The 71 Best Places to Eat and Drink in Edinburgh

The entrance is a fake barbershop front on Queen Street, complete with foreign currency in the window as the only signal you're in the right place. Head downstairs and you're in a dim, prohibition-themed cocktail bar with curiosities on the walls and a menu built around freezing techniques: cryo-concentration, freeze-drying, the works. It's on Europe's 50 Best Bars and The World's 50 Best Bars lists, which the pandas on the walls take in stride.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 2 Pins
2. The 50 #34 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. The 50 #20 · Europe's 50 Best Bars

The big red barn door on Lady Lawson Street opens into a former warehouse where exposed stone, timber beams, and a working wood stove set the tone for a Michelin-starred tasting-menu restaurant that takes Scandinavian-influenced, hyper-seasonal Scottish cooking seriously. Fermentation, foraging, and a genuine zero-waste ethos run through everything, including a cocktail list, named Cocktail List of the Year at the 2026 National Restaurant Awards, that makes things from its own meads and ferments.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · Cocktail List of the Year · The National Restaurant Awards
2. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · Best Restaurant in Scotland · The National Restaurant Awards
3. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Champagne trolley upstairs, ageing fridges stocked with charcuterie and top-end seafood, then down to grey velvet and white linen for the tasting menu, which is Stuart Ralston's idea of unapologetic fine dining and he means it. The 28-seat room holds a Michelin star and a spot on the National Restaurant Awards list, and the kitchen leans heavily into sustainably caught fish and shellfish, letting the produce do most of the arguing.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #33 · The National Restaurant Awards

A converted Leith warehouse overlooking the old port, with a large kitchen window that lets you watch the brigade work if you snag the right table. Tom Kitchin's flagship is a fine-dining room built on French technique and Scottish seasons, and his pig's head with west coast langoustine is about as close to a house signature as you get. It holds a Michelin star and a tasting menu that runs wherever the larder leads.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #49 · The National Restaurant Awards

A small Italian cocktail bar on Bread Street where amari, vermouths, and bitters are treated less like modifiers and more like the whole point. The Negroni is a baseline, not a showpiece, and the menu moves from there into weirder, warmer territory. The playlist gets its own Spotify account, which tells you something about how seriously the team takes the room. Top 50 Cocktail Bars has it at number seventeen.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #17 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A Michelin-starred creative restaurant that relocated from San Francisco to a Georgian townhouse in Stockbridge, because the chef visited Edinburgh on holiday and simply never left. The cooking applies Californian lightness to Scottish produce, which sounds like a concept pitch but holds together. The drinks flight mixes wine, sake, sherry, and a single malt, because when in Scotland.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A hand-drawn bookmark is your only menu, hinting at ingredients rather than spelling out dishes in this six-table shop conversion just south of the center. The surprise tasting format leans on seasonally shifting décor and carefully matched flavors, with the kitchen finding its footing in the quiet work of making modest ingredients taste like more than they should. It holds a Michelin star, which feels about right for somewhere this deliberate.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Tom Kitchin's gastropub in Stockbridge leans into the neighbourhood pub format with enough conviction that it actually works as one. The menu runs on Scottish comfort, haggis and neeps, fish pie loaded with seafood, the kind of food that makes you want to book a table rather than just turn up optimistically. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks. Come hungry, and leave room for the rice pudding.

1. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #56 · Top 50 Gastropubs
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A converted bank in Edinburgh's West End that traded one kind of vault for another, The Palmerston is an all-day French bistro and bakery where the high ceilings do the work of making every lunch feel like an occasion. The menu shifts daily, the portions ignore calorie counts, and the pastries at breakfast have quietly become a neighborhood habit. It landed at number 65 on the National Restaurant Awards list in 2026.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #65 · The National Restaurant Awards
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A cocktail bar in a former Leith pub that kept the draught beer when it went upmarket, which tells you something about its priorities. The nautical theme runs to iridescent walls that genuinely do suggest mermaid scales rather than a seaside gift shop. The drinks lean hard into Scottish producers, and the bar team will steer you toward something you'll like without making you feel quizzed. It landed at number 27 on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list.

1. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #27 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A small golden plaque at pavement level is the only hint that one of Edinburgh's best cocktail bars sits beneath a dry cleaner's shop. Down in the basement, bare brick walls, leather armchairs, and low lighting make it feel like a discovery rather than a destination. The gin list leans into Edinburgh's reputation for the spirit, and staff will happily build something bespoke. Weekend DJs keep the atmosphere from getting too precious about itself.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A grand hotel dining room inside The Caledonian, where the lucky tables look straight up at Edinburgh Castle. Chef Dean Banks runs the kitchen here, trading the old tasting menu format for an à la carte that leans hard into Scottish produce, smoked lobster among the signatures. It reads like a special-occasion room without apology, which is more or less what it is.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Candlelit and close, this moody little set-menu restaurant sits in Stockbridge, the Edinburgh neighbourhood that has quietly become the city's most interesting place to eat. The cooking takes a modern approach to Scottish land and sea, with a fondness for preservation techniques and the occasional creative detour. Natural and low-intervention wines fill out the list, which feels like a considered choice rather than a trend the team discovered last Tuesday.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A wine bar downstairs, a seafood restaurant upstairs, and Scottish waters doing most of the heavy lifting on the menu. Shetland mussels and Skye langoustines anchor things, though the kitchen isn't above pulling in Jamaican jerk spice or harissa butter when the mood strikes. The West End crowd tends to start with a glass from the international list and somehow never quite makes it to the stairs.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The English muffin with miso honey butter arrives early and sets the tone for this relaxed neighbourhood bistro from the team behind The Little Chartroom. The menu wanders cheerfully between Gallic classics and British comfort, landing somewhere that feels less like a concept and more like somewhere you'd actually want to be on a Tuesday. Service is warm without being studied, which in Edinburgh counts for quite a lot.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The salmon-pink corner building in New Town is hard to walk past without noticing, which seems to be the point. Little Capo is a contemporary Italian restaurant and bar where small plates, larger sharing dishes, and handmade pastas fill a handwritten menu. The room has real style without taking itself too seriously, and sitting at the counter with the chatty service team is its own kind of evening plan.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Restaurant Bar – Europe

Neon-lit and loud in the best way, this Asian-inspired sharing plates bistro on Broughton Street pulls you in off the street and dares you not to over-order. Cocktails flow, the counter fills fast, and the menu skips between fried chicken karaage and apple pie gyozas with cheerful disregard for restraint. The Michelin Guide has it on their list, which surprises no one who's been. Come hungry and bring someone willing to split everything.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Exposed stonework and soft lighting set the mood in this wine bar and restaurant housed in a converted old inn near the Palace of Holyroodhouse, from the team behind Timberyard. The wine list leans into lesser-known regions, and the sharing plates are built to match something interesting in the glass. A stool at the ground-floor bar counter is the right call if you can get one.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Irn Bru candyfloss lands at the end of your meal, complimentary and completely earnest, which tells you most of what you need to know about Moss. It's a modern restaurant in Stockbridge where the menu runs on Scottish produce only, the drinks list is strictly British, and a fair amount of the ingredients come from the owner's family farm in Angus. The room is spare and quiet; the cooking matches it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A wine bar and trattoria in the heart of Stockbridge where dropping in for a glass and some olives at the marble-topped communal counter is as legitimate a plan as staying for pasta and fish. The Italian wine list is long and almost exclusively from the boot, with the sommelier owner ready to talk you through it if you're the sort who enjoys being talked through it. Unfussy is the whole point here.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Parisian wine bar transplanted to Broughton Street, with bistro cooking that pairs French classics and Scottish produce with the occasional Mediterranean detour. The set lunch includes wine, which is either very civilised or a very good reason to cancel your afternoon. Downstairs sits Vivien, a speakeasy-style cocktail bar, in case one concept wasn't enough. Stuart Ralston runs the room, and the room is cosy without trying too hard about it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Victorian pump house tucked down one of Edinburgh's famously steep closes off the Royal Mile, Devil's Advocate is a cocktail bar with a back bar stacked with over 200 Scotch and world whiskies that stops most people in their tracks on the way in. The space runs across several levels, all sleek and modern in a way that shouldn't work inside a Victorian pump house but does. The cocktail list pulls equal weight with the whisky wall.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

