Valvona &Crolla

Alfonso Crolla and Benedetto Valvona opened their Italian grocery on Elm Row on the 8th of September 1934, and four generations later the Contini family runs what has become Edinburgh's — arguably Scotland's — definitive delicatessen: a long dark shop of hanging hams and towering wine, a caffè bar at the back that took Scotland's Best Italian Restaurant title in 2024, the firm's ninetieth year. The shelves run the length of Italy and the wine cellar deeper still; a national mail-order service and a Jenners foodhall concession extend the reach, but the Elm Row shop is the cathedral and everyone treats it as such. Ninety years, one family, one irreplaceable room: the guide takes the scale on the chin because the shop earns it.