5 Best Restaurants in Aberdeen and the Northeast, Scotland

This artsy café-restaurant has an innovative menu, an atmospheric dining room with open kitchen, and covered outdoor seating. The menu features veggie options such as mushroom falafel, grilled halloumi with crushed walnuts, and barley fricassee, as well as lots of imaginative Middle Eastern-fusion meat and seafood choices. No matter what you order, local produce makes it tasty and fresh. The handsome restaurant is in a silvery granite building with exposed-stone walls, huge windows, and shiny black tables.

With light streaming through the large windows onto the wooden tables and rattan chairs, there is an airiness and freshness to this eatery. Fish landed just a few miles away on the Moray coast is a good bet, as are the long-aged steaks. Either way, be sure to finish with a seasonal fruit panna cotta: there's elderflower in June and raspberry and strawberry in July and August, all from the estate's walled gardens, which you can visit.

This elegant yet relaxed seafood restaurant can be found along a medieval lane next to St. Nicholas Kirk. Mains may include freshly caught sea trout, halibut, or hake served with imaginative accompaniments such as celeriac with seaweed. The sophisticated atmosphere of the dining room is enhanced with striking landscape photography and somber lighting. A gin bar serves craft distillations and cocktails.

This former coaching inn is exactly where you want to take nourishment after a bracing walk from Dunnottar Castle. Refurbishment has taken away much of the history, but wood paneling and rattan chairs make it comfortable, and huge new windows provide views of the harbor. The mixed grill is worth the splurge.