The dough sits for up to 60 hours before it sees the oven, which tells you most of what you need to know about Razzo. It's a small Neapolitan pizza restaurant near Leith, serious about its flour, its fresh yeast, its imported tomatoes and anchovies, and not much else. The room is simple, every table in plain view, Italian music in the background. Book ahead on weekends, and consider bringing a bottle.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

A Neapolitan pizza shop on the fourth floor of a shopping centre, which sounds like a setup for disappointment but isn't. The dough ferments for 24 hours and comes out of a 500-degree oven with proper char and plenty of tomato. Classics share the menu with weekend specials that lean into curious combinations. Spritz cocktails, a short wine list, and a relaxed room that fills with tourists and locals who didn't plan too hard.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

The bar is the first thing you see walking into Hotel Missoni, set dead center like a declaration of intent. It's a cocktail bar done in the fashion house's signature bold colors and two-tone patterns, which sounds like it could go wrong and somehow doesn't. The island counter gives plenty of room to perch, or you can sink into one of the deep booth banquettes if you'd rather commit to the evening properly.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A frosted window glowing from within is the only sign anything is happening on Rose Street North Lane, which is either charming or inconvenient depending on how long you've been walking. Bryant and Mack is a speakeasy-styled cocktail bar with seating for about twenty, a no-standing rule, and the kind of atmosphere that rewards the people who actually find it, assuming there's room when they do.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Fairy lights and a narrow passage off the Royal Mile lead you downstairs into three rooms that feel nothing like the street above: a proper bar, banquette seating, and a back room with an open fireplace and bookshelves that leans hard into gentleman's club territory. The Royal Mile earns its tourist reputation, but this basement cocktail bar is the exception serious drinkers make before moving on to lecture everyone else about avoiding the Royal Mile.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A semi-basement cocktail bar on North Castle Street with walls in deep burgundy and a menu that runs to what may be Scotland's longest list of classic cocktails. The real tell is who's drinking: off-duty bartenders from across the city treat it as their unofficial staff room, which says something about the drinks and the people making them. Low-key and a little tucked away, it wears its reputation lightly.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Wicker chairs spill onto Frederick Street, which is the only hint you'll get from above that there's a full tiki bar below. Once you cross the little bridge and descend, the room opens into bamboo, Polynesian kitsch, and nautical bric-a-brac stacked deep enough to suggest someone had strong feelings about the tropics and a very generous budget. A reliably committed tiki bar in the middle of Edinburgh's New Town, which is a sentence that didn't need to exist but does.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The antique brass water tap at the end of the bar exists solely so you can add a splash to your dram, which tells you everything about this place. A proper old Edinburgh pub on a corner you can spot by its blue exterior from halfway down Bread Street, it has the dark wood, mosaic tiles, parquet floor, and ornate fittings that only come with serious age. Eight Scottish real ales on traditional hand pumps, no pretension, and nowhere better to be on a wet afternoon.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A painted sign discovered on the back wall during renovations gave this Leith bar its name, and it still hangs in the conservatory as a kind of accidental founding document. The old whisky bonded warehouse keeps its bones on show: exposed brick, thick wooden beams, low ceilings, and leather seating that makes a cavernous space feel genuinely snug. The kind of place you end up staying longer than planned.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A hidden door at the bottom of a staircase on Hanover Street opens into a subterranean cocktail bar themed around a 1950s New Orleans funfair, which is a sentence you don't type every day. There's a claw crane machine, a tarot reader, and an ice-cream parlour where the ice cream is alcoholic. The cocktails lean playful without turning sloppy, and the whole thing commits to the bit just seriously enough to pull it off.