Edinburgh’s New Town hides some of its best secrets in the basement. Tucked beneath the city’s grand Georgian townhouses, the best pubs in Edinburgh are cosy, dimly lit rooms of exposed stone, pressed metal ceilings and well-worn wood.
There’s cask ale on tap, friendly locals happy to chat, and enough atmosphere to make you forget the nearby Royal Mile. Whether you’re looking for some great pub grub, a quiet corner to soak up the city, or a standing-room-only Friday night, here are Edinburgh’s best pubs for your DIY pub crawl of Edinburgh’s New Town.
St Vincent Bar (The Vinnie)
If I lived in Edinburgh I’d be making ‘The Vinnie’ my local. This wood-panelled, olive-green bar – in the basement of a Georgian townhouse on the edge of Stockbridge – is full of the chatter of regulars. It has a lovely warm vibe, friendly staff and features cask ale, interesting wines and good cocktails. Their iconic hot gin is like a mulled cider with gin, herbal tea, apple juice and seasonal aromats. They’re very dog-friendly too!
Kay’s Bar
This typical Victorian cask-ale house serves hand-pumped ‘real ale’ and is full of locals catching up with one another and happy to chat to newcomers. It’s often standing room only, so conversation with neighbours is almost essential. Wine merchants John Kay & Sons traded from here for over 100 years, and there are interesting, well-preserved Victorian features like signage, great exposed stone walls and bright red cast-iron pillars.
The “Oxford” Bar
You can’t talk about the best Edinburgh pubs without mentioning The Oxford, local haunt of author Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus. In a narrow laneway just behind George Street, it’s a tiny pub with a small front bar and a little side room of bleached wooden benches, bare lightbulbs and not much décor. It looks like it hasn’t changed in a long time, which, I suspect, is just how the locals – including Inspector Rebus – like it!
The Bailie
There’s been a bar here since at least the 1870s, and regulars who’ve been coming since the mid-’90s (before the area ‘got posh’) still gather at the large central bar. The Bailie’s big, spread over three basements, with a focus on cask ale and good pub grub like handmade burgers and seafood from Armstrong’s of Stockbridge. Sport’s important too, with the Six Nations’ flags adorning the red metal ceiling above the coal fire.
The Scran & Scallie
The Scran & Scallie deserves its title as Edinburgh’s best gastropub, using premium produce in a short menu of mostly classic recipes that simply taste great. Owner/chef Tom Kitchin (of Michelin-starred The Kitchin in Leith) describes it as “hearty Scottish ‘give-me-a-hug’ kind of food” divided into Yer Starters, Yer Mains, Bits’n’Bobs and Oor Puddins. There’s a well-curated wine list, friendly staff and a great neighbourhood vibe too.
Published 18 May 2026
The New Town is the grand Georgian district north of Princes Street, built from the late 1760s to ease overcrowding in the medieval Old Town. Its elegant grid of streets, squares and crescents, lined with stone townhouses, is part of the city’s UNESCO World Heritage Site – and home to many of the best pubs in Edinburgh. For the full story, see the Old Town and New Town FAQ in my Edinburgh food guide.
The New Town’s Georgian townhouses were built with a basement floor below street level, reached by steps from the pavement. It housed the kitchens and was the domain of the servants who worked for the wealthy families upstairs.
As those families moved out over the 19th and 20th centuries and the New Town became more commercial, many basements were turned into shops, flats and bars. Today their thick stone walls, low ceilings and fireplaces give Edinburgh’s basement pubs their famously cosy feel.
Cask ale, also called real ale, is beer that finishes fermenting in the cask in the pub’s cellar. It’s unfiltered and unpasteurised, with no added gas. It’s drawn up to the bar by a hand pump (the tall lever you’ll see on the bar), which is why it’s also called hand-pumped ale.
Served cool rather than ice-cold, cask ale has a gentler sparkle and fuller flavour than keg beer. The term ‘real ale’ was coined in the 1970s by campaigners fighting to save traditional brewing, and Edinburgh’s classic pubs remain some of its strongest champions.
The pub’s name comes from an Oxford University Press depot that once stood further along Young Street – but the inverted commas, the pub explains, are tongue in cheek. Tucked into a lane just behind George Street, this tiny, unpretentious bar has long been the haunt of hardened regulars and off-duty police rather than haughty academics. One regular quipped that it was the only pub he knew with an emergency entrance.
Author Ian Rankin drinks here too – it’s the local for his character Inspector Rebus, and he allegedly based Rebus’ pathologist, Professor Gates, on former landlord John Gates. The “Oxford” Bar sign was chosen as Object 100 in ‘Edinburgh’s 101 Objects’, a VisitScotland-backed project telling 1,000 years of the city’s story.
It was once. In the 19th century Edinburgh was the most important brewing centre in Britain – ahead of London and Burton-on-Trent – with almost 40 breweries at its peak. Their secret was the ‘Charmed Circle’, a band of underground springs beneath the city whose water was ideal for brewing, and Edinburgh ales were shipped as far as India and Australia.
When those export markets dried up after World War II, most of the breweries closed. The last of the great Victorian breweries, the Caledonian, shut its doors in 2022 after 153 years. Today a new generation of craft brewers is reviving the tradition of Edinburgh beer.
In Scotland draught beer is served in pints (568ml, about the same as an Australian pint), half pints or – increasingly – two-thirds of a pint, which Scots call a schooner (378ml, so smaller than an Australian schooner).
Craft beer bars often offer thirds (190ml), perfect for tasting several brews. Simply ask for ‘a pint’ or ‘a half’ of whatever takes your fancy. If you hear someone order ‘a hauf and a hauf’, that’s a half pint of beer with a dram of whisky on the side. Among the ales, look out for those labelled 60/-, 70/- or 80/- (said ’60 shilling’ and so on), traditionally known as light, heavy and export. The numbers once referred to the price of a cask in shillings and now simply indicate strength: the higher the number, the stronger the beer. These terms apply right across Scotland, so you’ll be ordering like a local from Edinburgh to the Highlands.
