Panda & Sons
The current menu, Transcend, is sixteen drinks built over five years of freezer work, and its first chapter freezes the water out of a spirit and swaps the ice for another flavor.
Why go
Iain McPherson opened this basement behind a false barbershop front in November 2013, and the room has spent the decade since turning cold into a technique. Transcend runs in four chapters: switching, then a vacuum extraction the bar calls Sous Spression, then freeze drying, then cryo-concentration.5 The academy behind the UK Top 50 put it second in the country in 2025 and ninth in 2026, and the World's 50 Best Bars ranked it 34th on the planet in 2025, the only Scottish room on that list.
Order this / avoid
- Order: off Transcend, chapter one. Nobody has published the name of a drink on that menu, so you order by the chapter and the bartender pours the switched one.5
- Avoid: turning up on spec in August.
What locals & experts say
- Rosalind Erskine, Food and Drink Editor, The Scotsman (2025):
It has won multiple awards for a reason and it is a cosy, quirky bar with brilliant drinks and lovely staff. It's really busy, so book ahead and see where the night takes you.
1 - The Top 50 Cocktail Bars academy, a panel of working bartenders, bar owners and drinks writers (Time Out, 12 February 2025): the drinks are
first-class, refined and intelligent
, and the voters singled out the last two chapters of Transcend.4 - UK Top 50 Cocktail Bars, 2023: it was already sixth in the country that year.4
- Edinburgh Bar Awards 2025, Best Bar and Best Bar Team: it took both on 22 September 2025, with Hey Palu and The Cocktail Geeks highly commended behind it. The organiser counts that vote half public and half trade.2
Good to know
- Timing: it runs late, and the bar publishes no opening times or drink prices, so phone before you build a night on it.
- Getting there: Queen Street, roughly five minutes from The Stand on York Place and ten from the Assembly Rooms.
- Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, though the inspection dates from April 2022 and nothing newer has been published.
Verdict
must-visit — Build the night around it. The voting academy behind the UK Top 50, over 200 bartenders, owners and drinks writers, put this bar second in the country in 2025 and ninth in 2026, and it is the only Scottish room on either edition's top ten; the World's 50 Best Bars has it 34th on the planet and the only UK entry outside London. That is a marquee award by any reading, and it sits on top of a technique nobody else is running at this depth: five years of freezer development turned into Transcend, sixteen drinks in four numbered chapters, opening with switching, where ultra-low freezers pull the water out of a spirit and the frozen part is swapped for another flavor. Craft first, and the craft here is a laboratory method that reaches the glass. The city then voted it Best Bar and Best Bar Team in 2025 on a half-public, half-trade ballot, and it is weighed at that weight. Two shipped Edinburgh peers set the line below it: Bramble at should-visit on 13th in 2023 and 36th in 2025, Nauticus at should-visit on 12th and 27th. This room outranks both in every edition they share. What keeps confidence at medium instead of high is that nobody with a byline has reviewed the drinks; Rosalind Erskine's 'brilliant drinks and lovely staff' is a recommendation from a food editor, and the fuller description of the cocktails is the awarding body's own copy. It is a basement, it fills in August, and the person who recommends it tells you to book.