The Best Restaurants in Edinburgh. A Local's Guide to Where to Actually Eat.

Edinburgh is one of the best cities in the UK to eat in right now. I say that as someone who has lived here long enough to have opinions and eaten in enough places to back them up. The restaurant scene has changed enormously in the last few years, with independent venues doing genuinely ambitious work sitting alongside long-established institutions that have earned their reputation across decades.

There are hundreds of places to choose from. This is not a comprehensive list. It is a personal one, written by someone who has worked in and around Edinburgh's food and drink scene since arriving here, whose co-founders have cooked and bartended in a significant number of the places on this list, and who has a specific idea of what makes a meal worth leaving the house for.

Here is where I would actually send you.

Nectar, Broughton Street

I would be doing this guide a disservice if I did not start here, with the caveat that you should weight my recommendation accordingly.

Nectar is the bar and restaurant we built on Broughton Street. Greek-Mediterranean sharing plates alongside handcrafted cocktails, in a room designed to make people want to stay rather than move on. The menu is built around technique and story. The Tzatziki Martini arrives completely clear despite being built on cucumber, yogurt, dill and garlic. The Prawn Saganaki is rich, warming and deeply Greek. The Spinach and Leek Pitta is made from Margarita's family recipe and has never been written down.

Half the menu is vegetarian or vegan. The room can get loud on a Friday night and feels like someone's home on a Tuesday. We have over 220 five-star Google reviews and roughly half of everyone who walks through the door was sent by someone who came before them.

Open Tuesday to Thursday from 5pm, Friday from 5pm, Saturday and Sunday from noon. Book here.

Locanda de Gusti, Dalry Road

There are Italian restaurants in Edinburgh and then there is Locanda de Gusti, which occupies a category of its own.

Rosario Sartore's restaurant is where you go to eat fish the way it is supposed to be eaten. Not dressed up, not over-complicated, not processed into something unrecognisable. Fish treated with the respect and simplicity that Italian coastal cooking demands. The pasta is made in-house. The produce is sourced with care. The whole thing operates with a warmth and consistency that takes years to build.

This is also where Margarita began her Edinburgh cooking career, and the Locanda team feel like family to us. That connection runs deep enough that when we describe what we want Nectar's kitchen to embody, Locanda is the reference point we reach for most often. Genuine Italian cooking, executed with love. There are not many restaurants in Edinburgh you could say that about.

Thamel, Broughton Street

A few doors down from Nectar sits one of the most creative restaurants on the street, and possibly one of the most underrated in the city.

Thamel serves food that is genuinely surprising in the best possible way. The plates are inventive, the atmosphere is warm and particular, and the whole experience has a creativity to it that most Edinburgh restaurants do not attempt. The menu draws on South Asian influences and executes them with a level of care and distinctiveness that keeps people coming back before they have finished the first visit.

And then there is The Blind Tiger. Hidden beneath the restaurant is a speakeasy that hosts live jazz on Friday nights and a DJ on Saturdays. The atmosphere in that room, particularly on a Friday with the music playing, is one of the better late-night experiences in Edinburgh. We send guests there regularly after dinner at Nectar. They always thank us. Book at Thamel here.

Fazenda, George Street

Do not eat before you go. That is not a recommendation. It is an instruction.

Fazenda is a Brazilian rodízio steakhouse on George Street, and the format demands a commitment that casual diners tend to underestimate. A series of Gaucho grill chefs move continuously between tables with different cuts of meat, slicing directly onto your plate until you indicate you are done. The quality of the meat is outstanding and the variety across the cuts gives the evening a sense of progression that a traditional restaurant menu cannot replicate.

Eirini worked at Fazenda for a long time before Nectar, and her understanding of what genuine hospitality looks like in a high-volume, high-energy environment owes a great deal to that experience. If you are going as a group and want an evening built around generosity and shared abundance, Fazenda is the right answer.

Chaophraya, Castle Street

There are restaurants with views and there are restaurants with good food. The overlap between those two categories is smaller than it should be. Chaophraya sits in that overlap.

The Thai food at Chaophraya is genuinely outstanding, which would be enough on its own. The fact that it is served on the upper floors of a building with a direct view of Edinburgh Castle is the kind of combination that makes for an exceptional date night or a special occasion meal that actually lives up to the occasion. The menu is extensive and the quality is consistent across it rather than concentrated in one or two signature dishes.

