TIMBERYARD — Restaurant in City of Edinburgh

There are good things here, but its cost far outweighs the quality of the experience. If you would expect to spend £550+ on a tasting menu meal for 2 regularly, then feel free to try. To anyone else, I encourage you to note the reoccurring themes in other reviews. Quality was good, technique mediocre, but quantity / value-for-money and resulting satiety were the poorest I have ever had in a tasting menu.

The Service: This was the best part of the experience, easily. Everyone we spoke to was nice, and I was also pleased the offhand comment I'd made that it was my wife's birthday was remembered. There were ~10 waiters walking around, all with no clear assignment. I was a bit surprised, though, to hear the person with the cheeseboard try saying £9 a slice with a hint of "only / now reduced" and not see a look of embarrassment.

The Atmosphere: The space is nice but a bit too dark. The folk instrumental music playing in the background was just loud enough to distract when listening to each other, and it was made louder as the restaurant filled-up. The space has a pleasant buzz, but I think that came from the staff and their brief attempts to converse outside their sales-opportunities than to the background din. The light was so low it made it hard to properly see and appreciate the food, most of which seemed to be presented very carefully, but due to the low light, it lost some of its impression.

The Food: The meal started well. We had the full tasting menu, which started with a little bowl of excellent broth, 4 or 5 small plates of pickles, bresola (1 slice each), and other nibbles. A pleasant velouté and foam with eel appeared soon after was the high point. However, the next 5 courses were unremarkable. The little details we liked, like pickled pine cones or sauces, were all disappointingly and inexplicably miniscule. We elected to pay for the extra oysters and asked for extra bread and butter (resulting in confused eyebrows), but despite this, the meal was not satisfying. We both left feeling unsatisfied.

The Wine: I ignored the feedback in multiple reviews. The wine pairings I was offered were disappointing, easily the worst I've had in a restaurant, made all the more disappointing having paid £125 to be able to make that claim. The first 2 were passable, not great pairings, but interesting enough to avoid ire. The next 5 were lamentable, shades of the same nonsense bio-wine (small independent producers, all with interchangeable stories). I made the hopeful suggestions that I preferred not to have only bio-wines and get some traditional classics, but mysteriously that was ignored. (Presumably, they never had any reason to open them to serve by the glass.) There was no concern whether I enjoyed them or what I thought of it, again leading to the feeling of a product created simply to maximise their profit.

I am loathed to say it, but my impression leaving was that this could have been a good experience. However, by taking every opportunity to force upselling or cost-cutting with the abysmal wine menu, we left feeling the experience was much closer to Ryanair than a Michelin starred restaurant. Relentlessly upselling products really doesn't contribute to the feeling of a special, luxury, or even...

Can’t say anything about the food because I never got to go, but I can say their customer service was surprisingly poor. Beware of their reservation policy. We has reservations for Tuesday and tried to cancel on Monday (full disclosure, I won a ballot for golf at St. Andrews which would have made us miss our reservations) and they were closed so we left a voicemail. Reservation cancellations required 24 hours or they would charge £50 per person—we booked way back in April so I completely forgot about this policy. We got a call back Tuesday morning and I spoke with the girl and said maybe we’d be able to make the 9:30 sitting and she agreed—if she had told us the policy we wouldn’t have pushed it. We got delayed at St. Andrews and I called them early in the afternoon to let them know there was no way we would make it.

I saw a charge on my credit card the next day after which I called them to reason with them. The guy whom I spoke with never called me back when he said he would so I called back later that afternoon and spoke with a Woman who I’m pretty sure is part owner. I explained my situation and she explained how people like me are a blight on the industry in those exact words and that they still hadn’t made a decision on refunding me. She never returned my call and the charge stuck on my card. She told me that the table would have sat empty and that they were turning many people away for the reservation. I gave 3 hours notice, so I’m not sure how that was the case and we tried to give the proper amount of notice to cancel but they weren’t even open. It was fringe festival and Edinburgh was jammed so it’s difficult to buy how she was both turning people away but couldn’t fill it later. I even called back later and asked if they would credit me for lunch the next day and was lied to about it being booked solid for lunch as I checked and there was still online availability.

I completely understand the policy, I’ve been all over the world and eaten at some really nice tables which have similar policies. I can tell you that there is almost always exceptions and flexibility to said policies and an element of customer service as situations arise. Refunding half my money or having us for lunch the next day would have been sufficient to me but the way we were treated was like we were people trying to cheat them. I was really looking forward to going and ended up super disappointed. I’m sure the food is great etc but it’s tough to get behind someone’s business when you’re...

Compliments to the chefs - 2 of my friends were visiting. They’re into fine dining so I felt compelled to show the best we have in Scotland and Edinburgh. We thoroughly enjoyed every course and the drinks pairing was interesting.

I had to take off one star because of the price communication. On the menu it clearly listed a tasting price £89, a drinks paring price £78 and £5 cheese serving. My 2 friends went for the cheese and confirmed before ordering it was the £5 as on the menu. When the cheese was served it also came with a glass of wine and we didn’t think much about it as we chose the wine pairing. But when the bill arrived there was an item for wine pairing for the cheese of £29 for 2 glasses, which caught us by surprise - it was nowhere to be found being mentioned and the staff did not mention this at all. We had to complain about this twice and the staff could not really explain it so eventually my friend got so annoyed that she had to ask to speak with the manager. The manager came, my friend explained our point of view again and he simply told my friend “it’s a shame that you don’t understand this”. I could not believe my ears. I feel embarrassed that my friend experienced this while visiting me. But he eventually agreed to not charge us for the wine for the cheese. We decided not to pay for the service charge because of what he said. We also opted out of the charity aid due to lack of transparency but then he also asked if we want to pay for the tea, which I find a bit sarcastic coming from him. Maybe this poor dude was just tried or having a bad day. I don’t know 🤷🏽‍♀️

Also, while explaining the wine pairing, one staff touched his nose and kept putting his palm on top of the bottle… 🤌 man… come on…

Anyway, food 100% hands down I’d love be back but the service will get me think twice and hesitate to come back again due to this memory. They probably never want us back anyway and think we are a bunch of Karens lol But again, compliments to...