I had a transcendent 13-course dinner at Edinburgh's most joyful Michelin restaurant
This is a bucket list sort of place
It’s a first world problem, but I think I’m allergic to tasting menus.
Or maybe it’s just that my bad experiences have outweighed the good.
In a 19-year career as a restaurant reviewer, I’ve spent many marathon-length eating sessions wishing that I could go home and have a lie down, while I pick at overly worked food, usually in some plush hotel’s dark dining room.
Someone I know described this type of menu as a “meal of a thousand thank-yous”. Indeed, especially if there is crumb-scraping, water filling and you’re having paired drinks.
Anyway, I was buckled up for an epic 13 courses (£169pp for the food, or £600 for two people with paired wines) at relative newbie Avery.
This restaurant is in the basement venue that once housed The Stockbridge Restaurant. It’s owned by chef Rodney Wages, who brought his fine-dining restaurant over from San Francisco in 2024, then bagged it a Michelin Star in 2025 and 2026. He’s here tonight, not in chef’s whites but in a smart tweedy jacket, like a laird.
There are still the black walls that I remember, except with large abstract paintings on the walls and a pile of hardback coffee table books beside our table, including one about painter Milton Avery, who presumably is the restaurant’s namesake.
They ask us if we want to see the menu, or just freestyle it, and we decide to go in blind.
They hook me in so quickly, with the first course. It’s a “live scallop”, except it’s not really. I’m pretty sure a marine vet couldn’t resuscitate this raw Orcadian guy, though he was alive very recently and is served with a mixture of chia seeds that have been soaked in bonito vinegar, as well as cucumber, chilli and calendula petals, all served on a frilly iridescent plate.
It electrifies any dormant tastebuds, like plunging into the real life iteration of one of David Hockney’s bright swimming pools.
There are many other highlights. Of the five fishy courses in total, my beau highly rates a dish that we later learn is called Bits and Bobs, because it’s made from whatever fish the chef gets in that day. This is a beautiful marbled lemongrass-y coconut broth with fermented chilli, a slab of turbot, wibbly mussels, plus sea aster, sea purslane and other oceanic vegetation.
My top hit in the piscine countdown is the langoustine - a meltingly soft comma with a piquant XO condiment and a scoop of velvety fish butter rice.
This food definitely has a Californian signature, with its bright, vibrant, fusion flavours. Every course is so distinct, and full of personality.
However, I’m a bit scared that we’re having pasta at the halfway point, but their take on the rustic Northern Italian dish, tortellini in brodo, actually gives my appetite a second wind.
The dinky pasta parcels pop, like Chinese soup dumplings, and there’s a mouth-coating broth that’s laced with burnt onion butter.
Just like mama used to make, if your mother is a Michelin-starred chef named Rodney.
Course number 10 - the 28-day-aged sika deer tenderloin - is another winner, since it’s so darn buttery textured, and slightly smoky after a spell on their hibachi grill. It comes with wood mushroom, sweet garlic puree, tomato marmalade and other gloriously colourful and flavour layered accessories, such as nasturtium oil, mustard seeds and braised ox tongue.
However, we have not peaked yet. Probably my two favourite dishes of the whole meal are the next two goodies, which come leaping over the finishing line like Flo-Jo.
The first sweet dish is for sharing, and consists of a tiny doll’s house stack of pancakes, a large scoop of caviar, crumbled toasted nuts and a jug of buttery maple syrup.
It is utterly wonderful. Same goes for the cheese tart - essentially a little pecan pie topped by a fluffy puffball of Isle of Mull cheddar and a blob of wild heather honeycomb. I don’t know if anything I ever eat again will measure up.
As far as the paired drinks go, we loved the rich and fuzzy Solstice by Danbury Ridge, and the amazingly syrupy and nutty 50-year-old whisky from Invergordon Distillery. It was hand-picked by Wages, and he built the rich pigeon dish - the ninth in the 13 courses - to match.
There’s also a touch of Champagne Le Mesnil Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru at the end of the meal, so that we leave feeling as if we’ve just won at the grand prix of life.
Well, it’s that kind of bucket-listy meal.
Inspiring, life-affirming and certainly the best tasting menu I’ve ever eaten. Maybe even the best menu full stop.
54 St Stephen Street, Edinburgh, (0131-563 4470, www.averyedi.co.uk )
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