tipo
The room takes its name from the flour: tipo 00, the fine Italian mill grade that pasta doughs are built on, and the kitchen rolls and cuts the pasta in the building.
Why go
Stuart Ralston opened this first-floor room on Hanover Street in March 2023, after Aizle and Noto and before LYLA.3 It started from a gap he could name: what was lacking in Edinburgh was a fresh pasta restaurant,
and he had the skill on hand from years of cooking in New York, where he loved to eat out in a lot of Italian-inspired restaurants.
2 MICHELIN gave the room a Bib Gourmand in the 2024 guide, the only Scottish restaurant to gain one that year. Holding that price is a kitchen decision: Ralston says pasta has a low produce cost but a high labour cost so we try and balance that out with the small plates menu,
and that making everything in-house allows us to utilise everything, minimise waste.
2 Scottish produce does the rest of the work, because it costs less to get to the door.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the pappardelle with crab and chilli. It is the dish the MICHELIN Inspector ate,
wonderfully intense and had a lovely kick from the chilli,
2 and it is also the one Ralston picks himself:when it comes to pasta, I will always pick the crab.
2 The bigoli cacio e pepe is the other pasta the guide singles out, a thick strand with enough surface to hold pepper and pecorino. Start with the zeppole, which The List describes arriving witha snowdrift rather than a dusting of cheese.
6 - Avoid: treating it as the meal after your last show. Service runs to about 9pm every night, so this is lunch or an early dinner and nothing else.
What locals & experts say
- Rosalind Erskine, Food and Drink Editor, The Scotsman (2024):
Both pastas were cooked perfectly, with just a bit of bite,
and the roombrings to the plate authentic, simple food that's made very, very well.
3 - MICHELIN Guide Inspector (Bib of the Month, July 2024):
The fresh pasta is impressively well-made, lightly cooked to retain a bit of bite and full of flavour thanks to the quality accompaniments.
2 Two palates a few months apart reached for the same word about the texture, which is the kind of agreement a pasta cook should care about more than the badge. - The List, Eat & Drink 365:
The service is among the best in town.
6 - Mark Donald, two MICHELIN stars at The Glenturret Lalique (Condé Nast Traveller, 2024): when he picks his Edinburgh rooms he chooses LYLA, and describes Ralston as owning
Aizle, Tipo and Noto, all restaurant leaders in the Scottish capital.
7 That is a passing line from a chef about the group.
Good to know
- Timing: lunch and an early dinner, seven days, with service finishing around 9pm. Check the venue site for exact hours.
- Booking: the restaurant takes its own reservations, so book through its site or by phone.
- Getting there: up a flight of stairs to the first floor at 110 Hanover Street, one block north of George Street. The Assembly Rooms are about 170 m away, two or three minutes on foot.
- Price: pasta ran £16 a plate at Erskine's 2024 visit, and Ralston's own framing is three courses for under £30.2
- Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 11 March 2024. The result is clean and the inspection is over two years old.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Michelin bib gourmand 2024." His year is the right one. The Bib was first awarded in the 2024 guide, and the guide's own page still showed it in February 2026, so the standing has held for three editions.
Verdict
should-visit — A pasta room that a MICHELIN Inspector, a national food editor and a free city guide all describe in the same terms, at a price where three courses land under thirty pounds. That combination is the whole Bib Gourmand argument made concrete, and it is worth rearranging an afternoon for. It stops short of must-visit because nothing here is unavailable elsewhere: the cooking is very good Italian-leaning food executed cleanly, the standing is a Bib Gourmand, and the 9pm finish takes the room out of contention for a whole class of evening.