St Andrews feeds three populations that barely overlap: eight thousand students who need to eat cheaply, a golf trade that does not, and a steady flow of day visitors. The result is a town where you can spend a great deal on dinner or very little on lunch within a hundred metres, and both will be good.
The geography is simple, because the town is three parallel streets. Market Street and South Street hold most of the restaurants and cafés; North Street and the wynds have more; the golf end by the links has the hotel dining rooms; and East Sands has a beach hut with a cult following.
The Seafood Ristorante sits in a glass box on the Bruce Embankment above West Sands, with the beach and the bay on three sides — it is the best-sited restaurant in Fife and the cooking is up to the view. It is the place to book for an occasion.
The Tailend on Market Street is the fish and chip institution, doing both a restaurant and a takeaway, and it is the answer most locals give when asked where to eat fish.
Beyond the town, the East Neuk is the real seafood country: Anstruther, fourteen kilometres south, has a fish bar with a national reputation and a queue to match, and the harbours at Pittenweem, St Monans and Crail all land shellfish. Crail’s harbour shack sells lobster and crab straight off the boats in season.
The Bridge at Rusacks, on Pilmour Links overlooking the eighteenth of the Old Course, and the dining rooms at the Old Course Hotel and the Fairmont are the golf-trade restaurants — smart, expensive and with the best views in the town.
The Dunvegan, a small hotel bar by the links, is the golfers’ pub: walls covered in photographs, a great deal of conversation about the Old Course, and open to anyone.
Little Italy on Logies Lane is the long-standing Italian and is consistently busy. St Andrews Shawarma House on South Street does Middle Eastern food and is one of the highest-rated places in the town — a good illustration of what a student population does for a restaurant scene.
Market Street and South Street between them carry Indian, Thai, Turkish, Italian and modern Scottish cooking, plus a great many cafés, and the standard is high because the competition is constant.
It deserves a paragraph. A beach hut at East Sands selling toasted cheese sandwiches, which sounds unpromising and is in fact one of the best-loved things in St Andrews. There is usually a queue. Take it down to the beach.
The wynds and side streets are full of them, and prices are held down by the student market. Coffee is taken seriously here, there are good bakeries, and the takeaway end — kebabs, pizza, chips — is well developed for the same reason.
Fisher and Donaldson, the Fife bakery, is the local institution: their fudge doughnut is a Fife thing and worth trying once.
St Andrews has a lot of them for its size, split between student pubs, golfers’ pubs and locals’ pubs, with a certain amount of overlap. The Greyfriars, The Central, Aikman’s and the Whey Pat by the West Port are the names that recur, and The Dunvegan by the links is the golf one.
The Kingsbarns Distillery, ten kilometres south-east, makes a Lowland malt in a converted farm steading and has a tasting bar and café. Eden Mill at Guardbridge is the other local producer.
Fife produces well: Anstruther and Pittenweem fish and shellfish, Fife beef and lamb, soft fruit from the Howe of Fife, and the Arbroath smokie from just up the coast. Cullen skink, Scotch pies and haggis are on most pub menus, and Fisher and Donaldson’s baking is a local fixture.
Booking. Golf weeks are the constraint. During the Dunhill Links in October and the Open Championship — which returns to the Old Course every five years or so — the town is completely full and the restaurants book out months ahead. Graduation weeks in June and November do something similar on a smaller scale.
Term time versus summer. In term the cheap end is lively and the town is young; in July and August the students go and the golfers arrive, and the character changes entirely.
Timing. The Seafood Ristorante, the Bridge and the hotel dining rooms all need booking. Most other places you can walk into outside the peak weeks.
Sunday. The Old Course is closed to golf, so the golf-end restaurants are quieter and the town is at its most relaxed.
Breakfast at one of the cafés on Market Street or in the wynds. Mid-morning, a fudge doughnut from Fisher and Donaldson, which is a Fife institution and not negotiable. Lunch from the Cheesy Toast Shack at East Sands, eaten on the beach. Afternoon coffee somewhere on South Street. Dinner at the Seafood Ristorante over West Sands, booked well ahead, or the Tailend for fish and chips if you would rather not. And a last drink at the Dunvegan by the links, where the conversation will be about golf.
The whole circuit is inside twenty minutes’ walk.
It needs stating plainly. When the Open Championship is at the Old Course — roughly every five years — and during the Alfred Dunhill Links each October, St Andrews is completely full. Restaurants book out months ahead, accommodation prices multiply, and walking into anywhere for dinner is not an option.
The same applies on a smaller scale during graduation weeks in June and November, when the town fills with families.
If you are visiting in one of those weeks, book everything early. If you are not, the town is easy — outside them you can generally walk in anywhere except the Seafood Ristorante and the hotel dining rooms.
Well provided for, and the reason is the students. Eight thousand young people with modern eating habits have pushed the town’s restaurants and cafés into taking plant-based cooking seriously, and dedicated vegetarian and vegan menus are standard across the independents rather than an afterthought.
The golf-end hotel restaurants and the traditional fish places are the weakest link, as they tend to be everywhere.
The Seafood Ristorante on West Sands for the setting and the cooking; the Bridge at Rusacks for the golf view; the Tailend for fish and chips.
South Street and the wynds — the shawarma house, the pizza places and the cafés. It is genuinely cheap by Scottish tourist-town standards.
The Bridge at Rusacks, the Old Course Hotel’s restaurants, and the Dunvegan bar.
At the golf end, yes. Elsewhere, no — the student population keeps a whole tier of good cheap eating alive.
The East Neuk: Anstruther for fish and chips, Crail harbour for lobster and crab straight off the boats.