Piatto Verde

Bellissimo! Don’t let this tiny restaurant fool you, it can definitely pack in some big flavours!
Our friends recommended Piatto Verde to us one Friday night. Italian is not my first choice of restaurant but they told me how amazing this place is so we decided to give it a go.
We were warmly greeted as they accommodated our party of five. This place is not showy at all and the ambiance is homely and relaxed. It is tiny though with about eight tables, this all adds to the authentic Italian charm. And after a few carafes of the house red you feel like you’re at an old friends for dinner!
The menu consists of Italian classics with a great selection of starters, pizzas and pastas. I went for the squid to start and a gluten-​free pasta dish for my main. The squid was well cooked and the sauce delicious. My pasta was amazing! The simple sauce of mushrooms, pesto and cream was beautifully seasoned — proper comfort food. We greedily went for dessert, the profiteroles. UNBELIEVABLE! Huge and obviously homemade, instead of a chocolate sauce they were coated in a chocolate mousse. Delicious!
Coming in at just over £20 for a 3-​course meal and wine I will definitely be paying Piatto Verde another visit. Even if it is just for the profiteroles!
Cheers, Amy

Piatto Verde is, without a doubt, the best Italian restaurant in town.
It’s a tiny little place tucked away on the edge of Fountain Bridge that really doesn’t look much from the outside. In fact, I had walked past it many, many times before I even realised it was there.
The inside is small and cosy, with only half a dozen tables or so. The décor is not too fancy but just enough that it seems very authentic and has a lot of heart. You know immediately that you’re not in some sterile chain restaurant.
There appears to only be one full-​time chef («Massimo», who must perform miracles to cook all the dishes to order by himself), and one full time waitress (a lady who is more Italian than Silvio Berlusconi and will greet you in loud bursts of flamboyant half-​Italian, half-​English). The ambiance created by these two characters loudly calling to each other in their native ways is truly charming.
Sit yourself down, order a carafe of the very fairly priced and dangerously drinkable house plonk and soak it all in.
The menu in Piatto Verde covers a very good selection of different pastas, risottos and pizzas as well as some great antipasti. There are plenty of those classic Italian meats, but also a very good selection of veggie options. Everything is made to order, so customisations are an option if you want a tweak on something.
Their pasta dishes are absolutely divine. Their sauces are rich and flavourful and the ingredients always taste absolutely fresh and top-​notch. In Piatto Verde you very much get the sense that you’re dealing with a chef who absolutely knows what he’s doing when it comes to handling Italian flavours and combinations.
The pizzas are amazingly good, too. Normally I don’t expect much from restaurants that do pizzas as a side-​line rather than a focus, but Piatto Verde could be running a pizzeria alone, such is the tastiness of their circular delights. Try the calzones, too! They’re outstanding!
Finally, do yourself a favour and get the god damn profiteroles. Just do it. Your life will never be the same afterwards.
This restaurant really has it all: absolutely fantastic, authentic food; really great service; a broad and well thought-​out menu; very reasonable prices; and Italian charm by the bucket-​load. Book ahead!

