Bramble Bar & Lounge
Named for Dick Bradsell's cocktail, this basement under a Queen Street dry cleaner was the only Scottish bar on the World's 50 Best Bars list in 2013, at number 32.
Why go
Mike Aikman and Jason Scott opened it in 2006 and have kept it on the UK rankings since, at 13 on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars in 2023 and 36 in 2025.1 The house spirit is gin, and 50Best's own write-up puts a number on it: Edinburgh being the gin capital of the UK, eight recommended pours feature the spirit, including various twists on the G&T, a gimlet and a reliably brilliant gin martini.
2 In 2024 the Scottish Licensed Trade News gave its Industry Achievement Award to Aikman and Scott by name, across the bars they run.4 The room itself is small, underground and unbookable.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Brightside. Keith Davidson's line on it, and the build:
a Brightside (gin, Aperol, lemon juice, rose water and sage) is sophistication in a glass.
1 - Order: the gin martini if you want to test the bar rather than the menu, or the Molly Ringwald, which takes its name from The Breakfast Club and runs gin, vodka, raspberry syrup, honey, yoghurt and granola milk.
- Avoid: Friday and Saturday if the plan is conversation. There are DJs on both nights, and this is a low-ceilinged basement.
What locals & experts say
- Keith Davidson, Time Out (2016):
Bramble still does great drinks from a deft gin and tonic to complicated cocktails laced with a sense of humour.
He also got the room's manner right:Mostly Bramble takes itself seriously... Fun is far from absent though.
1 - The World's 50 Best Bars (2013): number 32, and the only Scottish bar on the list that year, for the second year running. The 2012 position is not recorded anywhere and is not claimed here.3
- Top 50 Cocktail Bars UK: 13 in 2023 and 36 in 2025.
- SLTN Awards (2024): the Industry Achievement Award went to
Mike Aikman and Jason Scott, Bramble Bars
. The award is to the two of them, and this entry records it that way.4 - A checked negative worth stating: The Scotsman's 2025 piece in which four named Edinburgh bartenders pick other people's rooms was read in full. Aikman is one of the four and never names this bar, and no other bartender in it does either.
Good to know
- Booking: none taken. The venue's own word is "walk-ins only", so the queue is the door policy.
- Timing: open to 1am, seven days.
- Price: cocktails around £8 to £13.50.
- The room: a basement under a dry cleaner on Queen Street, with the entrance easy to walk past. It is small, and on a Friday it is full.
- Hygiene: the hygiene register holds a Pass for this premises, inspected 11 November 2009. That is sixteen years old, which makes it a record rather than current information about how the bar runs now.
- Getting there: Queen Street, two minutes from the top of Hanover Street.
Jeff's take (his words)
The case for it is a 2013 World's 50 Best placing that no other Scottish bar had that year, two more UK Top 50 placings since, and a critic's account of one specific drink.
Verdict
should-visit — A basement cocktail bar named for Dick Bradsell's drink, which put it on the World's 50 Best Bars list in 2013 at number 32 as the only Scottish entry, and which has kept turning up on the UK Top 50 since, at 13 in 2023 and 36 in 2025. The house style is gin, and 50Best's own write-up counts eight recommended gin pours including a gimlet and a martini it calls reliably brilliant, which is depth rather than fashion in a city that trades on the spirit. The craft argument is carried by a critic's specific line about a specific drink: the Brightside, gin with Aperol, lemon, rose water and sage. Mike Aikman and Jason Scott took the SLTN Industry Achievement Award in 2024, and that one belongs to them personally. It stops short of must-visit because the strongest critical writing about the drinks is from 2016, and because two nights a week the room becomes a DJ bar, which is a different proposition from the one the rankings are about.