L’Artigiano Edinburgh — Restaurant in City of Edinburgh

Well appointed neighborhood place for Italian options. We were fortunate to get a table right away around the folks that were smart enough to make a reservation. We watched numerous parties be turned away due to no availability. Will say upfront each member of staff we interacted with during the meal was personable and professional. A real treat. The meal unfortunately had some minor misses. We almost always try an Italian restaurant’s Bruschetta to start and chose to here. The Classico-chopped tomatoes, garlic, fresh basil and olive oil. Served on fresh bread with a bit of rocket salad. This didn’t live up to its billing as the bread was nowhere near hardy or grilled enough to hold up under the moisture of the tomatoes mixture. Mushy bread does not make a good bruschetta. And the tomatoes on our visit were very light on flavor, almost bland. My DW go to when eating Italian is spaghetti bolognese. Unfortunately they did not have this on the menu. After a menu review and some conferring with our waiter, she chose a pizza, the Parma. This came much larger than expected-we could have shared and been just fine. It came with Parma ham (delicious), Rocket (too much imo), and Parmesan “shavings”-really small chunks of firm Parmesano Reggiano. The strong flavor of the Parmesan took away from the flavor of the Pham but all in all it was quite good. An excellent crust. My choice was the ravioli of the day. Stuffed with lobster, topped with king prawns, and a reddish sauce that the name of got lost in translation-sona rossa perhaps. This turned out to be a mixture of a tomato sauce and a double cream sauce per our waiter. What did not get passed on to me, our waiter it seemed, was that this sauce had spicy chilis included. The dish came looking excellent, if a bit small portion with only three prawns. One bite and I knew it was going to be a problem for me. I don’t do spicy. It was truly just about the only thing you could taste, though the prawns quality did come through. As much as would have preferred to explain and return it, I powered through with much help of the supplied carafe of water. When I did mention it to the waiter he apologized profusely and checked with the kitchen to confirm the presence of the chilis. For all the positives they deserve the four stars but the two misses imo were very...

Awful, thoroughly disappointing, and potentially dangerous experience at this seemingly highly rated restaurant. The rude and condescending waiter, when taking our orders, refused to engage properly when we asked about whether the Catch of the Day was Gluten Free or not - for a Coeliac member of our party. When asked, he flippantly and rudely dismissed our question saying "it's just fish'. When directly asked," are you sure there is no gluten in the sauce etc.", he confirmed that there wasn't. We ordered and when the food arrived, we were not convinced that the fish didn't have any flour in view of the thickness of the sauce. We asked another waitress to check with the kitchen, who quickly confirmed that the dish did, in fact, contain flour with gluten. We had to reorder food and the rest of the party were unable to eat together due to the wait. The pizza that replaced the fish came out quickly but was undercooked. The restaurant then tried to charge for the pizza despite their behaviour and failures. Eventually, after being prompted, they removed this from the bill.

There was absolutely no apologies from the original waiter - who seemed to be defiant and continually flippant - throughout the whole situation. No apology from the manager either. Quite frankly, shameful behaviour and brings this restaurant into disrepute.

Perhaps the restaurant owners are unclear about the (legal) consequences of failing to provide correct information about allergens, which could have resulted in a serious illness for the member of the party with the allergy. It seems like it is only a matter of time before this attitude harms a customer. We will be reporting this incident to the FSA via the Environmental Health Team in Edinburgh.

Completely unacceptable and we'd strongly recommend avoiding this restaurant if you have...

A restaurant with so much potential, let down by the staff.

We called ahead to say we were running 10-15 mins late and the woman who answered the phone was very clearly put out and told us that we needed to be out by 8 (1 hr 15 mins).

On arrival we couldn’t get anyone to take our order - the first man we asked told us “I only take drinks orders” and when we chased up and asked our waitress if we could order she told us that other tables were being prioritised first. Fine but at odds but with being told essentially to be quick.

Starters came and my beef and pork meatballs were raw and had to be sent back. Waiter told us all meatballs were made too big and couldn’t be cooked so now off the menu. They offered me another starter but in the interest of time I said no.

An hour later, no sign of mains, we chased up only to be told my partners medium steak takes a long time to cook and we needed to wait. We asked for some bread (which never came) and a caprese salad instantly arrived on our table. Nice gesture but I was there for the marathon the next day and it wasn’t what we wanted.

At 8pm meals finally arrived and my partners steak which took an hour to cook was unbelievably raw. He called the waiter over and told him it wasn’t as cooked as he was expected and the waiter was abrupt and put out to take it back to the kitchen. My partner also ordered peppercorn sauce and was given mushroom sauce.

No real apology, no attempt to make anything right. The food (which was cooked) was very nice but an overall stressful...