FIN & GRAPE

Under the dining room there is a second bar whose food list is tinned fish, each one named by its producer and the port it was packed in.6

Why go

Stuart Smith opened this in 2020, in the middle of lockdown, and kept it alive on takeaway until the room could be used.8 He is the chef-patron and he is direct about what the kitchen is for. I would always order a big bit of fish cooked on the bone, it's our thing and I believe it's the most representative in terms of the sort of restaurant we want people to see us as.3 Asked to name his favorite ingredient, he picked salt and argued it as a process. In addition to seasoning, its potential when used for curing, preservation and fermentation mean it is hugely versatile and important in so many food production processes.4 You can taste that argument on the menu: salted pollock worked into a mousse, sea trout smoked, and a snack list built on cured fish.

The other root is fire. His first food memory is a Brazilian churrascaria, big skewers of different meats pulled off the coal grills, and the vegetable plates come off a barbecue: romanesco and courgette with goats curd, red pepper, black pudding and almond.4 The buying is named where it counts, with Gairloch langoustines, hand-dived Skye scallops off the specials board and Denhead Farm asparagus, and it is unfussy where it does not, with Calabrian anchovies and Isle of Wight tomatoes sitting on the same page. In 2024 the Good Food Guide made it the Best Local Restaurant in Scotland.9

Smith runs a separate room downstairs that he calls a speakeasy wine bar, opened on the restaurant's third birthday, with its own short menu built on conservas he picked up from time in Spain and Portugal. Zallo anchovies from Cantabria, Nuri sardines from Matosinhos, Olasagasti yellowfin from Getaria, Pepus squid and mussels from Galicia, and a tuna belly in curry from Real Conservera Española. Sherry by the glass starts at £5.

Order this / avoid

Order: the market fish. On the £65 sharing menu it lands last, roasted with cauliflower, giant chickpeas, cavolo nero and caper butter, and it is the plate the whole room is arranged around.6
Order: the salted pollock mousse, £9, with herb oil and charred sourdough. It is the salt argument in one plate.
Order: the poached Gairloch langoustine with asparagus mayonnaise, £11 for one and £13 for two.
Order: the chips. Gaby Soutar put them against the standard a fish restaurant has to meet. If you're a fish restaurant, your chips have to be on point. These absolutely are.1
Order downstairs: the Nuri sardines in olive oil at £9, or the Real Conservera tuna belly with curry at £16, with a Fino Inocente at £6.
Avoid: planning around oysters. The only mention of an oyster happy hour is a reader's phrase inside the Good Food Guide's review, and oysters are on neither current menu.2
Avoid: treating the 2024 award as where the restaurant stands now. It held its list place in 2025 and is off the 2026 list, which names four other Edinburgh rooms.5

What locals & experts say

Gaby Soutar, The Scotsman, December 2023, on why she keeps losing track of a restaurant she likes: I'm glad to have rediscovered this place and sorry that I always forget about it, in favour of all the overrated venues in the centre of town. Her plate of the night was a single fat hand-dived Skye scallop off the specials board at £7, toasted on top and came with a rich slosh of melted gochujang butter, for a mouth-coating taste of Korea.1
The Good Food Guide's review is the strongest published read of the kitchen: Despite the postcode, chef-patron Stuart Smith's cooking is anything but parochial, and he is currently delivering some of the best seafood in the city.2
The Good Food Guide, Best Local Restaurant: Scotland, 2024, winner. The citation argues the case on price as much as on cooking: There are plenty of restaurants in Edinburgh serving plates of Scottish seafood, but Fin & Grape stands head and shoulders above many better known, and more expensive, options in the city centre.9
Callum McCormack, Edinburgh Evening News, July 2024, reporting the result: Fin & Grape in Bruntsfield bagged the Scotland regional award and topped the list of Scottish eateries on the list. The same guide had put it on its 18-strong Platinum List three years earlier, alongside only one other Scottish room.10
Stuart Smith on the room nobody finds: A lot of people still don't know that we have a speakeasy wine bar in the basement.3

Good to know

Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 19 November 2025, no re-inspection pending as at 4 August 2026. Eight and a half months old, so this is current information.7
Hours: closed Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday is dinner only from 5.30pm. Thursday, Friday and Saturday run noon to 10.30pm. Sunday is lunch only, noon to 3pm. Nothing here is a late plan.6
Booking: through ResDiary on the site, and a card is required to hold the table.2
Price: plates £9 to £17, snacks £4 to £10, sides £6 to £7, desserts £9, cheese with tawny port £14, and a sharing menu at £65 a head. Wine by the glass £6.50 to £14 across nine pours, cocktails £13 to £14. Service is 10% and discretionary. Read off the venue's own menus on 4 August 2026. Two people sharing four plates, a side and two glasses lands around £85 to £95 before service.
Wine: nine by the glass, leaning Iberian, Italian and Eastern European, plus a separate cellar list for bottles. Bellfield, brewed in Edinburgh, is the house beer.
Room: one bright street-level room of about a dozen tables, a private dining room, and the basement bar. No source publishes a cover count.
Getting there: Holy Corner, where Colinton Road meets Bruntsfield Place, about 25 minutes' walk south-west of the Old Town on a heavy bus corridor. PIGGS Bruntsfield is 232 m up the road and Black Ivy is 658 m.
Location note: Jeff's list files this under Morningside and every published source calls it Bruntsfield. Soutar splits it precisely: its liminal location, at the junction between Bruntsfield and Morningside. The door is on the Bruntsfield side of Holy Corner.1

Jeff's take (his words)

Note: "new good food guide 2024 seafood winner"
On that: body, year and result are all right, and the category name is the part to correct. The Good Food Guide made this its Best Local Restaurant for Scotland in 2024, judged across every cuisine, with no seafood category in the programme at all. The seafood framing is the guide's own prose about the place, which calls it head and shoulders above better known and more expensive city-centre options.

Verdict

should-visit — The craft is specific and it is the chef's own. Stuart Smith names salt as his favorite ingredient and argues it as curing, preservation and fermentation, and that argument lands on plates you can order: pollock salted into a mousse, sea trout smoked, a snack list built on cured fish. The house statement is a whole market fish roasted on the bone, in his words 'it's our thing', and it anchors the £65 sharing menu at the end of the run. Behind the barbecued vegetable plates is a first food memory of a Brazilian churrascaria and coal grills. The buying is named where it counts, with Gairloch langoustines, hand-dived Skye scallops and Denhead Farm asparagus. The Good Food Guide calls the cooking 'anything but parochial' and 'some of the best seafood in the city', and its 2024 Best Local Restaurant for Scotland was judged across every cuisine in the country. That is a genuine standout on the plate at Bruntsfield money, which is what the walk out to Holy Corner buys you. Two things hold it under must-visit. The award is two years old and the trajectory runs the wrong way, since the venue held its list place in 2025 with the Scotland award going to Redwood Wines, then fell off the 2026 list entirely, and there is no Michelin standing of any kind. And the evidence is thin at the top: the only bylined visit review is Gaby Soutar's from December 2023, so no critic has published a verdict on this kitchen in two and a half years, and nothing on either menu is a dish you can get nowhere else.

FIN & GRAPE.