Best restaurants in Edinburgh

This stylishly decorated restaurant and cocktail bar combines Scottish ingredients with influences from warmer and sunnier climes. Seafood and game are a highlight, daily market menus offer excellent value – and don’t skip dessert.

This latest venture from Martin Wishart moves away from haute cuisine to a more casual brasserie-style offering without ever forsaking quality. Steaks and seafood are specialities while set menus include lunch, tasting and kids’ options.  

The fin-de-siècle look of this Edinburgh institution looks more like something you’d find in Le Marais than the New Town. The cooking has a stronger British accent than the Parisian-style surrounds suggest but the wines are très French.

Chef Mark Greenaway has closed his eponymous restaurant in the New Town and re-located to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Despite the name, Grazing majors in hearty dishes of rich meats, while the casual surroundings encourage lingering.

Chef Tom Kitchin has almost every eating eventuality in Edinburgh covered and this Stockbridge gastropub ticks the boxes for casual and family-friendly. Expect classy pub grub, bar food, weekend breakfasts, Sunday roasts and Scottish beers.

Craig and Vikki Wood’s second Wee Restaurant, in the New Town, repeats the success of the North Queensferry original. Expect good-value brasserie-style cooking served in a relaxed, light-filled dining room, washed down with some great wines.

The name of Paul Kitching’s restaurant is slightly misleading: instead of 21212, he offers three starter choices, then soup, three mains, then cheese and finally three desserts. Exciting and experimental, this is cutting-edge cooking.

The first solo venture from Swiss-French chef Jérôme Henry has a New Town location that suits the heritage feel of red velvet seating and white tablecloths. The cooking style is more modern: scallop crudo with confit tomato, say.

Down-to-earth Field offers some very accomplished cooking served up without a hint of pretension. International flavours are to the fore on a one-page menu, though the approach is European. Fun puddings and good-value set menus, too.

Its location beneath Edinburgh Castle Mound couldn’t be any more traditional, but everything else about this contemporary dining room is bang up to date. Expect fresh flavours, top-drawer desserts and excellent but affordable wines.

Fhior is the Gaelic word for ‘true’ and chef Scott Smith’s restaurant stays true to its ethos with a seasonal menu based on Scottish ingredients, some of them foraged. Expect small plates at lunch and an evening tasting menu.

If it’s your first-time in Edinburgh and you want the full-on Royal Mile experience, you can’t beat The Witchery. With its extravagant baronial style and mood of candlelit romance, it’s the closest you can get to dining in the castle itself.

Edinburgh's best restaurant combines views of the city’s most famous landmarks with the finest Scottish seafood. A sparkling crustacean bar reveals the freshness of ingredients that need only the lightest of chef touches to shine.

Copper pans, posters of Edith Piaf: there’s no mistaking you’re eating in a French restaurant here, even if you didn’t know that it was owned by proud Frenchman Fred Berkmiller. Expect Gallic classics washed down with French wines.

Chef David Bann raids the global larder for his innovative vegetarian restaurant that is Edinburgh’s best place to eat for anyone following a meat-free diet. Modern interiors reflect the kitchen’s forward-looking outlook.

Michelin-starred since 2001, this slick restaurant is the showcase for one of Scotland’s most famous chefs, Martin Wishart. Scottish ingredients combine with French technique on the seasonal menu; vegetarians get their own tasting menu.

A sibling of Mother India in Glasgow, this Edinburgh offshoot serves the same good-value Indian tapas as the original, making it a good bet for a cheap eat in the Socttish capital even if you're not a student at the nearby university.

This Royal Mile restaurant comes courtesy of TV chef Paul Wedgwood. It’s a chic setting for refined modern Scottish cooking that is as creative as the surroundings are elegant. Like the food, the wine list changes with the seasons.

Emerald tiles and brass fittings reflect the Victorian heritage of this building on Newhaven harbour where the view of fishing boats and the Forth bridges gets the juices flowing for freshly cooked fish & chips to eat in or take away.

The fame of this Michelin-starred restaurant extends well beyond Edinburgh, not least due to Tom Kitchin’s regular TV appearances. The chef’s ‘from nature to plate’ food philosophy results in destination dining of the highest order.

It might look like a cosy local, but with an ex-Castle Terrace chef in the kitchen, you can be sure the food here punches well above its location. Short seasonal menus guarantee freshness and thoughtfulness, while staff are friendly. 

Executive chef Jeff Bland is in charge of the Michelin-starred, formal flagship of the Balmoral hotel. The modern French menu makes good use of seasonal ingredients, plus there are tasting menus and wine pairings for big spenders. 

With its shabby-chic style and commitment to foraging, butchery, curing and growing your own, Timberyard is a restaurant for our times. Multi-course menus, much of it adorned with herbs and flowers, are best enjoyed in the alfresco yard.

With vegetable patches out front, there’s no mistaking this Victorian building for the gardener’s cottage it once was. The cooking follows suit with dishes in which the vegetable component is as considered as the prime Scottish protein.

Tom Kitchin’s Bruntsfield bistro is the first time the chef has headed to south Edinburgh, but we’re glad he did. Appealing modern European cooking and a fascinating drinks list are the reward for making the journey.