with kids

The pub kitchens are what serve at half five in this city, and several of them are good. The Ox in Broughton runs its kitchen from noon into the late evening every day and half an hour longer on Friday and Saturday, takes its last booking as the kitchen closes, welcomes children for an hour beyond that and keeps biscuits for the dog; its Sunday roasts are £20 to £25. The Doric serves food all day in the Old Town, moves the evening service up to the first floor, prints a children's menu and, on CAMRA's February 2025 survey, admits children downstairs until early evening and in the first-floor restaurant late into the night. That menu marks its vegetarian, vegan and non-gluten-containing dishes and the kitchen will alter some of them on request, so one card covers a table with mixed diets at it.

Three more rooms open early enough to matter. Roseleaf in Leith trades from ten in the morning seven days a week and stops the kitchen in the late evening, with the chunky Cullen skink at £10.95. The Radhuni starts its evening service in the late afternoon on Friday and Saturday and runs straight through from early afternoon on Sunday, and it keeps a family zone inside a 120-cover room. The Magnum admits children late into the evening, has a garden with tables, and holds a two-course table d'hôte at £25 for anyone seated before the dinner rush, Monday to Saturday, so an early sitting catches the cheap end of the card.

The small rooms say plainly that they cannot take a buggy, and that saves you a phone call. LeftField publishes the whole answer on its reservations page: children at lunch only, no children's menu, no highchair and nowhere to park a buggy. Phil White cooks 24 covers alone in that kitchen, and the same arithmetic governs the other twenty-seat rooms on this list. All of this comes off the venues' own published hours, which move, so call before you build an evening on one.