The Spence

A Banking Hall Repurposed for the Scottish Table

There is a particular category of Edinburgh dining room that earns its reputation before a single plate arrives: spaces where the architecture carries enough accumulated authority that the kitchen must rise to meet it rather than the other way around. The Spence occupies one of the more persuasive examples. Until 2017, 39 St Andrew Square was operational Royal Bank of Scotland premises, and the transformation into a restaurant has preserved rather than sanitised the original banking hall. Granite columns frame the room. Plasterwork detailing runs overhead. A central cupola draws natural light down into the space during the day, shifting the room's character completely between a lunch sitting and a candlelit evening service. This is a room that reads as civic and serious in the leading sense, and the cooking responds in kind.

Where The Spence Sits in Edinburgh's Dining Tier

Edinburgh's Modern British and modern Scottish scene has consolidated around a recognisable upper tier: The Kitchin, Martin Wishart, Timberyard, and AVERY all operate at the £££££ price point with tasting-menu formats and full Michelin recognition. The Spence occupies the tier immediately below, at £££, which in practical terms means it is accessible without advance commitment to a multi-course set menu while still operating within a kitchen that has earned Michelin Plate recognition in both 2024 and 2025. That Plate designation signals a kitchen producing cooking worth attention, positioned below the Star tier but above the broader crowd of casual-dining rooms that fill the New Town. Within the city's mid-to-upper bracket, The Spence competes alongside restaurants like eleanore, eòrna, and Spry, each of which approaches the Scottish larder from a distinct angle. At The Spence, the angle is accessibility: a menu that foregrounds familiar formats — roasts, seasonal British dishes, produce-led plates — without sacrificing ambition in the kitchen.

The Roast Ritual in a Grand Interior

Sunday roast culture in Britain functions as much as a social contract as a culinary format. The communal table, the carved joint, the argument over Yorkshire pudding ratios: these are inherited behaviours as much as dining choices, and the spaces that execute the ritual well understand that the room must earn the occasion. In this respect, The Spence has structural advantages that most Edinburgh dining rooms lack. A converted banking hall, with the scale and solemnity that implies, translates into exactly the kind of setting where a long Sunday lunch at a well-set table makes sense. The grandeur is not incongruous; it is appropriate. The Scottish larder emphasis means the sourcing logic behind a Sunday joint follows a short, coherent line from producer to plate, which matters in a city where the country's leading beef, lamb, and game are within close geographic reach.

Across the broader Modern British canon, roast execution is a reliable measure of kitchen discipline. Restaurants like Hand and Flowers in Marlow and The Fat Duck in Bray approach British comfort formats from opposite ends of the technical spectrum; what they share is a refusal to treat familiar dishes as an excuse for reduced effort. The Spence's Michelin recognition suggests a kitchen with similar discipline applied to an accessible format.

Scottish Larder Focus and Presentation

Modern British cooking in Scotland operates with a specific advantage: proximity to some of the country's most distinctive produce. Highland beef, hand-dived scallops, wild game, and coastal fish all reach Edinburgh kitchens with minimal transit time. The question for any restaurant at The Spence's price point is how that produce is handled once inside. Michelin's Plate recognition specifically cites the kitchen's attention to presentation alongside its Scottish larder focus, which points to a team aware that accessible menus do not require careless plating. This is a middle path that requires more care than either tasting-menu abstraction or pub-format honesty, and the 4.5 Google rating across 402 reviews suggests the kitchen is walking it with some consistency.

For context within the national scene, comparable Scottish larder-led Modern British kitchens at the Plate and Star level include Skua and The Broughton. Further afield, the genre's leading figures , L'Enclume in Cartmel, Moor Hall in Aughton, CORE by Clare Smyth in London , represent the ceiling of ambition in this format. The Spence is not competing at that level, nor is it trying to. Its target is a well-executed, larder-led dining experience in a room that holds its own against the grandest in the city, priced to allow a second visit rather than a single occasion.

The Room as Part of the Experience

Dining rooms converted from civic or financial buildings carry a particular kind of weight in British cities. The original function , public trust, institutional solemnity , translates into interiors built to impress in ways that purpose-built restaurants rarely match on budget. Edinburgh has several of these conversions, but the RBS banking hall on St Andrew Square represents the upper end of the category: the cupola alone, which channels natural light directly into the centre of the room, is an architectural feature that changes how the space reads at different times of day. Lunch in that light is a different meal from dinner under lower, warmer illumination. Both are worth considering depending on what the occasion demands. For the The Ritz Restaurant in London comparison that sometimes gets made about grand-room dining in Britain, the scale here is more intimate, the atmosphere less ceremonial , closer to civic than courtly.

Planning a Visit

The Spence is located at 39 St Andrew Square in Edinburgh's New Town, a short walk from Waverley station and within easy reach of the city's main hotel cluster. St Andrew Square is a central reference point rather than an outlying destination, which means combining a visit with other New Town stops requires minimal planning. At the £££ price point, this is positioned as a special-occasion local or a serious option for visitors who want a meaningful room without the commitment of a tasting-menu format. Given the Google rating and Michelin recognition, booking ahead is advisable , particularly for Sunday lunch, when the roast format draws a reliable crowd and the room fills with the kind of long, unhurried service that the space deserves. For anyone building a wider Edinburgh itinerary, the full guides to the city's restaurants, bars, hotels, and experiences are available: Our full Edinburgh restaurants guide, Our full Edinburgh bars guide, Our full Edinburgh hotels guide, Our full Edinburgh wineries guide, and Our full Edinburgh experiences guide.