Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K. City Guide

For over 20 years, Pamela Lanier's Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K. Travel Guide has been your connection to Edinburgh's tourism community with invaluable details on local attractions, restaurants, shopping, museums, history, outdoor recreation and more.

Dining

Scotland’s distinctive cuisine, based on hearty rustic foods, is available city-wide, from traditional fare to more contemporary cuisine with various international influences using the best local Scottish ingredients: game, seafood, cheeses and fruits. Fish and seafood lovers should head down to Leith’s refurbished dockside. Edinburgh's restaurant scene has evolved in recent years with a wide range of offerings to suit all tastes and budgets, including Italian, French, Mexican, Spanish, Indian, Thai and Chinese restaurants. If you eat well at lunch and restrict yourself to a snack or light supper in the evening, then dining out in Edinburgh need not be expensive.

Scottish breakfast typically adds local favorites such as black pudding (blood sausage) and potato scones to the traditional English sausage, bacon and egg. Porridge, made of oatmeal and water cooked with salt, is another breakfast standard; add milk, not sugar. Try kippers (hot smoked herring) or more delicate "Arbroath smokies" (smoked haddock), and bannocks (plain, slightly salty oatmeal biscuits baked on a griddle) as part of an authentic local meal.

Lunch offerings include Scotch Broth or Hotch-Potch, a rich soup traditionally made by boiling mutton neck bones with diced carrots, garden peas, leeks, cabbage, turnips and a stick of celery with a handful of barley, served piping hot. Colcannon is made from boiled cabbage, carrots, turnip and potatoes, a wonderful compliment to local Angus beef. Forfar Bridies and Scotch Pies or Pasties are crusty pastries traditionally filled with minced mutton although in modern times beef is standard. Holes in the top of the pie indicate its contents: one for plain, two for onion. As in England, fish and chips is popular fast food and “chippies” abound.

Haggis is perhaps the best-known Scottish national dish. The windpipe, lungs, heart and liver of the sheep are boiled and then minced. This is mixed with beef suet and lightly toasted oatmeal and stuffed inside the sheep's stomach, which is sewn closed. The resulting haggis is traditionally cooked by further boiling and is served with “bashed neeps” (mashed turnips) and “chappit tatties” (mashed potatoes).

One perennial Scottish institution is afternoon tea, consisting of finger sandwiches and a generous variety of cakes washed down with lots of tea between 5 and 6.30pm. Displays of iced buns, cakes and cream-filled pastries are a typical feature of any Scottish high street, and homemade shortbread, scones or tablet (a hard, crystalline form of fudge) are popular treats. For the serious sweet tooth try: “Edinburgh Rock,” a soft crumbly fruit flavored candy made since the 19th century.

Known as the Water of Life or Uisge-Beatha in Gaelic, Scotch Whisky (only the Irish and American varieties are spelled with an "e") is distilled from a barley liquor and flavored with peat-tainted water. For more about whisky than you could ever imagine, check out the Scotch Whisky Experience near Edinburgh Castle, an interactive living history museum that brings 300 years of Scotch Whisky history to life.

Most restaurants serve from noon until 2:30 pm and from 6 until 10 pm and are closed on Sundays. If you need to eat on a more flexible time table, perhaps because of jet lag, try a bistro, many of which serve food until 1 am. Tip: A table at one of the more upscale restaurants can be hard to come by during busy periods such as the Festival, so call ahead for reservations.
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