The pairing conversation is, in my experience, one of the most reliable ways for a dinner to open up into something more interesting than it would otherwise be.

If you are drinking cocktails, the Drops of the River is the cocktail that sits most naturally alongside the lighter dishes: the cheese filo pastry, the halloumi, the zucchini fries. Its botanical and floral character has enough lightness to sit alongside rather than over the top of food with genuine delicacy. The Warmth Within belongs alongside the skewer and the prawns: the warmth in the cocktail meets the warmth in both dishes and each makes the other taste more itself.

For wine, the Assyrtiko is the white alongside any fish and alongside the halloumi: its acidity does what lemon does to those dishes, which is to say it sharpens and lifts everything. The Xinomavro belongs alongside the skewer and anything from the meat section: structured, aromatic, built for food in a way that announces itself the moment it meets something substantial.

The specific pleasure of a pairing conversation at a dinner for two is that it turns the drinks decision into part of the meal rather than a separate transaction. What are you drinking, what are you eating, how does one change the other: these are questions with genuinely interesting answers at Nectar, and they tend to extend the evening in the direction the best evenings go.

The actual answer to what you should order

Look at the menu. Find the things that interest you. Order those things, and then keep adding as the evening develops and you understand better what the table wants.

The dishes above are the ones I come back to most consistently when someone asks directly, and they are honest recommendations rather than the ones that are most expensive or most elaborate. The cheese filo pastry, the chicken skewer, the prawns in tomato sauce, and the zucchini fries form a table that covers most of what this food does well: pastry, grilled meat, seafood, something crisp and light. From there, the menu extends in every direction, and the evening extends with it.

The only thing that limits a mezze for two at Nectar is appetite. Order until you are satisfied, add one more thing if you are curious, and let the conversation do what it does when the food is good and the room is right.

Book a table for two at Nectar Bar.

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