Herringbone Barnton — Restaurant in City of Edinburgh

Two completely different experiences. Firstly, we visited 1 June for a drink and snack. The venue is lively and really well fitted out. The young crew of staff are great, attentive, friendly and helpful. Drinks were lovely. Regarding the food, we had hummus and olives with "flatbread" as a snack but the flatbread was very thin, more like a wrap. We then had the vegan "burger" which given what you can get these days I'm sorry HB but I'm struggling to give it 1 out of 5. It's not a burger...its a fritter (a frozen one clearly) and a lumped together ball of anaemic looking tasteless jackfruit that was supposed to be shredded. All this in, again, a wrap-like flatbread.....burgers should be in buns folks! To top it, the chips were pretty tasteless (frozen again?). Secondly, we visited for an evening meal on 7 June....much better experience. The "while you wait" plates are pretty big! We had the garlic pizza bread and the olive board before a starter but unbeknown to us, this was too much for 2 people as yhey are large dishes, would maybe be OK for 4. We then tried the seared watermelon which I enjoyed ......similar texture to tuna so maybe not for everyone. My wife had the vegan version of mushrooms on toast which was really nice but would benefit from a vegan cream. She also had the salt and chilli tofu which was also nice. I had the puy lentil and butternut squash dish which was good but perhaps a little more sauce could have been added. We had a side of chips which were much better than our first experience! Not everyone, even if not vegan, wants meat all the time so we would love to see a vegan risotto perhaps or a vegan pizza on the menu! Shout out to Lochlan who was our waiter and was excellent and really...

I love that there's more restaurants popping up in the area. I already loved Herringbone in North Berwick, but when I heard they were coming to Barnton I was so happy! I had breakfast there, the breakfast BLT, and my partner took the avocado toast and both were very good, and super affordable. The service was quite slow as we had to wait 20min for coffee and 45min for food but it's a new team that's just starting so it's understandable that there are a few things to improve on at the beginning. The staff is very friendly. I can't wait to have dinner there soon!

Update from June 2025: I had dinner there and was hoping that the service would have improved, especially as it wasn't a busy evening. We had to wait 45min to place our order for food, which felt really long, and no apology when the staff did come. We had the crab linguine which was fine but I was expecting more from one of their favourite dishes. The drinks were great and served quickly. I would advise people to place their orders for food as early as possible to get the...

We had a nice evening at this venue and enjoyed our meal overall. The hosts were great at welcoming us, and the servers did a good job. Food was nice, and drinks great.

We'll be back, and look forward to seeing this place develop and flourish.

A few areas of constructive feedback: Food: Great starter (bread/olives), pizza was okay, although a little lite on the toppings, the chicken burger was too dry for our taste (both tried it).

Service: Would have been great to be offered sauces, our server left before we could ask. We were waiting for drinks a little too long between offers to have them refilled (and it wasn't a busy evening). Our table was wiped (which was good) but not well, leaving bits everywhere.

Ambience: This wasn't the venues fault, but someone next to us was watching videos on their phone without earphones, rude and surprising for a restaurant.

I'm giving this place 5/5, as it has the core ingredients, but will update my review after...