Did I just find my go-​to Italian joint? Oh boy oh boy, I think that I did!
I’ve walked past Piatto Verde at least a half a million times before. If you live in the area, it’s easy to bypass the rows of kebab shops and small ambiguous food joints as «meh.» One night in particular we walked past PV, peered inside, and said, «Nah. It’s so small!»
Lucky for me I didn’t let that stop me in the end! With some friends in tow and a reservation booked in advance (you definitely want to do this on evenings, because did I mention how wee it is?), we marched in and were promptly seated. P.V. itself is cozy and shabby in the sort of mismatched, cozy, rather charming way only a place that doesn’t take itself too seriously can accomplish. It has about four, maybe five tables, tops, but one of them could seat quite a few, so if you have a group you could perhaps squeeze 8 or so inside (there were also some chillens runnin’ round, so there’s that!).
After being seated we perused the surprisingly extensive menu – any place that has more than one standard vegetarian main to try totally gets points in my book, and my other half and I were hard pressed to choose just which one we wanted to try. A fairly priced and solid carafe of house red wine was purchased, starters and mains were ordered, and the rest is history. Our server was around just enough to be thorough, just friendly enough to seem genuine, and also hollered in Italian to her buddies in the back several times, something that I think added to the authenticity of the place. ;)
And the FOOD. If you’re expecting something incredo-​fancy, this is not your joint. But if you want the kind of creamy Italian goodness you can’t quite ever manage to cook for yourself, this is your guy. I had a mushroom tortelloni main, and I promptly devoured it. My husband’s calzone was enormous! Not only that, but our starters – olives for our friends, and for us mixed platters of mozzarella and tomatoes and the like – were simple and lovely.
But I think what really sealed the deal for me was, as another Unilocaler has mentioned, the profiteroles. I made the mistake of ordering the perfectly adequate tiramisu, whereas my husband got the profiterole. After one bite I was hulking out with envy (he was nice enough to trade me one for some tiramisu, or I would have thrown myself on the ground and had a profiterole-​less tantrum). DAMN were those things delicious. I’ve never actually had a profiterole before, but I reckon these would be tough boots to fill in the future.
Summary: a lovely joint if you’re looking for a casual, delicious evening (or lunch) meal at a surprisingly reasonable price! I’m absolutely going to return in the future. And you’ll probably see me stuffing my gob with profiteroles.

I was so close into giving this place a 5-​stars review after my first visit: arrived early, table for two, red wine in a carafe, friendly waitress, extremely tasty food, great ambience, like a little Italian place popped out from an old movie kind-​of-​thing, and with a L-​E-​G-​E-​N-​D-​A-​R-​Y profiterole for farewell…
And after a few days from that great night, I was looking for good food around 20:15. It is a small place, neighbourhood style, so I imagined it won’t stay late open during the week.
So I asked what time do they stop serving. The waitress kindly confirmed to us with the owner/​chef that last orders are at 20:30, so I reply we’ll be back in 5 – 10 minutes, please don’t close, while smiling! :-)
We returned back less than 10 minutes later, however the owner/​chef this time replied (through the waitress) that the kitchen had been cleaned up and they only take orders for pizza.
Really? I mean… REALLY??? I did prefer the take-​away, so we ordered a calzone pizza, which, to his credit, was good, but it felt a bit disappointing…
I will certainly think twice before going there again…

Great food. the restaruant is small but has a great atmosphere and the price is very reasonable. Definately one of my favourite places to eat. :)

It’s a little bit out of the way, and has an exterior that doesn’t entirely inspire confidence, but Piatto Verde sits alongside Domenico’s on the podium of the finest Italian restaurants in Edinburgh. The service is superb and the dishes are high quality. The simple message is: GO, and go soon!
Overall, we said: «The only real problem I see with this place is that it is not nearer to where I live, though, the next time I am in need of a good Italian fix and find myself on this side of town instead of near Domenico’s, I’ll go here, no question.»

The best mussels ever, and great pastas and pizzas. my husbands favourite is the steak in Diablo sauce. friendly staff and great atmosphere nice selection of wines this is my favourite italian restaurant

Piatto Verde is great cheap and cheerful traditional Italian banter, in an unpretentious atmosphere, ideal, in my opinion, if there’s a big gang of you wanting to go on a night out, but you want to pretend to be at least a little bit civilised at the beginning. There’s nothing better than a good dose of pizza or pasta to line your stomach before an alcohol endurance marathon (i.e. an average night out in Scotland), and you’ve got a chance of making it until 3am if you take the time to eat beforehand.
I came here with a big group of friends before what was inevitably going to turn into a rum catalysed dance session (or embarrassment), and we got big amounts of house wine, and a starter and main, for much less than any of the city centre Italians. Piatto Verde is near the Fountain Park complex, so slightly more out of the way, but really only a short walk from the west end, and it’s worth it for the cash savings. The pasta dish I went for was really tasty, and generously proportioned. The restaurant space is definitely cosy though, so you’ll need to book ahead if you’re planning on pitching up with a big group.