Sometimes a fry up is exactly what the doctor ordered. This is a super little no frills, no fuss, ‘clean as your Grannie’s kitchen,’ café on Leven Street. Large mugs of builder’s tea for less than the cost of your bus ticket. Try a ‘tattie scone’ for the full Scottish breakfast experience.

27 Leven Street, West End , Edinburgh EH3 9LH
Google map: bit.ly/nWMZYO

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This little gem defies the scourge of the Royal Mile and is actually good. Genuinely friendly staff delight in serving you their latest fresh offerings.
Feel your hangover disappear with their delicious bacon roll, or enjoy a Scottish breakfast of smoked salmon and bagels.
Plenty of suitably de-toxing teas to go around.
Watch the crowds rush by along the Royal Mile from your own spot in the window. You really will wish it was always Sunday.

www.alwayssunday.co.uk
170 High Street, Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh EH1 1QS
+44(0)131 622 0667
Google map: bit.ly/oiHPDJ

* Rachel is our Been there local for Edinburgh. You can view her profile here: www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/articles/edinburgh-local-rachel-brown.jsp and follow her tips here: www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/travellers/RachelBrown

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The Elephant House is a gourmet tea and coffee shop nestled on George IV Bridge in the heart of historical Edinburgh. Opening at 8am everyday of the week, treat yourself to every tea, coffee and hot milk blend imaginable from your regular Espresso to the exotic 'Banana Bounty'. Not only can you enjoy a unique tea and coffee experience but you can indulge yourself in the variety of cakes and bagels on offer. The cafe's central location makes it ideal to stop by for locals and travellers alike.

21 George IV Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 1EN
+44(0)131 220 5355
www.elephanthouse.biz/
Google map: bit.ly/gzMSy0

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A beautiful cafe with incredible food. Off the beaten track slightly, in the heart of Marchmont, so you'll likely avoid swarms of festival-goers, but popular with the locals so it will be fairly busy nonetheless.
Booking is sensible on weekends for brunch, when they serve a classic menu cooked to perfection. Their Full Scottish Breakfast - an essential experience when visiting Edinburgh - is almost definitely the finest in the city. Sandwiches and proper mains available too. All dishes at reasonable prices and guaranteed to delight.

146 Marchmont Road, +44 (0)131 446 9873
www.toastedinburgh.co.uk/Brunch.html
Google map: bit.ly/8Y7rRn

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Breakfast. Forget those spartan breakfasts with a few dodgy rolls and luke-warm coffee. This was it. Everything for the cosmopolitan traveller, including as near to an Ulster fry as you’ll ever get.

Are your taste buds beginning to tremble at the thought of such seductive fare? Is the saliva flowing? The sheer joy of savouring the smell from a plate with rashers of succulent shavings of bacon beside plump juicy sausages and carefully fried eggs. This, complemented with those hallmarks of excellence, soda bread and potato bread, and black pudding and grilled tomato cooked properly, with the tomato beginning to blacken and the pudding just on the verge of crisping. Which of us has not succumbed to temptation at some time?

And as for the philistines who claim that a fry does not fix a hangover… let them feel the soothing balm of such fodder on a morning when the hands shake and the pulsing head yearns for pity and even death is seen as a welcome release. When eternal promises to never again indulge in the demon drink are made. When even the Almighty is invoked in an effort to remove the awful consequences of over-indulgence. It is then that the magical restorative properties of the fry come into their own.

To witness such a miracle is to visit any early opening restaurant on a Saturday or Sunday morning when pathetic specimens of humanity, who, the previous night, ready to take on the world, now cringe at the sound of a closing door. The secret is to find The Right Place. And here it was. In the breakfast room of the St James Thistle.

St James Centre, Edinburgh;
tel: 0131 556 0111

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