Spinach and Leek Pitta. The Dish That Cannot Be Rushed.

There are dishes on a menu that you design, and there are dishes that arrive fully formed from somewhere older than the restaurant itself.

Our Spinach and Leek Pitta belongs firmly in the second category. It did not come from a recipe book, a food trend, or a conversation about what might work well on a sharing plate menu. It came from Margarita's family, from decades of preparation in Greek kitchens, and from a tradition that predates Nectar by several generations.

This is the story of that dish, how it came to be on the menu, and why it represents something we care about more than almost anything else we serve.

What Pitta Actually Is

In Greek food culture, pitta refers to a family of pies rather than a single dish. The word itself simply means pie, and the variations are almost endless across the different regions of Greece.

The most widely known outside of Greece is Spanakopita, the spinach and feta version that has become familiar in delis and supermarkets across the UK. Prasopita uses leek as its primary filling. Hortopita is made with wild greens. Tiropita focuses on cheese. Kreatopita uses meat. In different regions, different combinations dominate, and the debate about which version is the correct one is the kind of argument Greek families have been having around kitchen tables for generations without ever reaching a conclusion.

What all of them share is the pastry. Filo, stretched thin until it is almost transparent, layered and folded around the filling, then baked or fried until it shatters at the touch. Making proper filo from scratch is one of the more demanding skills in Greek home cooking. It requires patience, the right dough, and a particular technique that most people learn by watching rather than reading.

Our version at Nectar combines spinach and leek with spring onion and herbs, finished with dill and wrapped in homemade pastry. It is served warm, cut into pieces for sharing, in the way it would be shared in Greece.

A Recipe That Will Not Be Written Down

When we first discussed adding pitta to the menu, the practical conversation was about sourcing. Pre-made filo exists in every wholesale supplier's catalogue. A competent kitchen can produce a perfectly acceptable pitta using bought pastry and a standard filling recipe. It is the obvious route, and there is nothing wrong with it.

Then we tasted Margarita's version.

The decision was immediate. Not close. Not a matter of preference. The difference between what she makes and anything we could have sourced externally was the difference between a dish that is good and a dish that makes people stop talking and look at what is on the plate.

Margarita will not share the recipe. Not because she is being precious about it, but because the recipe is not really hers to share. It belongs to her family, passed down through the women in her kitchen across multiple generations, carried in memory and repetition rather than written instructions. Some of the proportions exist only as instinct, adjusted by feel rather than measurement. The kind of knowledge that cannot be accurately transferred through a list of ingredients and method steps.

This is, incidentally, the most Greek thing about the dish. The jealously guarded family pitta recipe is a cultural institution in Greece. Every family believes their version is the definitive one. Every family is probably right about that, in the sense that each version is the truest expression of that particular kitchen and that particular history. Margarita's version is the truest expression of hers.

A Ritual, Not Just a Recipe

The first time I watched Eirini and Margarita prepare the pitta, it felt less like cooking and more like something closer to a ritual.

Hair tied back. Workspace cleared and cleaned carefully. Movements that were precise and unhurried in the way that only comes from having done something so many times that the body knows the steps before the mind has finished formulating them. There was a quality of quiet concentration in the kitchen that you do not often see, and that communicated something important about the seriousness with which this dish is treated.

There is a specific rolling stick used for stretching the dough. Not a standard rolling pin. A long, thin, smooth rod that allows the dough to be worked across its full length without losing the tension required to stretch filo properly. I have been trying to find one ever since that first session. Margarita's considered assessment is that the best substitute is a cut-down broom handle, sanded smooth. This information has not made the search any less interesting.

Everything in our pitta is made in-house. The dough, the filling, the assembly, the layering. There is no component that arrives from outside and is assembled here. It is authentic Greek home cooking in the truest sense of that phrase, made entirely from scratch in a kitchen on Broughton Street by the person who has been making it this way her entire life.

What It Tastes Like

Despite being a pie, the Spinach and Leek Pitta at Nectar is surprisingly light.

The pastry shatters rather than yielding. It has the kind of crispness that comes from proper filo work and a kitchen that understands how to handle it, not the slightly chewy texture that results from bought pastry that has been handled too much or baked at the wrong temperature. The layers are distinct and delicate, and the contrast between the crisp exterior and the warm, yielding filling is what the dish is built around.

The filling is spinach, leek and spring onion with herbs throughout, and a finish of dill that lifts the whole thing. Dill is one of those herbs that does a specific job in Greek cooking. It adds freshness without acidity, brightness without sharpness, and it works particularly well against the earthiness of spinach and the mild sweetness of slow-cooked leek. The balance between the richness of the filling and the lightness of the finish is where Margarita's experience shows most clearly.

It is not a heavy dish. You could eat it at the start of a meal to open the table, or in the middle as part of a wider spread, or alongside a drink on its own without it sitting heavily afterwards. That versatility is part of what makes it one of the more useful dishes on the menu from an ordering perspective.

We serve it cut into multiple pieces, designed for sharing. The same way it would be served at a Greek table, where pitta is rarely a personal portion and almost always something that moves around the table until it is gone.

How to Order It

The Spinach and Leek Pitta works well in almost any position in a sharing plate meal, but it tends to shine earliest. It is the kind of dish that arrives and immediately gives the table something to agree on, which is a good way to start an evening.

Pair it with something lighter from the vegetable section of the menu and you have a natural opening to a meal before the heavier plates arrive. It also sits well alongside the Cheese Filo Pastry if your table enjoys pastry-led dishes, though ordering both at the same time can lean the early part of the meal in one direction. Better to bring one first and see whether the table wants more in that register before ordering the second.

If you are new to sharing plate dining and not sure how to structure the evening, our guide to ordering sharing plates covers everything you need to know before you arrive.

What to Drink With It

The lightness of the filling and the delicacy of the pastry respond well to drinks that are similarly precise and clean rather than rich and heavy.

A crisp glass of Vermentino is the wine pairing that works most naturally. The freshness of the wine mirrors the dill and herbs in the filling without competing with them. It is the kind of pairing that feels obvious in retrospect, the glass and the dish simply agreeing with each other from the first sip and the first bite.

For cocktails, the Rustling Wind is the pairing we recommend most often alongside the pitta. Its bright fruit notes and clean finish sit against the lightness of the pastry in a way that keeps both feeling fresh across the course of the dish. It is a pairing that respects the subtlety of the food rather than overwhelming it.

If you want to understand more about how we think about pairing food and drinks at Nectar, the cocktail menu guide covers the philosophy behind it.

What This Dish Represents

We serve a lot of food at Nectar that is genuinely good. We try to make sure everything on the menu earns its place and does its job well. But the Spinach and Leek Pitta sits in a slightly different category from most of what we serve.

It is a direct line to a specific tradition. A dish that exists at Nectar not because we developed it or sourced it or designed it to fit a menu slot, but because one member of our team carries a piece of Greek culinary history in her hands and agreed to bring it here with her.

That is what we are trying to do with Greek food in Edinburgh more broadly. Not approximate it, not present a commercially convenient version of it, but serve the real thing made by the people who grew up with it. The pitta is probably the purest expression of that ambition on the entire menu.

If you want to try something that is genuinely authentic, made entirely from scratch, from a recipe that has never been written down, this is the dish.

See the full menu here or book your table here.

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

Reserve a Table