Capital Diners Show They Have a Huge Appetite for the Edinburgh Restaurant Festival

This year’s Edinburgh Restaurant Festival has been a huge hit amongst diners and restaurants with over 30 quality restaurants taking part and hundreds of diners whetting their appetite across the city. In its third year, the Festival which ran from 6-16 October, engaged a range of eateries under the theme of ‘try something new’ including Harvey Nichols, Cadiz, Veeno, The Pompadour by Galvin, Badger & Co, Chaophraya, Cup Tea Lounge and CAU who ran special events and promotions.

In addition to promotions within the restaurants themselves, two fresh initiatives took place to celebrate the third year of this popular Festival. The signature event ‘The Moveable Feast’, proved to be extremely popular – guests were taken on a culinary tour of restaurants around the city centre, with little surprises along the way.  Event tickets were snapped up within hours of going on sale and EdinEvents, part of Essential Edinburgh had to add an extra date to accommodate foodie lovers’ demand. Another popular part of the Festival was the ‘Let’s Do Lunch’ competition, a fun new social media challenge which involved a festival-branded table and chairs pop up in unexpected place around the city. City visitors were invited to post a picture of themselves at the table to be in with a chance of a free lunch from a selection of restaurants.

The Edinburgh Restaurant Festival website received just under 10,000 views from eager diners keen to try out some of the events and offers running across the 10-day culinary feast and some restaurants received more than 90 bookings during the Festival period. EdinEvents, part of Essential Edinburgh, teamed up for the first time with leading Scottish based restaurant reservation system, ResDiary who delivered a reservation website dedicated to the Festival and all participating restaurants – allowing users to easily discover and, more importantly, reserve their Edinburgh Restaurant Festival dining experience.

Roddy Smith, Chief Executive of Essential Edinburgh, the company behind EdinEvents commented:

“We are thrilled with the success of this year’s Edinburgh Restaurant Festival and we’ve had some fantastic feedback from diners and restaurateurs who took part. As one of the UK’s top dining destinations, eating out is an increasingly important part of Edinburgh’s economy and the Festival is a wonderful opportunity to showcase the diverse range and quality dining destinations on offer.”

Andrew Cuthbertson, Social Media Manager for Cadiz, was delighted with the Edinburgh Restaurant Festival:

“Events like these are rare, with the Moveable Feast we got to try something innovative and introduce a whole new group of people to Cadiz and we are so pleased with the success of the event. Collaborating with other businesses in the area gave us a great chance to connect with our fellow restaurants and provide something special and innovative for the Edinburgh dining community. We would absolutely do this event again!”

Marinel Scorer, Marketing & Outreach Manager at Chaophraya added:

“The Chaophraya Edinburgh team were absolutely delighted to have partnered with this year’s Edinburgh Restaurant Festival as it has been such an exciting and inspiring concept to encourage people to dine out in the Capital. With this year’s Festival theme focused on ‘try something new’, it was a wonderful opportunity for us to showcase the contemporary Thai cuisine delicacies we have on offer at Chaophraya, inspiring diners to enjoy the different styles and flavours of Thai cuisine. As well as our 30% discount on the A La Carte menu, we thoroughly enjoyed being part of The Moveable Feast event which brought diners here as part of a gastronomic tour of the city. Everyone really seemed to enjoy the experience and we’re sure we’ll be seeing some of those diners again! “