Chef Roberta Hall-McCarron joins Condé Nast Traveler to share her top restaurants in Edinburgh. Whether it’s game from the Highlands, or fish from the North Sea, Edinburgh’s food scene is a fantastic showcase of Scotland’s finest produce. Discover some of the city’s must-try spots and what makes them so good.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00My mouth is just like, alive.
00:03Hi, I'm Roberta Hall McCarran.
00:04Today I'm going to take you to three places
00:06I love to eat at in Edinburgh.
00:07And this is where the chefs eat.
00:09Oh my God.
00:10It's perfect.
00:14We're starting off at Little Capo,
00:16an amazing new addition to the Edinburgh food scene.
00:18Let's go in.
00:25So it's Italian-ish, exactly how they describe it.
00:28Just super relaxed, like a beautiful vibe, stunning decor,
00:33like you're just going out to your friends
00:34for dinner, for lunch,
00:36but then serving really lovely, relaxed food.
00:39The dishes, the flavours are all there.
00:41The seasonings are perfect.
00:43The knowledge behind everything is great.
00:45It's incredibly good value as well.
00:47And we're in a lovely part of Edinburgh.
00:48Being a restaurant owner myself,
00:50I really do look at restaurants in a different way
00:52when I sit and dine.
00:53Ooh.
00:54Thank you very much.
00:56Thank you, Kitty.
00:58So here we have the zucchini free tea,
00:59which is courgette, deep fried in a light crisp batter.
01:03They've done a little aioli to go with it.
01:09Very hot.
01:11We'll let it cool down before I continue eating it.
01:13I love how garlicky this aioli is,
01:15and it's exactly the way the aioli should be.
01:16Punchy, garlicky,
01:18the perfect accompaniment to the zucchini free tea.
01:21And they've also added in a little bit of empathy oil,
01:24which gives the other little flavour in there.
01:25It's perfect.
01:29So this is the cioppino,
01:30which is basically like a fish soup.
01:32This is a dish that I want to have when I come to the Capo.
01:36The smells coming off it are just perfect.
01:38Oh my God.
01:39It's just, oh, it's a hug.
01:41It's a warm, warm hug.
01:42It's cod, mussels, bisque, potatoes,
01:46basically like a fish stew soup.
01:50And they're in-house ketchup.
01:52So this dish, the cioppino,
01:53has such an interesting background.
01:55It's actually originally from San Francisco.
01:57It was when they had bad fish tastes,
01:59and so they would all go around each other's stalls
02:01and take whatever little bits was left over
02:03and make this amazing dish.
02:06I love the idea of everyone grouping together
02:08to create something.
02:10And it actually also tastes incredible.
02:12Tomato's the prominent flavour.
02:14With the potatoes, they're really soaking it up,
02:17so they're full of the amazing soup.
02:19And the fish, the lovely cod,
02:22cooked to perfection.
02:23Quite frankly, Scottish mussels, nothing better.
02:30All right, so finishing up with cheese.
02:33Jermus is having such a moment right now.
02:34It's the perfect dessert.
02:36It's got a little hit of chocolate
02:37with a lovely dusting of cocoa powder on top,
02:39a little bit of booze,
02:40and just lovely soft, creamy textures.
02:42My favourite way to finish any meal.
02:45It's perfect.
02:47I mean, it really is perfect.
02:50That was incredible.
02:51Let's move on to the next place.
02:53I think Enema's food culture is so unique
02:59because it's really got such a broad range
03:01of different offerings.
03:02You've got our street food places,
03:04the neighbourhood bistros,
03:06so many bakeries,
03:07so many great independent places to go to now.
03:09And all these places are really showcasing
03:12all the incredible Scottish pod juice
03:13that we have on offer as well.
03:14The most amazing thing about Scottish pod juice
03:16is the fact just how tiny Scotland is.
03:19You really don't have to travel very far,
03:20and it's at your fingertips.
03:21One hour up the road, and you're in the Highlands,
03:24and you can get game, go foraging.
03:26Summertime hits.
03:27We've got all the berries.
03:28The West Coast and the North.
03:30Really incredible shellfish.
03:32Well, this is endless.
03:37The best way to describe Mirren's menu would be
03:40small plates of flavour.
03:43It's punchy.
03:45It's got layers, depth,
03:47such interesting ingredients are getting used,
03:49and they never, ever fail to deliver.
03:51OK, so here we've got your road here on Nudja.
03:55Dumplings with a kaffir lime broth.
03:56These dumplings are why I keep coming back to Mirren.
03:59I'm going to do the broth first, just because it's...
04:05Oh, my God.
04:06The depth of flavour in this broth is insane.
04:09It's got a creaminess, a buttery,
04:12like, spiciness to really liven things up,
04:14but then also you get that hit of the kaffir lime,
04:16and it lightens it all.
04:17More, more.
04:18I want more.
04:20I think what makes this even more special and interesting
04:23is using the amazing Scottish produce, like the venison,
04:26but adding in all these incredible Asian flavours
04:29like kaffir and the chilli and the Nudja is wonderful.
04:32And I'm going to go straight for a whole dump thing, actually.
04:37I wish everybody could taste what I'm tasting right now.
