Le Bistrot, Edinburgh, restaurant review: a little piece of France
, The Times
Picture this. An authentic French bistro open seven days a week, 9am to 10pm, breakfast to dinner. Serving soupe du jour, terrine de campagne, entrecôte de boeuf, moules frites and proper patisserie. With a three-course prix-fixe lunch for £23.95. Just off — this is where things get really preposterous — Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. As if!
And yet, head for the corner of George IV Bridge, where no matter the season tourists flurry like the east coast wind, breezing in and out of St Giles, stilling on West Parliament Square to be spun yarns by baby-faced guides in medieval garb, and bracing at the foot of the now rightly controversial statue of David Hume to rub his not-so-enlightened-after-all toe. Lift your nose to the cool air. And you will smell the fresh, briny, garlicky, winey, unmistakably French parfum of moules marinières.
It’s coming from Lothian Chambers, a Palladian grande dame of a building completed in 1904 and, since 2018, housing the Institut Français. And, on the ground floor, in a beautiful, light, airy, high-ceilinged room with half-drawn blinds adorned with quotations from French artists and thinkers, Le Bistrot. My lunch destination. From the smell of the moules marinières alone I can tell it’s going to be super.
Le Bistrot chefs Mohanad Araki and Kris Tselikia
NIKOLAY VASKOV
To my chagrin — and I’m afraid one of the side-effects of Le Bistrot’s little-piece-of-France-in-Edinburgh charm is an inability to stop yourself turning into a pitiable monoglot who peppers their English with un petit peu de français — I had no idea this restaurant was here. Until it was added to the latest edition of Peter Irvine’s Scotland the Best, where he praises its “classic bistrot food and sometimes curt French waiters — what more could we want!” Personally, I don’t think curt service is ever justified, even on cultural (or is that culturally clichéd?) grounds. We shall see.
Le Bistrot is on the ground floor of the Institut Français, with table service worthy of France itself
NIKOLAY VASKOV
I’m meeting my friend Marjorie, who is already here when I arrive. Though it says to wait until seated, there’s no one to take my reservation so I walk in and join her. An iPad is brought over so I can identify my name (fake, naturellement), we get a bit of a grilling, and I have to explain, twice, that we’ve booked. Oh dear. Not the most welcoming start but from here on in, service is fine. It’s also slow, which is a compliment. Too many restaurants catering for the lunchtime tourist trade have their eye grimly fixed on the clock. At Le Bistrot, we’re on European time. We linger for two hours. And leave more stuffed than I’ve been in ages.
A free basket of bread is plonked down. Lovely. Not the thickly crusted Parisian baguette you buy wrapped in brown paper and start beheading on the way home but fresh, brown, good enough. A dish of French butter, rather than those individual foil-wrapped rectangles of disappointment, would be good. The lunch menu is perfection (so is the dinner menu, I checked). Here are all the bistro classics but not so many you start to lose faith. The only duff note is Marjorie’s salade niçoise, which hasn’t been adequately tossed in vinaigrette, features vinegary capers straight from the jar and is draped with a few unremarkable anchovies.
The “generous, hearty, homely” ragoût de boeuf à la bière
NIKOLAY VASKOV
My goat’s cheese and tomato quiche comes in a rich, collapsing, eggy slice. Thin with a meltingly short pastry crust. Requires no knife. Parfait. Ragoût de boeuf à la bière is the best I’ve encountered in Scotland. This is generous, hearty, homely food, everything cut chunky and holding itself together beautifully: big hunks of beef braised in beer, thick carrot coins, soft fudgy potato halves, earthy slabs of swede, plenty of not overly reduced tomatoey gravy, and a thin ring of oil around the edge to let you know it’s been puttering on a stove for many hours. As a side note I stand with Nigella Lawson on the serious matter of the chopping of carrots. I can’t abide them sliced into coins — batons please, or at least on the bias — unless they come in a stew like this.
Coq au vin — so good it’s got Chitra Ramaswamy planning a second visit
NIKOLAY VASKOV
Come hungry: the portions are huge. Marjorie’s coq au vin is splendid: a massive corn-fed supreme, skin all papery, dark and crisp, in a demi-glace to die for. There’s tons of the glossy sauce, in which dollops of crème fraîche swirl, and exceptionally soft buttery mushrooms are hidden. Basically, next time I’m ordering the coq au vin. And I’m taking my beloved, who will have the ragoût de boeuf. When a plate of food is so delicious you’re planning your next order while eating your present one it’s a good sign indeed.
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We finish as one should when in a little piece of France: with impeccable tarte au citron, millefeuille, and unfinishable mounds of Chantilly cream. Meanwhile, Le Bistrot has filled with people in the know: local city workers on lunch, tourists with great taste and older folk who know a good stew when they see it. And out of the lovely big windows the tumult of the Royal Mile roars on. There’s something about eating in a restaurant nestled in a draughty old municipal building. It feels hyper-European, big city-ish. Le Bistrot may be a not-remotely-hidden gem yet I leave thinking … mon Dieu, what a find.
@times_foodie
Le Bistrot, West Parliament Square, Edinburgh (ifecosse.org.uk)
How it rated
Food 8
Service 7
Atmosphere 8
We ate
£23.95 for three courses x 2, £47.90
Quiche — goat’s cheese and tomato
Niçoise salad
Ragoût de boeuf à la bière
Coq au vin
Tarte au citron
Millefeuille
We drank
House red 125ml, £5.95
Americano, £2.40
Café au lait, £2.80
Service charge £5.90
Total for two£64.95
September 26 2025, 11.00pm
September 27 2025, 5.45pm
September 28 2025, 3.20pm
September 28 2025, 4.56pm
September 28 2025, 5.00pm
September 28 2025, 12.01am
Dining and Cooking