The Menu Is Never Finished. Behind the Specials at Nectar.

One of the questions we get asked most often is how we decide what goes on the menu.

The honest answer is that the menu is never quite decided. It is always in the process of becoming something slightly better than it was. Every three months we reprint. Every month we run a special. Every week something new is being tried behind the bar or tested in the kitchen, quietly and without announcement, waiting to see whether it is good enough to earn its place in front of a guest.

This is not restlessness for its own sake. It is the belief that a menu that stops evolving stops being interesting. And at Nectar, interesting is non-negotiable.

How the Menu Changes

Every time we reprint the menu, which happens roughly every three months, we look at everything on it with fresh eyes.

Not everything changes. Most of what is there is there because it has proven itself over time, because guests return to it, because it represents something we believe in strongly enough to keep defending. The Tzatziki Martini is not going anywhere. Neither is the Prawn Saganaki or the Spinach and Leek Pitta. Some things earn their permanence.

But around the edges, things shift. A side dish that was served alongside the Chicken Skewers gets reconsidered when something more interesting becomes available. A cocktail garnish that worked well enough gets replaced when something better presents itself. A new dish that emerged from a month of testing on the specials menu proves itself sufficiently to displace something that had been there since the beginning.

The Warmth Within is a good example of how this works in practice. It started as an experiment with infusing Patrón Reposado with ginger and chilli, a technique developed during preparation for a cocktail competition. It was served as a special first, tested in front of real guests, refined based on what we observed and heard. When the jalapeño syrup replaced the original caramel syrup following the Patrón Margarita Challenge in 2026, that change came directly from competition preparation feeding back into the menu. The drink you order now is the product of that ongoing process.

That is how the menu gets better. Not through a quarterly redesign meeting but through continuous experimentation that occasionally produces something worth keeping.

The Drinks Specials

Behind the bar, the process of creating new things is faster and more instinctive than the food side of the operation.

Drinks are often created on the go. An idea about an ingredient combination, a spirit that has just arrived, a technique being explored. Panos works through ideas at the bar in the quieter moments and the first version of something new is rarely far from a glass that someone is about to taste. The feedback is immediate and honest. If it is interesting, it develops. If it is not, it does not.

Most months there is a formal special on the drinks menu. These tend to be built around collaborations with spirit brands, where working with a specific bottle creates a brief that focuses the creativity productively. Two recent examples show how that process works and how far it can go.

The Citrus and Spice was created for the Patrón Spicy Margarita Challenge. The brief asked Panos to take one of the most recognisable cocktail formats in the world, the spicy margarita, and produce something that justified its existence beyond the standard jalapeño and tequila combination. The result was a drink built around layered citrus and controlled heat, exploring how different expressions of spice interact with different citrus elements across the length of the cocktail. It made it through to the advanced rounds of the competition. For a drink that started as an entry in a brand challenge, that progression is a genuine measure of what the process produced.

The Successful First Date was created for the Bumbu Originals competition, built around Bumbu rum, a Caribbean spirit with a naturally rich and complex character that lends itself to drinks with warmth and depth. The name came from the feeling Panos wanted the cocktail to produce, something that puts you at ease, that makes the evening feel like it is going well, that carries enough charm and confidence to suggest a second round. It made it through to the advanced rounds too.

Both of these cocktails represent something specific about how the specials programme works at Nectar. The competitions are not just about external recognition. They create a discipline that pushes the thinking behind new drinks further than casual experimentation tends to go. The brief is fixed, the deadline is real, and the standard being judged against is higher than a single evening's service. What comes out of that process is consistently more interesting than what would have emerged without it.

The Diplomático Artisans of Taste competition is the other example worth mentioning. The brief asked Panos to explore the relationship between sugarcane rum and cocoa. What came out of that process was two cocktails, one submitted to the competition and one that stayed behind and ended up on the menu permanently. Fizz n Fig was the one that stayed. The Warmth Within is another example of how competition preparation feeds directly back into the permanent menu, with the jalapeño syrup that now defines the drink emerging from development work during the Patrón Margarita Challenge itself.

The specials and competition cocktails are announced on our social media channels when they are available. Following us on Instagram is the most reliable way to know when something new is on and to get to it before it is gone. If you are visiting and want to know what is currently being tried or developed, ask the team at the bar. There is almost always something worth trying that has not made it to a printed card yet.

If there is no formal special running when you visit, ask anyway. Panos will very likely be able to produce something. And your reaction to it will become part of its development.

The Food Specials

Food works differently, and the difference matters.

The kitchen operates to a standard that means nothing reaches a guest until Margarita is satisfied with it. This is not a slow process for its own sake. It is a recognition that food specials carry a different kind of risk than drink specials. A drink that is eighty percent of the way there is still interesting to explore. A dish that is eighty percent of the way there is simply not good enough.

So the food specials that do appear are genuinely ready when they appear. They tend to be announced on the Nectar Instagram rather than printed anywhere, partly because the quantities are limited and partly because the nature of a food special is that it exists for a specific moment. A dish built around an ingredient that is available for a particular window, a seasonal preparation that only makes sense at a specific time of year, a recipe that has been in development for months and is finally ready to be put in front of people.

The lamb shank is the best example of how this works at its most meaningful.

Lamb shank is one of the great dishes of Greek Easter. In Orthodox Christian tradition, Easter is the most significant celebration of the year, and the food that accompanies it carries the weight of that significance. Whole lamb, slow-cooked for hours, is the centre of the Greek Easter table in the way that no other dish is. The lamb shank is its smaller, equally serious expression: braised slowly until the meat falls from the bone with complete generosity, rich and yielding in a way that requires patience from the kitchen and rewards it entirely at the table.

Margarita prepared it for Greek Easter earlier this year. It was on the menu for a limited number of days. The quantities available each service were specific and once they were gone, they were gone. The response from guests who tried it was immediate and consistent enough that it is now under serious consideration for the permanent menu.

That is the relationship between the specials and the main menu at its most direct. A dish that exists in a cultural and seasonal context, prepared when it is right rather than whenever it is convenient, tested in front of guests who are honest about whether it belongs there permanently. If it does, it stays. If it does not, it was still worth making for the time it existed.

Why the Menu Is Short

There is a deliberate tension between the constant development happening behind the scenes at Nectar and the menu that guests see when they sit down.

The menu is short. Intentionally and unapologetically short. Not because there is a lack of ideas or a lack of ambition, but because a short menu is a confident one. Every item on it has survived the process described above. Every cocktail has been tested and adjusted and tested again. Every dish has passed Margarita's standard and the additional standard of proving itself in front of real guests over time.

A longer menu would mean either a less rigorous process or a dilution of the quality that the current process produces. Neither is acceptable.

The specials exist partly to carry the overflow of creativity that a short menu cannot contain, and partly to serve as the proving ground for the things that might one day earn a permanent place. They are the menu's future, seen before it is decided.

How to Stay Ahead of It

The best way to know what is currently being tried, tested or about to launch is to follow Nectar on Instagram. Food specials in particular are announced there when they are ready, and the quantities are limited enough that following along closely is the practical way to make sure you do not miss something worth trying.

If you are visiting and want to know what is new or in development, ask the team when you arrive. The answer will almost always be interesting.

And if you have been to Nectar before and tried something that you have not seen since, ask about that too. The chances are it is still being developed, or it is waiting for the right season, or it earned a permanent place and you simply did not notice it had moved from the specials card to the printed menu.

See the current menu here and 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.