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The long marble bar and low tan chairs set the tone: this is a cocktail bar that runs from morning coffee through late-night drinks without ever raising its voice. Part of the Montpellier Group, so the drinks program is looked after, with a classics-led menu doing most of the heavy lifting. It shares an owner with the flashier Tigerlily nearby but keeps things deliberately quieter, which the after-work crowd in the low seats seems to appreciate.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Stuffed birds, stacked crockery, and several lifetimes of collected oddities cover every wall and ceiling of this old Morningside pub, making it feel less like a bar and more like a Victorian curiosity shop that somehow got a liquor license. The shelves behind the larger bar hold what may be Edinburgh's deepest whisky selection, and Caledonian and Belhaven come on draught for anyone who finds the malt list overwhelming, which is fair.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Deep Lincoln green walls and booth seating set the mood at this dimly lit cocktail bar tucked into Edinburgh's New Town, a solid walk from the George Street crowd. The whole thing is built around a fictional Victorian rogue whose globe-trotting misadventures, including a hasty exit from London after the Cleveland Street Scandal, inspired the drinks menu. A good excuse to order something with a story attached, even if the story was made up last Tuesday.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The cocktail bar on the fourth floor of Harvey Nichols earns its keep through the window: Edinburgh Castle in one direction, the Firth of Forth in the other, and a G&T arriving just in time to soften the credit card damage from the floors below. The room itself leans burgundy leather and teak, somewhere between airport lounge and a 1970s sitting room that never quite updated. Comfortable, unpretentious, and better on a grey afternoon than it has any right to be.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A "teuchter" is mildly rude Scottish slang for a country bumpkin, which tells you something about the place's sense of humor. This traditional Edinburgh pub runs on whisky, rugby, and football, with chunky wooden beams, leather sofas, and the kind of lived-in warmth that makes you stay for one more. When a match is on, getting through the door requires genuine optimism.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The Basement is exactly what it says, an underground dive bar on Broughton Street that trades on the fact that Edinburgh sunshine is, statistically, more of a rumor than a given. Their own website takes a cheerful shot at the wicker-furniture crowd, and the regulars seem to agree, keeping the place full even on the rare days when it isn't needed. Dark, atmospheric, and aggressively unpretentious.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The oval island bar counter sits at the center of a room that looks exactly as a Victorian baroque bar should, polished walnut screen, bevelled mirrors, and all. The Circle Bar has been around forever, and a preservation order means no one can touch it, which is the right call. Order something classic and take your time with the carved details. This is a proper pub-heritage drinking experience, not a theme park version of one.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The ornate plasterwork here has been picked out in gold and white against black walls and ceiling, turning an already grand Victorian room into something that feels like a Gothic ballroom that never quite went home. This cocktail bar sits inside the same building as the Cafe Royal, though it keeps its own moody, theatrical atmosphere. Five rooms and three bars total, with live music and cabaret filling the back spaces when the evening calls for it.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A manga mural covers an entire wall of this Broughton Street bar, which somehow feels bright and airy even when you wander in after midnight. Light decor, doors propped open to the street, and cheerful staff all contribute to the mood, though probably in unknowable proportions. The pink and blue button-upholstered toilet doors have reportedly stumped at least one visitor, which tells you something about the clientele.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Cymbals hang over the bar counter as makeshift lampshades, and ghetto blasters dot the room with the confidence of someone who knows the bit lands. Villager is a cocktail bar spread across two converted shops on George IV Bridge, split between a loungy sofa-and-palms side and a livelier bar room. The cocktails are the point; the wine and lager list is just there so nobody feels left out.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide