First Coast Restaurant.

First Coast Restaurant

A monkfish tail was the cheapest main on the card at £12.95, in a city where monkfish is usually the most expensive fish on it.

Why go

The name is a village in Wester Ross, on the North West Highland coast, and the restaurant has been on Dalry Road since 2003.3 It changed hands in September 2023, with Roberto Silvagni brought in as area manager, and the refit was cosmetic: a lighter room, a new bar, the same core menu with more seafood on it.2 The kitchen's habit under the previous regime tells you where the room came from. It hosted regular suppers for the Edinburgh branch of Slow Food and ran one-off menus that had nothing to do with Scotland, a Scandinavian night one week and a Sichuan feed a few weeks earlier.1 Sixty covers, five minutes from Haymarket, and the list runs oysters and Shetland mussels through to haggis with ginger gravy.2

Order this / avoid

• Order: the monkfish, with cauliflower puree, potato crisps and a white wine emulsion. It anchored the bottom of the 2024 main course list at £12.95, which is a price that usually buys a chicken breast.2
• Order: the oysters grilled, under the parsley and butter crust, if you want them warm and the day is cold. Both preparations are on the card.2
• Order: the hake with peppers, chorizo, cannellini beans and tomato stew, which is the dish on the list doing the most work with the paprika fat.2
• Order: the haggis starter if you want the Scottish end of the menu. Made in house, served with neeps, creamy mash and a ginger gravy.2
• Avoid: loading up on dessert. The only critic's line this kitchen has ever had, from 2012, ended on This eatery's savoury options are rather better. That was two owners ago and nobody has retested it.1

What locals & experts say

• The Scotsman (April 2012), on the braised ox cheek: a simple concept that had been coaxed into fulfilling its potential. The meat was incredibly soft. I didn't need my knife at all, I could've sucked it up through a straw. This protein was coated in a tar-black sauce, which contained Pedro Ximénez, for a clingy, intense sweetness. The same review found the puddings less good, and it ran under the paper's house byline, with no named critic attached.1
• The Scotsman (April 2012), on the fish: Rolf's thick fillet of pointy-faced lythe was balancing on a pile of the same tattie, which was sooking up the intensely garlicky, lemony and brown buttery jus that surrounded it. On the top came a generous tumble of cheeky little shrimps and mussels, sprinkled with parsley and doused with more of the sauce. Impressive.1
• Jeff's list: his own note here reads "Multiple recs." He does not say whose, so nobody is credited.
• Awards: none. No Scottish or Edinburgh awards programme names this restaurant.

Good to know

• The evidence gap is the headline. Every critical read of this kitchen predates the September 2023 change of ownership by eleven years, and no later review exists. Go for the menu and the price, and treat the old praise as history.2
• Hygiene: the Food Hygiene Information Scheme rates this premises Pass, from a City of Edinburgh inspection on 22 April 2024. That is about 27 months old as at 4 August 2026, past the eighteen-month bound, so it is on the watchlist. A Pass is not a safety finding. The one useful thing about the date is that it falls after the takeover, so it is at least an inspection of the current operator.5
• Price: starters from £5.95 and mains from £12.95 on the 2024 dinner card. Both menu PDFs on the website are dated January 2024, so phone before you plan around a number.3
• Size and booking: 60 seats.2 The booking form offers entry times in half-hour slots from noon to 10pm, which is the closest thing to published hours this restaurant has, and it takes parties of 7 to 100 through an Events Manager on 0131 313 4404. A sixty-cover room quoting for a hundred means it does the whole floor for a private booking, so this is a genuine big-group option in a part of town that has few.4
• Getting there: Dalry Road, a short walk west of Haymarket station and its trams, which makes it an easy stop coming in from the airport.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: "Multiple recs"
• On his note: he names no one, so no recommender is credited here. If he remembers who told him, that is worth adding, because the weakest point here is the absence of any current voice on the kitchen.
• Status: he has not said whether he has been.

Verdict

could-visit — A monkfish tail at the bottom of the main-course list for £12.95 is a genuinely good deal on a fish that usually sits at the top of the card, and the 2024 menu around it is seafood-led in a way that reads deliberate: oysters plain or grilled under a parsley and butter crust, Shetland mussels, hake with chorizo and cannellini, whole sea bream. Twenty-three years on Dalry Road, a short walk west of Haymarket, sixty covers, and a booking form that quotes for parties up to a hundred through an Events Manager, which means the room does its whole floor for a private night and is a real answer in a part of town short of them. That is a solid neighborhood restaurant doing one thing at a price that punches, which is the could-visit rung. It does not go higher, and the reason is evidence rather than taste: the only critic verdict this kitchen has ever had is from April 2012, the restaurant changed owners in September 2023, and nobody has been found reviewing it since, on a search the entry now honestly describes as thin. The 2012 review is good on the plate, 'the meat was incredibly soft. I didn't need my knife at all', but it describes a different regime, and its head chef Hector MacRae has not been placed in or out of the kitchen. Even the current dish list comes from a Scotsman /must-read/ advertorial the entry correctly reads for facts only, so no independent judgment stands behind anything being served today. Thin evidence keeps confidence low; it does not drop the rung to listed, because the price-to-fish ratio is real, sourced and recent enough to act on.