Stunning location superb hospitality & excellent experience
We visited The Whiski rooms on Sat 08th Nov 2025 as I had a Cheese & Whisky tasting voucher as a birthday present and we decided to make more out of it by having lunch before the tasting.
I confess to having been slightly apprehensive that given the location it would turn out to be a complete “tourist trap venue”, the very opposite was the case, an excellent welcome, service, food and experience from start to finish with reasonable prices given the very central location.
The staff are very efficient with greetings and welcoming as you enter, no hanging around looking for tables etc.
The ambience is superb with stunningly tasteful décor on a whisky theme of old advertising posters etc.our table was good for people watching and gave a good view over Princes St and the Xmas set up.
For lunch we both had the Chicken & Avocado sandwich, this was truly excellent a good sized, very light and fluffy Ciabatta with plenty of nicely warm juicy grilled Chicken, Avocado slices and mayonnaise and a generous portion of fresh green leaves on the side. Our side of chips was freshly made, crisp on the outside and fluffy indoors – definitely moreish!
Drinks – we restrained ourselves to fresh orange and lemonade with a whisky/wine tasting to look forward to.
The portions and settings we saw heading for other diners looked generous and very well presented.
The tasting itself was an exquisite example of hospitality, professionalism and attention to detail. We really appreciated the alternative of arranging to provide wines for my wife who doesn’t do whisky, these complimented the cheeses beautifully, full marks to the chap who made the selections. We did call in beforehand and discuss if this could be done.
This was an experience to remember and savour and that goes for the cheeses as well, the portions of which were not mean.
The four cheeses, all sourced from IJ Mellis consisted of Cheddar, Isle of Mull Cheddar, Connage and Strathearn Blue, these were beautifully fresh, served at spot on room temperature and were good sized portions.
They were paired, in order, with Glencadam (very light), my favourite Tomatin (rich sherry notes), Glenallachie (Robust!), and the Kilchoman which being islay was fairly Iodine on the nose but only very slightly on tasting and just on my tolerance.
They did a superb job on the wines, a Hungarian? Viognier, Chardonnay, Pinot and lastly a Hungarian Tokai dessert wine which we are definitely going to try and track down, again these worked perfectly with the cheeses subtle and robust in turn and beautifully balanced for flavour.
Eleven out of ten to Becky, three days into the job and on her first tasting who did an excellent job of describing the cheeses and whiskies and is an absolute walking encyclopaedia of history and knowledge on the distilleries the whiskies are from, the stills and the production and science of whisky, all presented in a relaxed friendly, informative and informal way with no snobbery or feeling of being intimidated if you were unsure or weren’t a connoisseur.
Thoroughly recommended as a venue just for food or for a tasting – we now have an excellent additional venue to go to with visitors.
