Best-of list · City Guide
The best bars in Edinburgh right now: from the whisky bars of the Old Town to the craft beer pubs of Leith. Sofia Reeves picks 10 essential Edinburgh.
The short answer
10 ranked rooms follow. How we picked is at the end of this guide.
Edinburgh does not need to be discovered. Its reputation as a whisky city is so established that most visitors arrive with a list already in hand, and the list is usually wrong. The best bars in Edinburgh right now are not the tourist-facing whisky shops on the Royal Mile. They are the craft beer pubs of Leith that opened five years ago and are still finding their feet, the cocktail rooms of Stockbridge where the bartenders trained in London and came home, and the late-night whisky bars on the Cowgate that know exactly what they are doing. We covered all of it on our most recent trip.
The Old Town is the obvious place to start and, if you choose correctly, it repays the effort. The tourist bars thin out quickly once you leave the Royal Mile and head down into the Cowgate, where the best whisky bars in the city operate below street level and below the radar of most visitors.
How we picked
Edinburgh's bar scene is at its best when it leans into what the city does distinctively: Scottish whisky, Scottish craft beer, and a pub tradition that treats the regular as the central figure rather than the occasional visitor. The best approach is 2 nights, with one dedicated to the New Town cocktail and whisky bars and one to Leith and the Grassmarket. Book the Bon Vivant and Panda and Sons in advance. Everything else can be walked into.
Sofia visits Edinburgh twice a year and considers it the most underrated drinking city in the British Isles. She has strong opinions about where to drink in Leith and considers Panda and Sons the best hidden bar entrance in Europe.
Last reviewed 2026-05-15 · The editors recheck hours and closures against current local coverage.