Leslie's Bar.

Leslie's Bar

A mahogany counter splits the pub in two, and ticket-window hatches let the lounge order drinks without being seen from the public bar.2

Why go

CAMRA's branch record opens with the reason: an outstanding, nationally important historic interior on the ground floor of a Ratcliffe Terrace tenement.2 The Scottish heritage inventory grades it National Inventory Three Star as EDN/174, the top grade that list carries, and ten rooms inside the city hold it.1 The counter carries a gantry with a clock and a mirrored snob screen. The lounge has its own door and three distinct areas, a snug at the entrance, a stretch around the fire and a quieter back with banquettes, under late nineteenth-century plasterwork and a Lincrusta frieze. A Knox of Alloa brewery mirror hangs in there too.

Imran Rahman-Jones dates the build to 1896 and the current layout to a 1902 redesign after a Mr John Leslie took the bar on, and names the architect as P L Henderson, who did The Abbotsford, The Central Bar, Deacon Brodies Tavern and The Mitre Bar.3 The pub is widely dated to 1899 elsewhere and nothing read here settles the year, so both are on the page. His reading of the hatches is the useful part: Presumably this was so that the rich people on the other side didn't have to fraternise with the riff raff on the opposite end.

Order this / avoid

• Order: something with turnover. Rahman-Jones got his one good pint from a Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted, at GBP 4.60, on a third attempt across two visits.3 CAMRA logs Timothy Taylor Landlord and Hadrian Border Tyneside Blonde as the permanent lines.2
• Avoid: taking the cask on trust because of the room. Two of the three pints on the published record were flat or dull, and the reviewer says he would come back for a whisky or a tap water rather than risk it again.

What locals & experts say

• Imran Rahman-Jones, Edinburgh Pub Reviews (16 October 2024), who calls it Edinburgh's most beautiful pub and then refuses to let that carry the beer: A pub which radiates this much beauty should serve stellar cask ale. But, it pains me to say, it just doesn't. At least on this occasion. His first pint was a little flat, with a musty aftertaste. He went back weeks later, got the Bitter & Twisted, and wrote that the bitterness of the hops sit prominently on top of the delicate sweetness of the malts. And GBP 4.60 a pint is pretty reasonable these days.3
• CAMRA Scotland's Real Heritage Pubs inventory, edition of 15 May 2023: National Inventory Three Star, ref EDN/174, filed under the pub's formal name, John Leslie.1 That grade is about the interior and says nothing about the cellar.

Good to know

• Timing: noon to 11pm Monday to Thursday and on Sunday, noon to midnight Friday and Saturday.2
• Booking: none to make. Walk in.
• The name: it trades as Leslie's Bar. CAMRA and the heritage inventory both file it as John Leslie, which is the name to search under.
• Best light: a weekday afternoon, when the sun comes through the stained glass at the front and the room is close to empty.3
• Hygiene, and the honest answer is that there is no record. An absence is not a pass and is not written as one here.4

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: Not one of my saves.

Verdict

should-visit — CAMRA's Scottish heritage inventory puts this interior on the National Inventory at Three Star, the top grade the list carries, and ten of the city's rooms hold it. What makes this one worth the walk to Ratcliffe Terrace is a detail you can still use: a mahogany counter splits the pub in two, and small ticket-window hatches let people in the lounge order drinks without being seen from the public bar. Imran Rahman-Jones reads them as a barrier between the money and the rest, which is the whole nineteenth-century argument sitting in a piece of joinery. Around it are a mirrored snob screen, a gantry with a clock, a Lincrusta frieze and a Knox of Alloa brewery mirror. The beer is why this stops short of the top rung, and the record is specific rather than vague: across two visits the only bylined reviewer rated an Old Golden Hen flat and musty, found a house ale no better, and only got a good pint on the third try, a Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted at GBP 4.60. Go for the room and order something that moves.