Where should I eat in Edinburgh, and which local food or drink is worth trying?

The Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 set out what the name requires. Regulation 3 obliges the spirit to be distilled at a distillery in Scotland at an alcoholic strength of less than 94.8 percent by volume, matured only in Scotland and only in oak casks of a capacity not exceeding 700 liters, held for not less than three years, and bottled at a minimum of 40 percent alcohol by volume. Nothing may be added but water and plain caramel coloring. That last clause is the one worth knowing: a bar's cheapest Scotch and its most expensive one are bound by the same prohibition on flavoring.

Arbroath Smokies — hot-smoked haddock from the Angus coast north of Edinburgh — carry a Protected Geographical Indication. The UK register records the name as registered under the EU scheme on 2 March 2004 and carried into the UK scheme on 31 December 2020, in product class 1.7, fresh fish, molluscs and crustaceans and products derived from them. The protection means a producer outside the registered area cannot sell smoked haddock under that name, so a smokie on an Edinburgh menu is a traceable claim rather than a style.

Where to eat follows the city's shape. The Old Town's eating places are threaded into what UNESCO describes as a dense medieval fishbone street pattern, so the kitchens are small and tucked into closes off the spine. The New Town's wider Georgian frontages hold the larger rooms. Neither is better; they suit different evenings.

Museum kitchens close well before the museums do, and in Edinburgh that catches people out. National Museums Scotland takes last orders at the Balcony Café and Brasserie at 16:30 and at the Museum Kitchen at 16:45, while the building itself stays open until 17:00. A late lunch planned around a museum visit needs to be a 16:00 lunch.

• Whisky — Ask the age, then remember the floor: no bottle sold as Scotch has spent less than three years in oak.
• Fish — Treat the words Arbroath Smokies as a registered designation, not a cooking method.
• Timing — Build any museum meal around the 16:30 and 16:45 last-order cutoffs rather than the 17:00 closing time.

August is the hardest month to get a table anywhere in central Edinburgh, because the Fringe fills the Old Town's venues and its restaurants at the same time. Many of the Old Town's rooms are also small and reached through stepped closes with no step-free route, which rules some of them out if stairs are a problem. And a bottle labeled with a region rather than an age tells you where it was distilled, not how long it sat — the three-year minimum is the only guarantee the regulations give you.

Pair this with the Edinburgh things-to-do answer for the free national museum on Chambers Street, and with the Edinburgh when-to-visit answer if an August trip means competing with the Fringe for a table.