Six Months on Broughton Street: What Opening Nectar Actually Taught Us About Edinburgh

Opening a restaurant is an act of optimism. You build something, you open the door, and then you find out whether the thing you imagined actually exists in the way you hoped it would.

Six months in, we can say with genuine gratitude that it does.

Finding Nectar's Place on Broughton Street

Broughton Street was always where Nectar was meant to be. The street has its own rhythm and its own identity. Independent businesses, a strong sense of community, neighbours who genuinely care about what the street becomes. From the moment we opened, that community extended a warmth toward Nectar that we did not take for granted then and do not take for granted now.

Regulars appeared faster than we expected. Locals who came once and returned within days. Neighbours who brought friends visiting from out of town. People who had walked past the window many times before finally stepping inside, and then coming back the following week. The particular quality of a repeat visit, the fact that someone chose to spend another evening with us when they could have chosen anywhere else in Edinburgh, has been the most meaningful measure of the first six months.

Broughton Street welcomed us as though we had always been part of it. That is not something you can manufacture. It is something you earn, slowly, one evening at a time. We are grateful for every one of them.

The Kitchen

At the heart of Nectar is Margarita's kitchen, and the first six months have demonstrated what we always believed it could be.

The menu is built around Greek-Mediterranean sharing plates. Food designed to be ordered in rounds, eaten slowly, and shared across the table in the way that Greek food has always been intended to be shared. The philosophy is simple: fresh ingredients, genuine technique, and the particular kind of care that comes from cooking food you actually love rather than food you have been asked to produce.

The Prawn Saganaki has become one of the most talked-about dishes we serve, a bowl of prawns in rich tomato sauce with melted feta that guests order and then order again before the evening is finished. The Spinach and Leek Pitta is made from Margarita's family recipe, never written down, produced entirely in-house in a way that tastes genuinely different from anything you can find elsewhere in Edinburgh. The Cheese Filo Pastry with honey and sesame arrives and immediately makes everyone at the table reach in simultaneously.

The food has resonated in a way that feels deeply personal because it is. This is not a menu assembled from trends. It is a menu built from memory, tradition and the conviction that Greek food treated with proper respect is as good as anything Edinburgh has to offer.

Half the menu is vegetarian or vegan by design rather than accommodation, reflecting the Greek kitchen's genuine relationship with vegetables as equal partners to meat rather than supporting players. That balance has been noticed and appreciated by a significant portion of our guests, and it has made Nectar a genuinely welcoming space for tables with mixed dietary preferences.

Chicken Skewer with a Tzatziki Martini

The Bar

Behind the bar, Panos has built something that Edinburgh had not seen before we opened.

The cocktail menu is built around technique and Mediterranean identity. Infusions that permanently alter the character of a spirit before a single other ingredient is added. Clarification that removes colour and cloudiness from a cocktail while preserving every element of its flavour. Foams that change the first thing your palate encounters before the liquid arrives. These are not gimmicks. They are deliberate choices made in service of a better drinking experience.

The Tzatziki Martini has become the drink Nectar is most associated with. Built on cucumber, yogurt, dill and garlic, clarified until it arrives in the glass completely clear. It looks like an elegant martini and tastes like nothing people expect. The response to it, across six months of service, has been consistent: curiosity before the first sip, quiet surprise after it, and a description of the experience to the next person who asks what to order.

The Warmth Within has become our most ordered cocktail. A spicy margarita rebuilt from the spirit up, with ginger and chilli infused directly into the Patrón Reposado. The heat moves inward rather than sitting on the lips. It is the cocktail that most reliably produces the particular expression of someone who expected one thing and received something considerably better.

We have entered four cocktail competitions in the first six months. Each one has pushed the thinking behind the menu further and produced ideas that will find their way into future iterations of what we serve.

Beach Bonfire

The People

The most important thing about the first six months is not a dish or a cocktail or a statistic. It is the people.

The regulars who have become familiar faces. The guests who told us on their second visit that they had already recommended us to three people. The table who came in for a quiet drink and stayed for three hours because the evening took on its own momentum. The couple who came on a first date and came back on a third. The group who booked the back room and said it was the best birthday evening they could remember.

Over 220 five-star Google reviews have been left by guests who chose to take a moment after their visit to say something kind. We read every one of them. Each one represents an evening that went the way we hoped it would, and a person who left feeling that Nectar was worth their time.

Roughly half of every new guest who walks through the door was sent by someone who had been before. That is the statistic we are most proud of, and the one that says the most about what has happened in the first six months. Not because it is a marketing metric, but because it means that the people who have experienced Nectar trust it enough to attach their own name to the recommendation.

That trust is not taken lightly.

What Broughton Street Has Given Us

There is a version of opening a restaurant where you arrive in a neighbourhood and spend the first year proving yourself to it. Where you wait to be accepted rather than welcomed.

That has not been our experience on Broughton Street.

From the beginning, the street embraced Nectar as though we had always been part of it. Our neighbours at Bistro Coco next door, the team at Thamel and The Blind Tiger a few doors down, the whole community of independent businesses that give this street its character. We recommend each other, look out for each other, and collectively contribute to making Broughton Street one of the best evenings out in Edinburgh.

The street gave Nectar a home. We intend to deserve it for as long as we are here.

Looking Forward

Six months is enough time to know that what we built is real. The foundation is solid, the community is warm, and the quality of what happens at Nectar every evening is something the whole team is proud of.

The menu will keep evolving. Every three months we review the drinks, test new ideas and introduce the things that have earned their place. The food reflects the seasons and Margarita's continuing development of what the kitchen can produce. The events programme is growing, with private dining, cocktail masterclasses and exclusive hire now available for groups from six to sixty.

The next six months will bring new dishes, new cocktails, new faces and new evenings that become part of the story of this place.

We are only getting started.

Thank you to everyone who has been part of the first chapter. Thank you for coming in, for coming back, for telling your friends, and for being generous enough to share your evenings with us.

See you soon.

Book your table here.

Nectar is at 73 Broughton Street, Edinburgh EH1 3RJ. Open Tuesday to Thursday from 5pm until 11pm, Friday from 5pm until 1am, Saturday from noon until 1am, and Sunday from noon until 11pm. Monday closed.