Monteiths Restaurant, Edinburgh

Excellent Scottish fare, with a definite focus on traditional game and fish.

The ambiance and the deco is beautiful. The place is quiet and the food excellent. But maybe not enough for the price. Comparing to the prices of the Swiss restaurants, it's a little lower.

A complete dissappointment. As oer a fellow reviewer below, I had the venison at over £20 last time I was there and was an embarassment how little there actually was on the plate. Decided to give it a second chance for a client's meeting, and although the drinks were ok, the food was pathetic, just as big a rip off again. Wouldn't mind paying if it was worth it, but think this place is just taking the mick for all it is.
Cannot possibly encourage people enough to avoid this place.

Booked a table as our last treat after spending a week in Edinburgh. The food was very good and for the price of ~£70 per head, including drinks, it should be. What didn't match the food was the surroundings. The restaurant was very crowded with 1 or 2 too many tables. The bathrooms were OK but not as good as they should be, and on my first visit there were no towels. The restaurant seemed to be more of a cocktail bar and because of this there was a lot of noise from the clientèle. Unlike other reviews I have read the Music in the restaurant was not loud. Service was acceptable. In summary the food and drink was excellent let down by the surroundings.

18 months ago I was a regular customer here but hadn't visited in the last year due to moving house. My last review listed it as excellent but things have unfortunately changed.

The initial cocktails we had were good (one excellent, one average) but it went downhill from there.

The starter I had was ox cheek tortellini in a veal jus. For my £6 I got 6 small pieces of pasta containing what tasted awfully like roast beef. The jus was really a watery gravy making me think this was a micro Sunday roast packaged in a pasta style. Was quite odd and could have been a lot better if the pasta hadn't been included and the ox cheek had been braised with the jus. The food wasn't particularly warm but still edible

For the main I went for a rare loin of venison. This was meant to be served with a blackberry jus, potatoes and parsnip purée. They got most of the items right although the parsnip was a solitary roast one. The meat was cooked to perfection but had unfortunately been left to go cold and the potatoes arrived at the end of the dish yet were fridge cold in the centre. They had clearly been cooked earlier then refrigerated and partially reheated. The blackberry combination was nice although had been striped with a gravy on the plate and the two didn't work well together yet the blackberrries used as a garnish were close to frozen in the centre. Given the £22 price tag, the portion was also miniscule and after the two courses I felt I had to order a sweet to satisfy my appetielte (the portions used to be much bigger)

The two sweets we had were however the most redeeming part of the meal. The chocolate fondant was really a melting middle cake but very tasty and the rhubarb tart with Ginger beer ice cream was tasty and innovative (although the pastry slightly lacking crispness)

I'd also note the staff repeatedly pushed us to top ip glasses and order more drinks - clearly now a place making more money on the bar than being food driven and gave no apology when we mentioned the cold food just the comment of 'oh really'

Certainly wouldn't go back which is a real shame given it's previous promise. Given a 2 person bill of over £100 there are much better city centre offerings

I've been here for drinks a lot over the last three years or so and had differing opinions virtually everytime but the place's quirky interior and range of cocktails have always lured me back. Now that the music policy and volume seem to have reached a sensible point (no blaring hardcore hip-hop) and the rather manic head barman seems to have moved on I think it can go on to greater things. And as I've for some reason failed to review it up till now having finally sampled the food it seems time to redress that.

Deciding that drinking on a palindrome earned double points (and having a hankering to take up the bar's bottle of vodka with limitless trimmings deal) half a dozen of us trooped along on 01/02/2010. As this was a Monday night we ended up being the only customers for the bulk of our time there. I doubt that had any bearing on the service but that was uniformly courteous and swift either way. The bottle of Finlandia in an ice bucket at the end of the table was a roaring success and no one had any complaints about their dishes, which included hare with pumpkin puree, black pudding with beetroot and poached quails eggs, haggis linguine and a very enjoyable cheesecake with strawberries dessert. £22 for three courses if having the table d'hote and the a la carte was slightly dearer obviously.

We'll be back again on 20/10/2010 and I'm looking forward to it.

Visited again sooner than expected (April 12th) and things seem to have changed as far as the bottle to the table goes. Smirnoff Black is now the vodka of choice and you certainly notice the slight change in strength. Mixers have unfortunately gone from individual bottles to jugs from the gun (and bizarrely Tonic's no longer available inclusively). You're still probably getting vfm but less so than two months ago.