04:40Oh, my God.
04:41Wow. Wow.
04:42This is some lovely North Sea cod
04:45that we marinate a little bit of misson,
04:47a little bit of sake, a little bit of Mirren.
04:49Then we vary the shellfish a little bit today.
04:50We've got some beautiful blue shell mussels and some crockles.
04:53The food that we do here is classic French cooking,
04:57but with some techniques from Asia, some ingredients from Asia.
05:00The atmosphere and the setup and everything,
05:02it's just so chilled.
05:03Exactly how I love to eat.
05:04This is what I want.
05:05I want to feel like I've gone round to their house
05:08and they're just serving me their dinner.
05:10Another thing that I love about Mirren is the flavour combinations.
05:15It's like amazing, insane, fun.
05:17I can't wait to try it.
05:18I can't wait.
05:18I've not had this, I'm so excited.
05:22My mouth is just like alive.
05:25I can taste the sweetness from the miso
05:27and these muscles are insane.
05:29Last but not least, the bao.
05:32So again, this is another dish that's kind of based
05:34in classical French technique.
05:36It's based on a hair royal.
05:37So we've kind of taken that idea
05:39and kind of merged it with a bao bun, something that I love.
05:42And then we serve that with a really rich raw.
05:44I have made hair a lot
05:47and I would never have come up with this idea.
05:50And I'm honestly, I'm so excited.
05:55Beautiful, delicate braised meat inside.
05:58It's got the stickiness that you get with bao buns,
06:01but there's a lightness to it.
06:02There's a teeny tiny bit of heat.
06:04There's just so much going on,
06:05but it all works so perfectly together.
06:07And it's just, yeah, another knockout dish.
06:11Absolutely amazing.
06:16Let's head to the last stop of the day.
06:17A very, very special place.
06:22So last stop of the day
06:23and what I think is maybe the best restaurant in Edinburgh.
06:27Coming into Lila is such a special experience.
06:30The beautiful staircase taking you up to this incredible room.
06:33You know you're in for a special treat.
06:36So one of my favourite things in the world,
06:38a cheese and onion sandwich,
06:39but it's not like any cheese and onion sandwich I've had before.
06:43You get cheese and onion,
06:45but so much more, so much depth of flavour.
06:48The crunchiness from the tuile
06:51with the cheese custard inside
06:53is like the perfect balance of texture.
06:55Texture is so important in food.
06:57And this little, like, teeny tiny bite has got everything.
07:00And it truly is a cheese and onion sandwich,
07:03but on a different level.
07:05I love snacks at the start of any meal.
07:07They take you to different places
07:08because there's so much going on in them.
07:10It's my favourite way to start any meal.
07:13The texture from the seaweed nori tart is perfect.
07:17And the richness that you get from that aged tuna
07:19is just that perfect accompaniment.
07:21All the little extra bits, like the finger lines,
07:23the tiny bit of heat from the chilli
07:25and the yuzu powder are just building so many flavours on it.
07:28It's incredible.
07:29There's something really exciting about getting to sit
07:31in this incredible room,
07:33having incredible snacks,
07:34drinking beautiful champagne,
07:36all before getting taken downstairs
07:38to continue the rest of your meal.
07:41So inside this little sleeve there,
07:42you'll find the menu for this evening.
07:44It's a 10 o'clock menu,
07:45based predominantly around fish and seafood
07:47coming from the great Scottish waters.
07:48Good evening, how are you?
07:50Good, how are you?
07:50Yeah, very well, how's it going?
07:51Good, really good, thank you.
07:54This is so pretty.
07:58It's so clean and fresh and vibrant.
08:01Everything that's in there just balances perfectly.
08:03The meatiness, fattiness that you get from the cured fish,
08:06that freshness from that really zingy cucumber apple broth,
08:11and then a teeny tiny bit of heat from that jalapeno oil.
08:14It's just, it's perfect.
08:15So up next, quite a playful example of ramen.
08:19So what we do is we take North Sea squits,
08:21and slice the meat to resemble ramen noodles.
08:23Then on top is pickled shallots,
08:24peppered or seaweed, some chiso,
08:26and the blooming broth.
08:28That's beautiful.
08:28Oh my god, the smell.
08:31It's so pretty, it's so tender.
08:34These super thin ribbons,
08:35they're almost like melting in my mouth.
08:40Gosh, that's another, another pretty plate.
08:42I mean, I'm delighted that we are finishing with a chocolate dessert,
08:46because chocolate is my favorite thing in the whole wide world.
08:49I think I actually get disappointed if I ever go to a restaurant with a tasty menu
08:52and it's not chocolate.
08:53I can't wait to try this.
08:56Wow.
08:57There's so much going on, so many flavors,
08:59but there's, again, just this incredible lightness to it.
09:02That is skill, because that is very, very difficult to achieve.
09:05Blown away.
09:06Absolutely blown away.
09:08Wow.
09:09What an incredible day.
09:10If I was to pick one place out of the three that I visited today,
09:13I don't think I could.
09:14They were all so unique and offered something completely different to each other.
09:17It transcended all of my expectations.
09:20If you get the chance, definitely go to these three restaurants
09:22and check out everything else that Edinburgh has to offer.