The Booking Office Pub

Edinburgh is a beautiful, spectacular city. Everyone who’s been there knows what I’m talking about.

In this post I’d like to give you a small piece of advice as where to eat a proper breakfast, without ruining your wallet. The answer can be surprisingly simple, but nevertheless it is a delicious option to eat an energetic meal right before a day full of walking tours up and down the Edinburgh old and new city.

One can often avoid eating at a train station, thinking the places are overpriced and not the best quality. Sometimes it is true, sometimes it is not. However, The Booking Office by the Waverley train station in Edinburgh is something worth consideration.

It is a very central and easy to find pub by J D Wetherspoon, which makes it a perfect starting point for your tours around Edinburgh’s old or new city. Then,it is fairly big, but quite crowded. Which means there is just enough seats for one to be able to find a table, but you can be sure that they have a proper turnover, which means the food should be fresh. Then, it is reasonably, if not very, cheap as for Edinburgh.

There is a trick to watch out for, though. Some dishes have a beverage like coffee, breakfast tea, or hot milk included in the price, others don’t. In fact, the biggest and the most popular, mainly variations of traditional full breakfast, are the ones that go without a drink. It means that you have to pay extra £2.50 for something hot in a mug. The good news is, no matter which option you take refills are unlimited.

We decided to have a breakfast wrap. scrambled egg on toast with bacon and avocado, and a nice Scottish accent: poached egg on haggis, served on English muffin and hollandaise sauce. Even though the poached eggs were overdone, I still appreciated the opportunity to enjoy a breakfast dish not available anywhere outside of Scotland. When it comes to the breakfast wrap it was quite nice, with bacon, a sausage, and a hashbrown. It was tasty, but we missed baked beans at least as a side, so the whole thing wouldn’t be this dry. On the other hand, ketchup does a good job, and if you like fried tastes it is definitely a choice for you. If you are a fan of authentic British tastes, then you should definitely add a bit of the famous HP brown sauce. The scrambled eggs are made of three eggs, served on two big slices of bread, so it’s also a filling option.  You can order a half of avocado and a slice of bacon extra, they cost 70p each.

Actually, when it comes to prices The Booking Office is a really nice surprise. Our breakfast cost us  £15.46 for three, with unlimited Lavazza Coffee and Tetley tea. Which is a very good price for a breakfast and a drink for three people. If one fancies more a traditional full breakfast, either bigger, smaller or a vegetarian option then it will be a cost of around  £8, which is a slightly smaller price than the Edinburgh average. But to be honest, one can really fill the hole with the options I mentioned, and this price is unbeaten as for my experience in the capital of Scotland.

So if you’re looking for a good price to value spot right in the heart of Edinburgh I totally recommend popping into The Booking Office by the Waverley station.