Monteiths is a restaurant I have walked past on numerous occasions, and yet somehow I have never ventured down the fairylight-lit close to discover what lies within. It came highly recommended by friends and colleagues, however having read some of the reviews on this site, I was somewhat hesitant to pay a visit. Having been for dinner and cocktails, I'm glad I didn't let the reviews of my fellow Qype diners stop me going.
I feel it is necessary to give a somewhat detailed description of my evening, in the hope that those who read this review will ignore the disparaging ones posted previously.
From the moment I stepped foot down the close, and got a glimpse of the secret garden, I knew it was something special. We were greeted immediately by a waitress and offered a seat by the bar for cocktails before the meal. I am unsure whether she was psychic or could see me staring at the armchairs by the fire, but she asked us if we would prefer a place next to the fire to warm ourselves before the meal - an offer we, of course, took her up on. We were unsure of which cocktails to go for, so again she helped in our decision process by suggesting some of her preferred cocktails. They were superb! Our indecisiveness continued when presented with the menu. It all looked so delicious. I chose the confit belly of pork and my sister had the Scallops with black pudding. Both dishes were cooked to perfection, and were of a size that filled us yet left enough room for the two following courses. For the main course I had Halibut (again cooked perfectly) and my sister went for the loin of lamb. Beautiful! The desserts were equally good, the open cheesecake making me want to learn how to make cheesecake just to reproduce the dessert at home. If I have any complaint of the evening it is that although we were by the fire, the door to the smoking area was used regularly by other customers causing cold air to come in. This is, however, just a minor quibble.
Monteiths is a great find. The service and food are excellent, and the atmosphere is unmatched in this part of town. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Disappointing. The highlight is the entrance off the Royal Mile - a bower of twigs all lit up with fairy lights, but it is downhill after that. We were shown to a table that could only be described as being in the corridor - though the waitress did find us another one when we asked. Nobody took our coats (minor I know - but if you have a nice coat on you don't want it crumpled on your seat back!); the toilets were not clean (and isn't it a bit unhygenic to have soft leather handles on toilet doors?); the food was mediocre - every dish had one ingredient too many, the lemon sole was not great quality fish (tasted a bit like Coley) and the white beans were undercooked.

I went to this restaurant today with a group, and despite the bad reviews here I actually quite liked it!

Things didn't start too promisingly when we were given a special Sunday lunch menu and told that the normal lunch menu (which had quite an interesting selection for a very reasonable price) wasn't available on Sundays, despite what was mentioned originally to the person who made the booking. It had turned out that there was an error in the original communication. However, the waitor then said "I'll see what I can do" and we were eventually offered the choice of the items on the normal menu, bar one or two items which weren't available in the kitchen at the time.

Admittedly service wasn't the quickest, but that was OK as we were all happily nattering away in the meantime. Also the food, when it arrived, was well worth the wait - beautifully presented and marvellously cooked.

The interior is an interesting mix of glam, Scandinavian style designer furniture and traditional Scottish homeliness that works quite well, giving the place a unique character.

A word of note: (as another mentioned) it isn't the easiest of places to spot - look for the tables and the big "M" above the alleyway, a couple of doors down from the Carubbers Close entrance on the Royal Mile.

Went on a Tuesday night for a leaving do - totally empty except for our party. Dingy basement bar, music blaring, naff plastic seats, inattentive staff and very expensive - £7.95 for a pint and a bottle of beer! Totally pretentious, no atmosphere and deserves to be empty as it is crap. Would not recommend, much better bars than this dingy wee place.

Overpriced, under-staffed novelty restaurant…...not at all impressed!

On arrival, it took the bar staff quite a while even to acknowledge that we had arrived. We had intended to have pre-dinner drinks in the garden area as it was a lovely day but the garden was closed due to a private function.

We were seated by a very friendly member of the front of house staff but the table was tucked away in a corner and the whole restaurant, although ultra chic, gave more of an impression of dark and gloomy.

The menu choices are surprisingly interesting although somewhat over-priced (£24.95 Beef Wellington & £9.95 for one of the starters) The food did taste great, however, we waited 45 minutes for our main course due again to the private function being held in the garden area.

The Front of House Staff were polite, however when we settled the bill, we were not served by the same person and our complaint was pointless as nothing was actually done about it.

I think this establishment is better suited to pre-drinks events or after dinner cocktails. We gratefully left and went for coffee and dessert elsewhere !

Had lunch here on Saturday and really wish I hadn’t.

Monteiths gets a good write up in the List Eating Guide, and has a lovely entrance. That’s it.

When we went in there were a 3 or 4 Leinster fans having a an early lunch before the match. We heard them long before we saw them, but soon realised that was due to the volume of the music which was more suited to a bar at midnight and not a Saturday lunch.

We were just left standing for a few minutes while they checked if our table was ready, and seemed to be in the way of the staff. We were then seated towards the back of the bar (with a draft coming from the open door leading out to the small courtyard). We did ask for the music to be turned down, and it was, but not for long.

As we had been unable to see the lunch menu on the street, there was little on the starter menu that appealed, so we just went straight for the main course. We were served 3 micro portions of food that wouldn’t have filled up a small child. There were no vegetables served with the meal, and no options on the menu to even pay for a “side” option. The food seemed nice enough, but unfortunately it was hard to tell due to the smallness of portion.

Overall this was a thouroughly disappointing Saturday lunch. Especially when the bill came to just under £40 for a £7.95 per head one course lunch! £5.50 for a small glass of house wine is a bit much by anyone’s standards!! We will not be back.