The Challenge: 10 good restaurants (list) for under £10
Edinburgh is fast becoming Scotland’s restaurant capital, with an ever-expanding range of food on offer. Fine dining, international cuisine, fish and chips or sausage and mash; you can pretty much find anything you want to eat in the city.
Best of all, it doesn’t need to involve a prior phone call to your bank manager. It is easy to get a really good meal in Edinburgh for less than £10. As I said to Edinburgh Guide, who then called my bluff by waving £100 in front of me and saying “Off you go, then, Euan. Find ten of the best”.
Well, that’s easy. Frankly, I could have found twenty, although I wonder how my ballooning stomach would have coped. So here we present ten (well, ten and a bit really) of Edinburgh’s best places to eat out without paying out. In the main, the restaurants featured only offer lunch at low prices, but there are a couple of cheap all-day places in there also.
The Rules
There are a few ground rules. I’ve tried to make all the restaurants as different to each other as possible, covering as broad a scope of dining styles, settings and flavours as possible. Also, no chain branches are allowed, regardless of how good they are. This is a cross-section of great restaurants unique to Edinburgh.
I’m also not going to tell you about the drink side of things. Generally speaking, if you’re trying to dine for £10 or less, it’s best to stick with tap water. It’s simple economic knowledge that if you fancy boozing it up with your meal, then the bill will double at least. And it’s worth pointing out that this is simply a guide for you. You can go to all of these restaurants and spend no more than £10. However, you may (and probably will) be having such a fantastic time that you decide to spend much more. That is certainly an open option, and I’ve reserved the right to “upgrade” my budget if I feel it’s merited by the establishment. Hell, rules are there to be broken.
Finally, I really hope you visit these places. Edinburgh’s restaurant culture is the best it’s ever been, but it needs you to get out there. So many interesting restaurants still go to the wall in such troubled times as today, particularly those serving less well-known types of food. There used to be a terrific Moroccan restaurant on Dundas Street. It closed and rebooted itself as an Indian. There used to be an equally terrific Jamaican restaurant on Buccleuch Street. It too is now Indian. Not that I have anything against Indian restaurants (far from it, as you shall see), but variety is the spice of life and all.
So, please throw down your overpriced Subways and supermarket salads. You’re in a city where, for just a few extra pounds, you can have a great, freshly-cooked meal. Go forth and eat.