Valvona & Crolla Vincaffe

Do yourself a favour and try their café latte with the Tiramisu. I’ve only had this once and I hope the quality is always the same but I’d definitely return to have more. Don’t try their macarons — dry and crunchy, not worth it.

Very disappointed with the quality of service on Sunday 9 August. The waitresses were uninterested, they twice failed, when asked, to provide water for the table. Fifteen minutes after ordering food we were told that two of the options were not available and when our replacement orders did arrive the sausage topped pizza contained two small pieces of sausage on what was a warm (at best) pizza.
The beer was nice and they also have a great selection of wines but for the prices you are expected to pay the service was shocking. I did highlight my frustrations on the day but to say that none of the three people waiting on tables were interested, is an understatement.
We chose Valvona and Crolla based on its reputation and convenient location but I am unlikely to recommend it in the future. There are plenty of other café venues I the local area that are much better.
I am hugely disappointed with my experience, as were my three friends. You certainly expect at least courteous staff when paying so much and in such pleasant surroundings.

«We are probably out of Peroni»
That was the first thing said to us. Very quiet and it can’t decide if it’s a shop, bar or restaurant, but fails on all three accounts.

So Devine and relaxing. I’ve been many times. A truly wonderful place.
Chef made me a verde salad to die for. Lovely wine. And now, because I’m so content, I’m having a coffee.
Thankyou vin caffe for being here!

Nice enough place to come for a coffee or tea, plenty cakes, pastry’s & biscuits on offer and filled rolls ect. Breakfast rolls available and a limited lunch menu that will satisfy the hunger for a while. The restaurant area is a little rough in some areas and just need a good bleaching or deck scrubbing. Even though staff where polite and chatty and that goes a long way.

I also love a visit to Valvona & Crolla hVincaffe. I decided to take an old friend there that was visiting me and we had a lovely meal although the humous i ordered for a starter was surprisingly awful which is why i don’t give it 5 star and the service wasn’t as good as it usual is.

In terms of the food, V&C’s Vin Caffe is one of the better Italian places in the city. However, it’s not a place I’d recommend, as the atmosphere… well, it don’t got one. This is compounded by very mediocre service. It’s a shame to see excellent work from the kitchen being so undermined by such soulless front-​of-​house presentation.
Overall, we said: «I very much enjoyed my pizza at Valvona & Crolla. My fellow questers were delighted with their dishes, too. However, the ambience and the service were rather spiritless, so I’m not sure it’s a place to which I’ll be rushing back, any time soon. An Italian restaurant with such a stuffy and reserved atmosphere just isn’t my thing.»

Another day, another lunch date :)
This time the destination was Valvona & Crolla Vincaffe on Multrees Walk.
My friend and I walked in and as downstairs was busy, the waitress advised us to go upstairs instead. We were seated promptly and both of us chose the soup of the day which today happened to be tomato soup. Also ordered a basked of ‘pane casalingo’, which effectively was a few slices of white bread and a walnut bread. Nice enough.
The waitress was very friendly and told me all the daily specials they had on the menu — but it was soup time for me.
Tomato soup was lovely and creamy, with a dash of olive oil and basil on top. The soup came with more of the white soft bread. I devoured the whole plate in record time :)
This is a nice place to go for lunch, good quality food and friendly waiting staff.

Very nice lunch, very odd focaccia (more like pizza base), parma ham and fig starter delicious, rib eye beef extremely tasty. Good selection of cheese for dessert. Slightly tired looking, and if prices came down slightly might have more customers. Would be a four star pushing five but for the last comment.

I have a lot of love for Valvona & Crolla, the origianl Italian deli founded in the city around 1930 which is still there and trading the most delicious Italian food stuffs, and also expanded to a food court in Jenners, a café in Jenners, this VinCaffe in Multress Walk with restaurant upstairs, and their newest Angels with Bagpipes restaurant on the Mile. As a lot of people say, V&C’s are something of an Edinburgh Institution.
Their VinCaffe on Multress Walk is certainly their most swish and stylish. Its on Multress so that kind of goes without saying, opposite Harvey Nichs and with Links & Calvin Klein as Neighbours. They occupy quite a large amount of the outdoor space, so when I happened upon them with an hour to kill one very sunny afternoon, I pulled up an outdoor seat and soaked up the rare Edinburgh sunshine.
It’s a lovely café inside, with booths and chairs, and a few wee items to buy up the back. They have pastries, a few wee savoury items including breakfast sausage rolls (but we’re talking proper sausage on a focaccio roll, not the ‘Greggs Sausage roll’), mini-​pizza breads etc.
Had it not been 4pm I may have been tempted by one of their fizz cocktails too (the weather simply called for it). Instead I opted for a soda water with lime. For a simple drink, it was good enough that I remember it. Soda water saturated with fresh squeezd lime juice. No added sugar. Wow what a hit. But at the price (£2.95) you’d kind of expect that.
And here’s where the stickler is. It’s pricey. And whilst I’m all for paying upmarket prices for upmarket quality, and V&Cs are definitely focussed on quality, as a breakfast or lunchtime spot it’s just a little too much. A nice dinner, you can splash out on, but had I had a sandwich and soda water here it probably would have been around £10. Two coffees might come in at £7.50.
I’m usually not such a scrooge or a miser, but every time I go here and order without thinking then pay, afterwards my wallet feels a lot lighter and I have the surge of regret. Everything else about V&Cs is wonderful, and I do like them, and have never been stingy about buying good food really, but it’s just slightly too high to make it seem worthwhile.
As JD has said, the name of the café (wine-​coffee) is a yes please. And their pastries are delicious, their coffees a real kick-​start to the day, fresh squeezed OJ. All of it delicious. By all means come here to splash out. I think, having read Emily V’s review now too, I will need to update my review after trying the upstairs restaurant…
Oh as a note, they do provide free wifi but when I was here it didn’t work.

