itchycoo

Really disappointing afternoon tea. Between two people we had 9 stale white bread sandwiches (cheese and pickle, ham and tomato, salmon) two dry tasteless supermarket style cupcakes, 2 tasty banoffee pies, two sticky ginger cakes and 2 mini macarons. Oh and some clotted cream and jam for the scones we didn’t have. I think we were given extra sandwiches because of this but really there’s only so much stale bread u can eat! Both our ‘hot’ drinks were cool.
Even at our groupon voucher price it was a poor show

Itchycoo is a restaurant bar with a new food menu that focuses on fresh local produce. We started with deep-​fried softshell crab and a mixed salad (featuring dried cranberries, walnuts, and blue cheese). For mains (which we both particularly enjoyed) it was pan fried sea bass and rump of lamb. Dessert was a dark chocolate tartlet and something called «munch» (which turned out to be many little tasty desserty things on a plate).
Many items on the menu can be ordered as either main or starter portions, which I thought was a lovely idea. I ended up having 2 starter-​sized portions (for both courses), and it was more than enough to fill me up.
Oh, and they have a lot of cocktails. The cocktails, which are well-​done classics for the most part, are about average-​priced for the city. I’ve tried several, and I think the raspberry mojito is my favorite so far.
Service was extremely friendly and knowledgeable, if a tad slow at times.
Disappointments:
1) None of the vegetarian mains looked particularly exciting (though to be fair, I haven’t tried them — perhaps they are absolutely thrilling to eat).
2) No local beers on tap. Would love to see these added someday — I could definitely see us spending a sunny afternoon at one of their outdoor tables on the Royal Mile sipping beer and people-​watching.

I visited Itchycoo this afternoon with the lovely Julie G and we had a lovely afternoon, so much so that we stayed and chatted in the lounge for several hours whilst savouring our afternoon tea and cocktails. I love the tradition of afternoon tea, and it is always fantastic to indulge in an afternoon of eating sandwiches, scones, and cakes. Itchycoo has taken the afternoon tea to a new level by letting you bypass the actual tea (or coffee) and skipping directly on to the cocktails. This is a fantastic idea (hey, if you’re going for a decadent afternoon filled with cake, why not go all the way and get a cocktail, too!).
Itchycoo’s cocktail list was lovely, and I couldn’t decide between the Death by Chocolate or the Espresso Martini. The waiter helped me decide on the Death by Chocolate cocktail — it was fabulous, rich and decadent and definitely fit what I was looking for!
After the cocktails arrived, our cake tower was paraded out to us. It was a beautiful array and selection. I think it’s a general feature that the sandwiches at an afternoon tea are usually a let-​down. The vegetarian versions we had were fine, but nothing stood out. We then moved on to the scone tier. The scones were tasty, but could have been a bit more fluffy and fresh. Itchycoo did very well with the cakes, though, which are always meant to steal the show anyway (let’s face it). We had a banoffee pie, a fruit pie, meringues and carrot cake. I liked them in that order, too, with the meringues and the carrot cake both being fabulous. I was a tad disappointed that there was nothing chocolate included in the cake range, but then again my Death by Chocolate cocktail helped make up for that!
We really enjoyed sitting by the lovely windows in the lounge rather than in the dark bar area. However, since we opted to sit farther away from the bar we were a bit neglected by service and had to ask three times for some tap water. However, that could have been because of the location we chose. Still, I wasn’t thrilled in the service because I had originally made the reservation for 3pm but then tried to move it later to 4pm but was told that they were completely booked out for afternoon that afternoon so weren’t able to let us come later. This was disappointing, especially because the whole time we were there it was extremely quiet with plenty of space at other tables, so they easily could have accommodated us an hour later. The online service was excellent, though, because the Radisson Bleu Edinburgh’s social media people are really on it and were excited to have us come (as they should be!).

This restaurant is part of the Radisson hotel, but doesn’t have the air of a bog-​standard hotel attachment. You can sit inside or, in summer, they have tables outside which is brilliant because you’re right on the Royal Mile, but on a nice wide part of it. The place has a modern feel, the menu is quite unusual in the sense that you order a number of small dishes (but not tapas, more with a nod in the Japanese direction). Tasty and delicious. However, the big surprise for me was that you can also have breakfast there (it doesn’t look like a breakfast place at all). They do all sorts of mean coffees and the croissants were fresh and French tasting. A very pleasant experience.