Scottish cooking has spent thirty years recovering its reputation and has largely succeeded. The raw material was always excellent — beef, lamb, game, shellfish, salmon, berries, oats — and what changed was that restaurants stopped apologising for it.
Haggis
Sheep’s pluck — heart, liver and lungs — minced with oatmeal, onion, suet and spice, and traditionally boiled in the stomach. It is savoury, peppery and coarse-textured, closer to a spiced crumbly sausage meat than to anything alarming, and most people who try it are surprised to like it.
Served with neeps and tatties (swede and potatoes, mashed separately), often with a whisky sauce. Vegetarian haggis is common and genuinely good.
Note for American visitors: haggis containing sheep lung has been banned from import into the United States since 1971, so what you may have eaten there is not quite the same thing.
MacSween is the best-known producer. Any decent pub does a version; the ones on the Royal Mile with a piper outside are not the ones to choose.
The rest of the larder
Cullen skink — smoked haddock, potato and onion soup, thick and excellent. Scotch broth. Stovies. Arbroath smokies, hot-smoked haddock from the Angus coast.
Seafood is the real strength: langoustines, scallops, oysters from Loch Fyne, mussels, and crab from the west coast. Edinburgh sits on the Forth and gets it fresh.
Beef — Aberdeen Angus, dry-aged — and venison from the Highlands. Grouse from 12 August, which is the whole point of that date.
For pudding: cranachan (cream, whisky, honey, oats and raspberries), clootie dumpling, tablet, and shortbread which is far better fresh than in a tin.
Breakfast is a full Scottish — the English version plus tattie scone, black pudding and sometimes haggis.
Where to eat
Leith has the best concentration in the city: three Michelin stars between The Kitchin, Restaurant Martin Wishart and Heron, plus a long run of very good places behind them. It is fifteen minutes on the tram and it is where Edinburgh eats.
In the centre, look off the Royal Mile rather than on it. The Grassmarket, Victoria Street, and the streets around Broughton and Stockbridge all do better. Timberyard, Aizle, Fhior and Noto cover the modern Scottish end.
For pubs that serve proper food: The Sheep Heid Inn in Duddingston, behind Arthur’s Seat, is one of the oldest in Scotland and has a skittle alley.
Whisky
See the Scotch Whisky Experience for an introduction, and The Bow Bar, Kay’s Bar or The Scotch Malt Whisky Society for actually drinking it. Ask for water on the side, not ice.
Practicalities
Tipping is around ten per cent and not obligatory; check whether service has been added.
Booking is unnecessary most of the year and essential in August and over Hogmanay.
Kitchens close earlier than in southern Europe — often by nine or half past outside the centre.
Tap water is free and excellent everywhere.
Vegetarians and vegans
Well served. Edinburgh has a long-standing vegetarian scene — Henderson’s opened in 1962 and ran for nearly sixty years — and the modern successors are plentiful, particularly around the south side and Leith. Vegetarian haggis is on almost every pub menu and is genuinely good rather than a token.
Gluten-free is widely understood; oats, which are everywhere in Scottish cooking, are naturally gluten-free but are often processed alongside wheat, so ask if it matters.
Meal times
Kitchens close earlier than visitors from southern Europe expect — often nine, sometimes half past eight outside the centre. Pubs serve food across the afternoon; restaurants frequently do not, closing between lunch and dinner.
Sunday roast is a real institution and worth booking.
The tourist traps
The Royal Mile has a run of restaurants with tartan-heavy frontages, a piper outside and a menu in six languages. They are not scandalous, they are simply mediocre and priced for people who will not come back.
The rule that works here is the same one that works anywhere: walk one street off the main axis. Victoria Street, the Grassmarket, Broughton Street, and anywhere in Stockbridge or Leith will all do better for the same money.
Breakfast
Breakfast is taken seriously. A full Scottish adds tattie scone, black pudding and often haggis to the familiar English plate, and porridge here is made with salt rather than sugar, which is worth trying once even if you then add honey.
Independent cafés cluster in Stockbridge, Bruntsfield, Leith Walk and Broughton Street, and most serve until midday or later.
Tipping and service
Ten per cent is normal in restaurants and not expected in pubs, where you order and pay at the bar. Check the bill: some restaurants add an optional service charge, and you should not pay twice.