Wildest Drams

Such a great dinner experience! Right on the Royal Mile, a menu rife with delicious game dishes!
I wanted to give Wildest Drams 5 stars, but had to go with 4. Read as more like a 4.5!
I had an appetizer of the Scottish Cured Meats and shared an entrée of the Venison Haunch. The meat plate was FANTASTIC, with the venison chorizo being the star of the show. I recommend this starter to anyone! The Venison Haunch was alright — I learned that I do not have a taste for venison when it is quite so rare. Had it been more towards medium, I might have enjoyed it better. The creamed cabbage + bacon that came on the side, however, was to die for! I inhaled it like mad!
Overall, I really enjoyed the food. I’d definitely be interested in trying some of the other options on the menu. The drop from 5 to 4 stars is due to the cooking of the haunch (maybe give the diner an option?) as well as the incredibly uncomfortable seating. A wooden bench with no back on it gets to you after a while, especially when you’ve been walking around Edinburgh all day. Small downsides, great overall!

Excellent whiskey list, and very friendly service. A great spot to grab a drink in a cozy, underground lounge.

Really nice place to get beer, whiskey, and wild game. We got the rabbit stew with some nice dark local brews. The stew was amazing. It had a lot of cream and mushrooms. Very tasty.

5 stars for food & service, 3 stars for ambiance. If the restaurant carried the casual warmth of the downstairs bar to the upstairs dining it would be perfect.
For starters we had the venison haggis and wild game charcuterie plate. Both were phenomenal, fresh, not gamey. Mains were the veal bolognese and bangers & mash– again fresh and well portioned. For the first 2 courses we enjoyed an Alba and Honeybee Saison. Dessert was a surprising treat. Can’t remember the name but it was a wheat beer ice cream, whiskey butterscotch sauce and stout chocolate cakebread — delish. Paired with a whiskey for me and mead for the hubby.
Can be hard to find with a small door marking the entrance of the steeply decending steps. If you can handle the stairs, don’t miss this wild gem.

The food is ridiculously fresh and inventive, a twist on traditional Scottish fare and game meats. So fresh, in fact, that there lies a caution at the bottom of the menu to be mindful of the rare but potentially remaining odd bits of bone fragment or shot. These critters were caught, in gratitude, sometime this morning.
Excellent beer & whisky selection, and the bartenders’ suggestions were on point. I understand from a local whisky shop owner (Jeffrey Street whisky & cigar shop specifically, a MUST visit) that Wildest Dram has one of the best curated and most affordable whisky collections in the area.
For dinner, we enjoyed the venison bolognese and the stout-​cured bangers and mash with some beautifully bright summer vegetables. Everything was fantastic!

An absolute gem in Edinburgh. A restaurant and cellar bar on the Royal Mile, it’s a combination of modern Scottish cuisine featuring dishes such as venison haggis and buffalo burgers. Great staff with top knowledge of the food being served and a real excitement of the whiskies being poured. As close to perfect as it gets.

This restaurant is really great in theory, but poorly executed. I really struggled between 2 and 3 stars for this place, but ultimately decided on 2. Our reservation was for New Years Eve. When we arrived, our table wasn’t ready yet so we were provided a seat at the bar and took a look at the drink menu while waiting. They offered to allow us to order and our drinks would be served at our table upstairs, but we decided to wait. We eventually worked our way upstairs, and the dining room was quite small with about 7 tables in total.
I decided to order the Pork Belly with black pudding mash, and my husband went with the Water Buffalo roast. We also both started with the Parsnip soup and ordered a bottle of wine. When our server brought our wine out, he set it down with two glasses and we were left to open it by ourselves. I mean, it was a screw top bottle, but I’ve never had to open my own bottle of wine AND pour the first glass in a restaurant EVER.
The soup it’s self was quite good, not much else to say about, it was soup, ha ha. The pork belly its self was REALLY good, especially with the apple and cinnamon sauce it was served with. However, everything from there went down hill. The vegetables didn’t have much flavour, they just tasted like boiled vegetables. The black pudding mash also didn’t have much flavour, they just tasted like dry mashed potatoes. I thought they needed more salt and pepper (which in my defense, I NEVER put on food in restaurants) but there was no salt or pepper on the table. My husband roast tasted like any normal roast. There wasn’t anything necessarily wrong with it, it just tasted like a roast you’d get in any pub. His vegetables were much like mine, but his roasted potato was quite good. Especially in the gravy served with the roast.
At the end we decided to order a couple whiskeys as our dessert before heading off to celebrate new years properly. You have to pay for your meal downstairs, which I thought was a bit odd, but oh well. The service that night was particularly slow. Which surprised me given that there were 7 tables (only 6 of which were sat) and there were 2 servers.
All in all, this restaurant really has the potential do and be something really special. But instead, the food is more like something you’d get in a basic gastropub.

Came in here shortly after it opened and had a good night.
Great range of beers and they also had a couple of gluten free options which is a bonus. Bar had a few visitors in it which is always good.
Food options good — a bit on the pricey side but my fish with crab was beautifully cooked and savoured. Dining area was quiet and quite sparsely decorated — think the place needs time to settle into itself as it was a bit lacking in atmosphere.
Probably more of a 3.5 rather than a 4* — not my first option for dinner again in the area but an ok option if I did end up here.

Amazing experience start to finish. We loved the leek and wild mushroom soup and goat cheese with beets. Very good beer selection. My wife had chicken with morels, and I had sea bass, which may have been the best piece of fish I have ever eaten. Extremely impressed by the freshness and quality of the food – doubt we will be able to walk in without reservations the next time we’re in Edinburgh!

Recently opened on the Royal Mile, Wildest Drams looks to pair locally sourced game dishes with a selection of craft beers. They have a good selection of malts, too. I visited during a working lunch so can’t attest to how well the beers work, but the food was of impressively good quality, with a particularly tasty game pie.
So overall, we said: «Wildest Drams made a very pleasing first impression. Both courses were delivered to a very high standard. I look forward to visiting again and trying their beer matching selections. I would recommend you do likewise at your earliest convenient opportunity.»