Southside
6 rooms on the Edinburgh list
The green space at the middle of the south side has a ring of small kitchens around it, and they cook for the people who live there. Going clockwise from the west, Bruntsfield holds two seafood rooms in LeftField and FIN & GRAPE, one of them cooked by a single chef for 24 seats. Marchmont holds three tiny set-menu rooms, NADAIR, Argile with ten counter seats and one man behind them, and Mara's Picklery with 22 covers and a menu handwritten daily. Salvatore's does the classic chippy on the same side. Southside and Newington run the cheapest and the most specific food in the city: Chennai's Marina for Sri Lankan, Memed Barbecue Grill & Meze Bar for an ocakbasi grill, Kebab Mahal for late Punjabi, and 徐州地鍋 Xu Zhou Ground Pot Chinese Restaurant for the food of one Chinese prefecture. Condita holds a star behind a shopfront on Salisbury Place that the Good Food Guide says you could walk straight past. Pomelo sits just over the line in The Grange with hand-ripped noodles, and Canny Mans has poured whisky on Morningside Road since 1871.
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Here, for
Known for, here
The curry house and the late kebab3 here
- Chennai's Marina — Kothu parotta is the clearest Sri Lankan marker on a menu that won South Indian Restaurant of the Year in 2025.
- Memed Barbecue Grill & Meze Bar — Won Best Kebab House in Scotland in 2024, on a card that carries kusleme off the tenderloin and cop sis on a thin skewer.
- Kebab Mahal — Time Out calls this an Edinburgh legend since 1979, and the tandoor has served the mosque, the university and the late trade ever since.
Gin, made in the room3 here
- The Royal Dick Pub — Pickering's arrives on draught through a pipe from the distillery in the same courtyard, which no other room in the city can copy.
- Holyrood Distillery — Gin has come off this Southside site since it opened, and the tour pours new make spirit while the whisky matures.
- 56 North — South Loch gin is distilled on the bar's own stills, and the flight of three is poured in the room it is made in.
Restaurants4
Chennai's Marinajust added!
Listed · Restaurant · Southside · $
walk-in
Peter Simpson of The Skinny read the menu's chilli marking as a warning, and when this kitchen says two chillies it means two chillies.
Memed Barbecue Grill & Meze Bar!
Listed · Turkish · Southside · $$
book ahead
The grill list runs to küşleme, çöp şiş and charcoal liver shish, which is an ocakbaşı card and not a doner counter's.
Kebab Mahal!
Listed · Kebabs · Southside · $
walk-in
The tandoor on Nicolson Square has been turning out halal Punjabi food since 1979, from a room that sits beside the Central Mosque and about two minutes' walk from Bristo Square.
56 North
Listed · Bar · Southside · $$
book ahead
The gin they pour here is distilled on the bar's own stills, standing inside the room you drink it in.
Pubs & cask1
The Royal Dick Pubjust added?
Listed · Pub · Southside · $$
walk-in
The gin is piped in from the distillery across the courtyard, and the brewery is directly behind the bar.
Producers1
Holyrood Distillery
Listed · Producer · Southside · $$
book ahead
The tour pours new make, the clear spirit that goes into the cask before it is whisky at all.
Elsewhere in Edinburgh