The first clue for me that I was going to like this place was really in the name.
VinCaffe… Wine Coffee, i mean these are already two of my favourite things so put that together and add sounds amazing cakes and baked goods and well lets be honest i was always going to be a happy man.
I went recently with a German friends who said she only had a few hours in Edinburgh so wanted to catch up and then be able to spend a fortune shopping.
This place provides all angles on this, after we had a coffee she wondered off like a kid in a candy shop while i relaxed and read the Sunday Times.
When she returned we had a spot of lunch, i had the Pesce sale e salsa, to you and I its the Italian take on fish and chips, just replace chips with cubed potato. Lovely dish and very good value. My friend had the pizza which also looked and smelled amazing.
So next time your spending a fortune on Multrees walk and are in need of some rest I recommend you stop in and see it for yourself.
p. s. if you just in for coffee have one of the twisty do-​nut type things!!!
Jd over and out!

I have had the pleasure of eating at the upstairs restaurant only once, several years ago, but I have not forgotten the experience.
It was not long after I returned from living in Italy as well, so my judgement of Italian food outside of Italy was primed and ready.
That far back I can’t remember exactly what I ate but remember being blown away by the food. I do distinctly remember having the most amazing affogato at the end of the meal, presented in a gorgeous way which allowed me to pour the espresso (and I think there was a type of liqueur as well) over the gelato/​ice cream, in order to limit melting.
I mentioned this once, and the man went out and bought me the V&C cookbook which has left me so baffled that it sits on my shelf virtually untouched to this day. Occasionally I leaf through it but there is just no way I can re-​create those recipes so on the shelf it remains.
More recently, the man and I had lunch and fancy juice at the downstairs café. We each ordered a panini and shared. The panini were gorgeous, though after dining upstairs I found the 50s-​ish décor a bit unexpected.

I’m a huge fan of Valvona & Crolla. I went to their flagship store on Elm Row and had lunch opposite Clarissa Dixon Wright (one of the two fat ladies) and it was incredible. The lunch, not sitting opposite her you understand. That was just a bit strange.
So I was expecting big things when I went to this place. How disappointed I was. We went inside to order coffees and the waiter was really short with us: «Sit outside and I will come to you.» Erm OK. He never came. We sat there for 20 minutes and eventually we just left.
It was really busy that day so I thought I’d give it another shot on a less busy day. The service was just as bad and the coffee was rubbish. And too expensive. I’m never going again. Stick to the real deal, or go somewhere else.

Two words: Pollo Saltimbocca
Seriously.
Forget the home-​made pasta, the pizzas, the panninis and the delicious sounding antipasta dishes with fresh buffalo mozzarella, pachino cherry tomatoes, salami and homemade bread and just order the polla saltimbocca. We’re talking deliciously moist chicken breast wrapped in crispy proscuitto and fragrant sage and pan-​fried to perfection. Served with seasonal greens and small roast potatoes, it’s heaven on a plate.

We decided to pull up a pew outside Valvona and Crolla on a particularly pleasant sunny afternoon in Edinburgh.
My Unilocal-​esque nature got the better of me and I popped inside to get the drinks, making my other half feel very ungentlemanly indeed. But needs must.
The food itself is mainly Italian, and all sounded delicious, although somewhat hard to pronounce for those of us who aren’t fluent in the lingo! We were only having coffee and a cake, and there was plenty to choose from. I chose a latte and my boyfriend had a classic cappuccino, but the cakes were the hardest part to choose, for sure. Since I was the one choosing, I opted for the lemon tart to share, which was absolutely gorgeous! One of the best desserts I have ever had, my only regret is I wish I had got one all to myself!
The bill racked up almost £10, which wasn’t incredibly cheap, but not overly expensive either, and the coffees were first class, made the way real authentic Italian coffee should be. Divine.

This is a real foodie sort of place in Edinburgh. They often have live music in the upstairs restaurant and always has a great atmosphere — but I suggest you book it if you want a meal!
It’s lovely to sit outside Valvona & Crolla on a nice day, or even on any odd day. The seats here are always scarce, and always looks inviting to see people sitting out here, on Edinburgh’s fanciest street.
I often come here to drink Bellini’s with friends — although I must admit they aren’t the best. In a place like this, you’re paying to be seen.
You can tell the food is good quality… but it’s wasted on lil olé me. I am not particularly fussy when it comes to food, but they serve French truffles and parfait of goat — give me a maccy d’s anyday.

Vin Caffe is a great shopping stop off for really good coffee and a quick bite to eat. If you’re looking for something more substantial for lunch or dinner, Vin Caffe also has a restaurant upstairs which serves some very yummy Italian food concoctions.
The café area inside is modern but traditionally Italian at the same time, so there’s a really good, homely feel about sitting here with delightful coffee scents in the air, and a selection of paninis and tasty looking cakes on offer. There are also lots of seats at the counter, so you can prop up the bar with your espresso Italian style.
The restaurant upstairs is classy looking and always busy with a mix of people, so there’s a really bustling atmosphere while you’re dining. The bread served here is amazing, as it’s baked in the restaurant’s own bakery, and the menu is made up of really fresh, quality ingredients, which after several samplings, I can confirm taste awesome. For a starter, I favour the Antipasto, followed by Pollo Saltimbocca, a pan-​fried chicken breast with proscuitto and sage, served with roasted potatoes.

Whenever my dad’s up in Edinbugh for work he always jokes about how we ‘mysteriously’ end up in here having a coffee or a glass of wine… I just seem to gravitate towards it it’s that good.
It’s named after the family that run this Edinburgh empire; they have a handful of other food & drink places dotted around the city, but this is definitely their best if you ask me.
I’ve never eaten in the formal sit-​down restaurant upstairs, I’ve just peeked in whilst on my way up to the loos — which, by the way are immaculate and always have lovely Molton Brown moisturiser for you to use after you’ve washed your hands. My mum always says you should judge a place by their loos and house wine, and this place definitely ticks the loo box.
On my first trip here, i couldn’t control my inner child and ordered one of their ice cream floats. I don’t care what anyone says, I’ll be ordering these in here until I’m so old I can no longer feed myself, it was that good. Think luxury italian chocolate and vanilla ice cream blended with oreos and topped up with Coke. Not great if you’re a dentist, but so worth the sugar content!!!
On my next visit I was feeling slightly less like a five year old, and so I ordered a glass of white wine. The second box in my mum’s theory can now be ticked off as well — it was ice cold for starters, and for once it actually tasted like the flowery descriptions that everywhere insists on writing under the name of it on the wine list.
Obviously, you have to eat something in here, otherwise it defeats half the prpose of coming somewhere so nice. The cakes are always changing around, but if they have caramel shortbread on display in the chill counter then you could do a lot worse than order that.

I love this café. Its located right next to Harvey Nicks and Louis Vuitton so it attracts the «ladies who lunch» and business men types. But it is oh so good.
It is part of Valvona and Crolla which is an Edinburgh institution. They have so many locations popping up around the city that you are bound to bump into one. The quality offered is fantastic. The coffee is delicious and my Granny always insists I bring her a back when I go to visit. The cakes. Oh the cakes! This place has the potential to make me very fat based purely on the desserts. The rest of the food is delicious also. Simple, but fresh and tasty. I had some sort of deep fried ball of rice and mozzarella, I couldn’t even begin to tell you the name because it was in Italian. But it was so yummy. As are the pizzas.
If your in the city centre and need some lunch, then this is the place to go.

I came here for lunch three times in a week — I’m definitely a fan… Although the space always seems to be overly crowded, the friendly waitstaff and the terrific food kept me coming back for more.
On my first visit I had the special of two appetizers and a glass of wine for 9.99, a terrific bargain. I got the mushrooms stuffed with capers and tomatoes and mozzarella, the grilled Queen Scallops, and a glass of white wine… I was still hungry and thirsty so I asked my waitress if I could get a second of the special, and I was given the okay — so I got the salumi assortment, the trio of crostini, and a glass of red wine.
On my second visit I got the calf’s liver (cooked medium-​rare) with mashed potatoes and sauteed onions, and a side of sauteed cabbage and pancetta, and a side of marinated fennel.
On my third visit I got the grilled Aberdeen Angus Ribeye Steak (cooked rare) with a salad of rocket and parmigiano reggiano, and for dessert I got the bread and butter pudding.
The food is simple and very well prepared — I really like this place, even though it’s proximity to Harvey Nichols makes it perhaps a bit too «posh» for some.