The Spanish Butcher Edinburgh — Restaurant in City of Edinburgh

Excited to see this place for the first time - not many big new restos in Edinburgh these days, and this site was Martin Wishart's celebrated The Honours.

First impression - very, very loud and quite weird. The waiter asks - 'are you comfortable with the menu?' - well, yes, once I've got my glasses on and the phone torch on. The menu is in fact a quite limited take on some standard Spanish tapas - grilled octopus, jamon iberico, pimientos de padron, gambas - along with some very not-Spanish elements - carpaccio, 'street corn', harissa - thrown in.

And then the weird - monkfish roast with a sauce of chorizo, capers and brown butter? Bizarre too are all the references to Galician steak, Galician burger, Galician fillet, Galician sliders, as though the region of Galicia was famous for having Spain's best meat. (Spanish friends laugh at that. Galicia is famous for other things.) And of what animal are these many steaks? The butcher does not say... Nor does he offer any birds, which is unlike any Spanish butcher I know. How about a nice Galician quail-steak?

But the chef knows some stuff: the squid/chorizo/octopus stew ('chargrilled'? ) was very good, and my abanico iberico - the secreto or feather steak, from the shoulder of a non-Galician pork-type animal - absolutely perfect.

But the saute potatoes that came with the abanico were fried just on one side, a sure sign of a kitchen not working quite right. Mean on the scallops, too. Not many of them, and no Spanish cook would throw away the coral... Room for improvement in the kitchen, but worth coming back for.

The music is mad too loud. So loud you can't really hear anything except the beat. The acoustic was famously bad in The Honours - don't...

We are at the Spanish Butcher last night to celebrate my birthday. My daughter was contacted the day before to confirm the booking and also that it was my birthday. When we arrived at the restaurant we were shown to our table and given menus and then totally ignored for 20 minutes. In the end we attracted the attention of an amazing waitress called Rachel P. She apologised for the wait but took our order even though our table was not in her section. She took our drinks order and food order but asked first if the menu had been explained to us. It hadn’t but we were happy to order. The drinks were served by the waiter who was supposed to be looking after us but without an apology. That is the only time we saw him. The rest of the meal was served by the younger staff and Rachel P. She was always very happy and checked on us for drinks and whether the food was enjoyable - which it was. When the bill came we explained to Rachel P that as the tips and service charges are pooled we wouldn’t be paying it as it should not go to the other waiters and management as they were appalling. We tried to ask her to take it separately but she wouldn’t. We also told her at the end that we were celebrating my birthday and her face fell as she wasn’t aware of this nor had anyone told her this when she told the person in charge - who checked the diary to see who we were - that we wouldn’t be paying the service charge. If you go there ask to be served...

Simple ! Great food, great service and great atmosphere.

First - the meat - lots of options for superb steak, but also some lovely Spanish iberico pork which we will return to try! All three of sides we tried were first class, the truffle fries, mushrooms and greens (including crisp sweet mange tout).

The service - exceptional friendly help from an Italian waiter who the rest of the team mentioned to us as their "informal sommelier". He was more professional as a sommelier than sommeliers in highly rates michelin starred restaurants we have eaten at in terms of asking the right questions to bring his excellent knowledge of the wine list to bear with great recommendations.

He explained in a similarly concise and helpful way the differences between the different meat options including sharing options - by the way do come as a group of 4 or more to make the sharing options viable, better value and also the larger pieces of meat will be better cooked.

Atmosphere - only 6 months old this new restaurant kept the previous operation's wooden panelling and then created a really comforting and interesting green themed decor which we certainly appreciated.

Overall not to be missed, but as with any high quality steak house it is not cheap! But it is good value. P.S. we did not have a starter, only excellent nibbles, which not only made the bill cheaper but more importantly left room for a perfect portion for us of 200 grams...