Avery - Michelin-starred restaurant in Edinburgh

Rodney Wages

Avery is a Michelin-starred restaurant in Stockbridge, Edinburgh, celebrated for its bold, creative tasting menus that fuse Asia-influenced Californian cuisine with the best of Scottish produce. It’s a singular dining experience—refined, intimate, and quietly theatrical.

Chef Rodney Wages relocated his acclaimed San Francisco restaurant to Edinburgh after falling hard for the city. “I started in London and worked my way up the country,” he tells me. “When I got to Edinburgh, it just felt right.” That sense of rightness permeates every detail of Avery, from the moody black-painted walls (formerly The Stockbridge Restaurant) to the precision of each plate.

There’s a clear focus on the tasting menu here—and who doesn’t love a tasting menu now and then, especially when it’s paired with Krug Champagne? On the night I visited, the bubbles flowed and the surprises kept coming.

A week later, what lingers is the memory of a Cumbrae oyster, served with fermented pineapple and chilli. Sweet, hot, briny—an early sign of Wages’ gastronomic wizardry. It arrives in a large, ceramic bowl with wavy edges evoking the sea and setting the tone for the sensory theatre ahead. At Avery, even the cutlery plays a role in the performance.

Tasting menu

Another standout: sweet potato pancakes with maple and caviar. High-end sweet-and-salty bliss. A dish that shouldn’t work but absolutely does.

Without listing every dish I can tell you that Wages’ cooking is a masterclass in imaginative composition. Think ingredients that include venison, miso, chocolate, grapefruit, wild berries, eel, beetroot, bluefin tuna. Sometimes the pairings are intuitive; other times, they’re puzzles you’re happy to solve. The only chef I can compare him to is the late, much-missed Paul Kitching—another culinary poet who made Edinburgh his canvas.

When Wages personally delivers a plate of Sika deer to our table, I ask him where his ideas begin. “They’re all flavour and produce driven,” he says. That ethos shows. No dish repeats. No course feels safe. This is Michelin-starred dining in Edinburgh that’s alive with risk and reward.

With neighbours like Eòrna and Skua , Moss and Cardinal Stockbridge is fast becoming a destination for serious food lovers. But Avery brings something different: a kind of quiet audacity. We’re lucky to have Rodney Wages in the mix.

And Krug? Like Wages, celebrates individuality. Each base wine is vinified separately in small oak barrels, its character preserved before being composed—like a symphony—into the final cuvée. Over 120 wines from more than a decade of harvests go into each bottle of Krug Grande Cuvée. It’s layered, expressive, and never the same twice. No wonder it felt so at home alongside those sweet potato pancakes.

Avery - 54 St Stephen Street, Stockbridge, Edinburgh, EH3 5AL -  +44 131 563 4470

Opening Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM. Closed Sunday and Monday.