Wedgwood The Restaurant
Paul Wedgwood picks his own kelp, sea aster and channel wrack off the East Lothian coast, and he moves the spot each trip so he never strips one stretch out.2
Why go
He chooses where to go on the day, off the weather and the tide times, and he has the argument that separates a forager from someone buying a story: You can have two hawthorn trees growing beside each other but one will be flavourless and the other one really beautiful.
1 The ingredients he names himself are sea aster, sea coriander, samphire, wood sorrel and mushrooms. Read the July 2026 menu and you can see where the rest of the picking goes: kelp custard under a potato pavé, sea aster and channel wrack with the Skye scallops, ground elder with heritage tomatoes and woodruff with strawberries.3
The training behind it came from Miller Howe in Windermere, under John Tovey, and he draws the line himself: he was a great, great chef, all about hyper-local, seasonal stuff or picked from the garden, he instilled into me, without me knowing at the time, the way I cook today.
1 He ran a bar in Kendal from 1999, moved to Edinburgh in 2005, and he and Lisa Wedgwood opened this room on the Canongate in 2007. Nineteen years later it is still the two of them and still one address. Lisa Wedgwood puts her own half plainly on the restaurant's team page: she does everything except the cooking. He leads every foraging walk himself and talks the table through each dish at the lunch afterwards.3
The menu is rewritten in full four times a year, adjusted daily, with the lunch list changing weekly.3 The room was gutted in a GBP 90,000 refit finished in early 2016, which exposed the original stone wall and put acoustic vinyl down in the street-level room to take the noise out of it. The downstairs room kept its original carpet.8
Order this / avoid
- Order: the pigeon ham, GBP 18.50, with haggis crumbled over it, neep ketchup and tattie crisps. It is the dish that explains what this kitchen does with the national ingredient.3
- Order: the Isle of Skye scallops, GBP 21, with sweetcorn, bottarga, and the sea aster and channel wrack off his own walks.
- Order: the Avon Valley roe deer loin, GBP 39.50, which comes with a venison haggis alongside it, confit neep and sweet potato mash.
- Order: the Wee Tour of Scotland if you have the evening. Eight courses at GBP 85, GBP 75 without meat, GBP 60 more for the wine match.
What locals & experts say
- The criticism here is old, and that is the single most useful thing to know before booking. The newest bylined review of this kitchen anywhere is Holly Jones's, published on 14 March 2014, on the leek and cheddar bread-and-butter pudding with roast tomato, soused fennel and fennel ice cream:
All she can say (even now!) is that you have to try it. The balance of hot and cold, savoury and sweet is exceptional in this dish.
6 Two things travel with that line. It ran in a local news site that does not review restaurants, and the piece opens by saying she had been asked to review this one for a second time. - Paul Wedgwood on where the picking came from, to Catriona Thomson in 2020:
I've had foraged ingredients on the menu for as long as I can remember, it was a natural thing for me, not forced. I was into it long before it was a trend.
He traces it to the cubs:I was the weird kid that really enjoyed the taste of nettles.
1 - SLTN Awards, Wine Award 2015, won, on a list of over a hundred wines that Lisa Wedgwood credits to the supplier relationships behind it.4 The same fortnight brought a place on the Sunday Times Top 100 Restaurants and a regional Thistle Awards Hospitality Hero, a category this room won against two named individuals, so it reads as a person's award more than a restaurant's. The Sunday Times list carries its own vote basis in the reporting: it
is not decided by judges or critics
and combines the opinions of thousands of diners. - Food and Travel Reader Awards, Best Restaurant Outside London, won in 2016 and shortlisted the two years after, which in 2018 put this room up against four Michelin-starred restaurants as the only Scottish entry in the category.5 The award is nominated by a magazine's readers and settled by a public vote, so read it as standing and never as a judgment on the cooking.
- The most recent thing the press says about this kitchen is who came out of it. Alan Keery and Sarah Baldry, who opened nadair in Marchmont in August 2024, first worked together in this kitchen.10
Good to know
- Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 11 September 2025, which is eleven months old and current.11
- Hours: lunch and dinner seven days. Lunch bookings run from noon with the last at 1.45pm; dinner starts at 5pm with the last booking at 9pm midweek and 9.45pm at weekends.3
- Booking: book. A nineteen-year-old room on the Royal Mile with two small dining rooms fills, and the tasting menu has its own rules about who at the table orders what.
- Price: starters GBP 18.50 to GBP 21, mains GBP 26.95 to GBP 42, desserts GBP 11.50, the Scottish cheese plate GBP 18.50, and eight courses at GBP 85, all read on 4 August 2026 from a menu dated 16 July 2026. Tasting tables carry a 10 per cent service charge. In 2012 mains here ran GBP 13.95 to GBP 26.95 and the room was winning a trade Restaurant of the Year in a category capped at GBP 35.7 Its cheapest main today is that old ceiling.
- The foraging days: GBP 175 a head for a two-hour walk on the East Lothian coast or in the woods, then a tasting lunch built from what the group brought back, with the chef talking through each dish. That is up from GBP 125 in 2022. The 2026 season is closed and the 2027 dates are not yet published.3
- The room: two dining rooms, one at street level and one downstairs, off a refit finished in early 2016. Nobody publishes a cover count.
- Getting there: the bottom half of the Royal Mile, at 267 Canongate, walking distance from Holyrood.
Verdict
could-visit — Paul Wedgwood does one thing that almost nobody in this city does, and he has done it since before it was fashionable: he picks the wild ingredients himself, chooses the ground on the morning off the weather and the tides, rotates the spot so he does not strip it, and puts the results on a printed menu as components rather than garnish. Read today, that is kelp custard under a potato pave, sea aster and channel wrack with Skye scallops, ground elder with heritage tomatoes and woodruff with strawberries, plus haggis crumbled over pigeon ham and a venison haggis set beside Avon Valley roe deer. He also teaches it commercially at GBP 175 for a two-hour walk in East Lothian and a lunch built from the haul. What the file cannot supply is any evidence that the cooking is currently executed at a standout level. The newest bylined verdict on this kitchen is from March 2014, in a local news outlet that does not review restaurants, on a visit the writer says she was invited back for; every award expired years ago, with the newest a reader-voted magazine nomination from 2018 and most from 2015; and there is no guide standing in 2026. So this is a solid, distinctive room to take if the Royal Mile is your evening, and the case for rearranging an afternoon around it rests on the chef's own account of his craft plus a menu, which is not enough to send someone across town. Thin evidence lowers the confidence here and it does not lift the rung. A current bylined review, or acceptance of the 2021 piece the research could not open, would move this to should-visit.