Leith, Italian Restaurant Guide

“It’s a bit out of the way down Leith Walk” and “you have to go into the shop to find it”, but it’s “worth a detour” to discover the café behind this “Edinburgh legend” – a deli and wine merchant that’s been going strong since 1934, and where diners profit from a truly miniscule (£6) corkage fee on any of the fine wines available in the store. Also on the menu, “great coffee (as you‘d expect) and a wide variety of Italian dolce and snacks” (“if the pizza is on at lunchtime, have it – you won’t regret it”).

“Great Italian food” is served in “beautiful rooms” – a collonaded Georgian banking hall modelled on a Florentine palazzo – at this 20-year-old operation from a Scottish-Italian catering dynasty. It’s “quite noisy, but fun”, and is open for breakfast (when ‘Aberdeen butters’, flat Scottish croissants, are served).

2023 Review: “Amazing Italian cooking using Scottish produce – impeccable – and with outstanding service” inspires excellent feedback on this stylish and moodily decorated New Town site. It was opened in mid 2021 by Stefano Pieraccini of the Rocca Group in premises vacated by Martin Wishart’s The Honour (RIP).

2021 Review: “Making other fine dining establishments in town look somewhat staid, out of touch and overpriced” – this April 2018 newcomer is “superb”, and some would say “the best restaurant to have opened in Edinburgh in recent times”. “A charismatic space” with “splendid service” – “the reference on its website to ‘progressive Italian dining’ is accurate” and the modern cuisine is “outstanding” – “go downstairs to see the kitchen in action”. To match the fine cooking there’s “an exceptional, mostly Italian, wine list”.

2021 Review: This “stylish and relaxed” Italian wine bar and restaurant occupies a basement in the Old Town, and provides a “guaranteed night out” with “high-class food” and in particular an “excellent wine list” – “under the masterly direction of maître d’ Silvio Praino”. Part of the Vittoria group owned by a branch of the Italo-Scottish Crolla clan, it celebrates its 10th anniversary last year.