Fhior Edinburgh - modern restaurant with beautiful food

Fhior Edinburgh was one of the restaurants we tried on our recent visit to the capital city of Scotland UK. According to their website, Fhior is an adaptation of the word for ‘true’ in Gaelic. It opened in June 2018. There are not many Edinburgh restaurants with Michelin-stars. The last time I checked there are only two one-star restaurants. Fhior Edinburgh is not one of them but it shows up quite often when we searched for the best restaurants in Edinburgh.

Fhior restaurant is located in the “New Town” side of Edinburgh. It is in a quiet part of the city, away from the touristy parts but still within walking distance away from the main thoroughfare, the Royal Mile. The building looks traditional but the interior of the restaurant is modern Scandinavian in style. Simple and neat are words that come to mind.

Lunch at Fhior Edinburgh

Unlike many eateries which offer a set lunch menu, Fhior offers an ala carte menu instead. It is list of small plate items that cost £10 or less each. The menu is available online. Here is a picture of the wines by the glass selection.

We began our lunch at Fhior with some bread with butter and salt. A simple and nice start.

The oysters (£2 each) were amazing. Fresh and accompanied by some seasoning that enhanced their natural tastes and looks. With hindsight, we should have eaten more of these as they were the best oysters we had eaten in a while. But we try to restrain ourselves when it comes to raw food when we are travelling. Just in case.

Fhior Edinburgh Oysters — Oysters at Fhior Restaurant

The trout dish (£6.50) certainly did not look like fish. It looked like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. The portion was small but the taste was refreshingly good.

The crispy pig ears (£3) was our least enjoyed dish that day. We could overlook the hairs still standing on the ears but were unable to overcome the hardness of this crispy snack. They had been cooked till extremely dry and hard. We left most of it untouched.

Our final two dishes had some resemblance to Asian dishes. The squid with pork ((£9) was prepared using delicate pieces of squid and some dried pork skin. The latter is often seen in Chinese dishes. Leek with mussels (£7.50) had pieces of leek which reminded me of the auspicious dishes for Chinese New Year. There were a precious few mussels in these dish. They were sweet and delightful.

Overall, the quality of food at Fhior Edinburgh was very high. Presentation was also top-notch. These dishes will not look out of place in more fancy restaurants with the M stars. The portions were very small, at least we were sure of not exceeding our calorie count for lunch.