Panos had one of his first Edinburgh hospitality jobs at Chaophraya, which means when we recommend it we are not doing so from the outside. We know what the kitchen cares about and how seriously the venue takes both its food and its guests.

Bistro Coco, Broughton Street

Our next-door neighbours, and one of the most reliably excellent meals you can have on Broughton Street.

Bistro Coco is a French bistro in the truest sense. No pretension, no overcomplication, just excellent French cooking served by staff who take genuine pleasure in what they do. The food is outstanding at a price point that makes it one of the better value meals in Edinburgh. The classics are the things to order, and the classics are what they do best.

We share a street and a mutual respect. When guests ask us where to eat before or after Nectar, Bistro Coco is one of the first answers.

San Ciro's, Leith

The best pizza in Edinburgh city. I will commit to that.

San Ciro's in Leith serves authentic Neapolitan pizza with the kind of fluffy, charred, properly fermented dough that almost nobody in this country produces correctly. The ingredients are taken seriously, the technique is genuine, and the result is a pizza that tastes like Naples rather than like someone's approximation of it.

What makes the recommendation carry even more weight is the connection. San Ciro's is owned by the son of Rosario, the founder of Locanda de Gusti. If you already know what Locanda stands for in terms of quality and authenticity, you know the standard that the San Ciro's kitchen is held to. It is worth the trip down to Leith specifically.

Cadiz, George Street

Cadiz is the kind of place that people who know Edinburgh keep slightly quiet about, not out of selfishness but because part of its appeal is the sense that you have discovered something rather than been directed to something obvious.

Tucked away on George Street, Cadiz serves Spanish food and wine with the confidence of a kitchen that has nothing to prove. The ingredients are excellent, the wine list is serious and specifically Spanish in a way that most Edinburgh wine lists are not, and the combination produces a meal that stays with you. It is the place I go when I want to eat something that will genuinely surprise me, and it delivers on that with a consistency that very few restaurants manage.

Lyla, Royal Terrace

If you want to understand what Edinburgh's fine dining scene is capable of at its absolute peak, Lyla is the answer.

Chef Stuart Ralston's restaurant on Royal Terrace holds one Michelin star, awarded in 2025 less than two years after opening. The 2025 National Restaurant Awards named it the best restaurant in Scotland and ranked it seventeenth in the UK. It is currently pursuing a second Michelin star, and based on the level of cooking it is producing, the pursuit seems entirely credible.

The format is a tasting menu built around Scottish seafood and produce, executed with classical French technique and subtle Japanese influence. The experience begins in a first-floor bar where the dry-aged fridges and the Krug champagne trolley set the tone before you move downstairs to the dining room for the main event.

It is worth knowing that Lyla is part of the same hospitality group behind Vinette and Vivienne, directly across the road from Nectar on Broughton Street. The standard of thinking and execution that Ralston and his team bring to Lyla runs through everything the group touches. That connection makes our neighbourhood feel significantly more interesting.

Dogstar, Leith

The most exciting new opening in Edinburgh in 2025, and already in the Michelin Guide within months of launching.

Dogstar on Portland Place in Leith is a collaboration between the co-owners of Nauticus, the celebrated Leith cocktail bar we have written about in our guide to Edinburgh's best cocktail bars, and Michelin-starred chef James Murray, who led Timberyard to its star before bringing his skills to this venture.

The philosophy is hyper-seasonal Scottish produce treated with intelligence and restraint. The menu changes constantly based on what is available rather than what is convenient. The cocktail programme, led by the Nauticus team, brings the same approach to drinks that has made Nauticus one of Edinburgh's most respected bars. The two sides of the operation amplify each other in a way that is genuinely rare.

The connection between Dogstar's food philosophy and what the Nauticus team do with drinks is the same underlying conviction expressed in two different mediums. At Nauticus, it is Scottish spirits and local ingredients in the glass. At Dogstar, it is Scottish produce on the plate. Together they represent something specific and important about where Edinburgh's food and drink culture is heading.

A Final Note

Edinburgh's restaurant scene is in as good a shape as it has ever been. The venues above cover a range from neighbourhood bistros to Michelin-starred tasting menus, from Brazilian rodízio to hyper-seasonal Scottish small plates to authentic Neapolitan pizza. They are connected by the same thing: kitchens and teams that take what they do seriously and produce results that justify your time and money.

The city has more options than this list covers. But if you work your way through these ten venues, you will have eaten very well in Edinburgh and understood something real about what makes the food scene here worth paying attention to.

Book your table at Nectar here and start with us.

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.