Pickles

The basement everyone remembers was 56a Broughton Street, under L'Escargot Bleu; the bar has grown into larger rooms at street level at number 60, and the boards of cured meat, cheese and house pickles made the move with it.

Why go

The food is boards. The List's 2026 wine-bar guide describes what arrives: charcuterie boards are piled high with locally sourced cured meats, cheeses and (of course) homemade pickles to accompany a vast wine list, in a room it calls dimly lit and atmospheric.1 The bar makes the pickles in house, which is where the name comes from. Owner Jonny Bristow's own explanation of why it works, given to the Evening News: I think it is because we are very small, very informal and we have a nice atmosphere.2 There is no kitchen behind any of it.

Order this / avoid

Order: a charcuterie board and something open by the glass. That combination is the entire proposition and it is the one The List singles out.
Order: the Scottish cheese platter with oatcakes and the house pickles. In 2016 it was £15, which is the only food price anyone has ever published for this bar, and it is nine years old.
Avoid: arriving hungry for a meal. The Evening News described the offer bluntly: diners will not find traditional pub meals here.
Avoid: a weekday afternoon. The doors open at four Monday to Thursday.

What locals & experts say

The List / Eat & Drink 365 (2026): Once a basement hideaway that topped Tripadvisor lists, Pickles has grown into its larger rooms at street level without losing any of the romance. The piece runs without a personal byline, so it is cited to the masthead.1
A checked negative, and it shapes this entry: no named critic has reviewed this bar. Five searches across The Scotsman, the Edinburgh Evening News, The List, The Skinny and Time Out found nothing bylined, and the bar is absent from The Skinny's 41-venue Edinburgh guide of June 2024. There is no expert quote here because there is no expert quote to have.
On the TripAdvisor line above: the bar's 2016 press coverage was built on topping a TripAdvisor ranking, which counts how many people posted and says nothing about how the wine list drinks.

Good to know

Timing: roughly 4pm to 11pm Monday to Thursday, and noon to midnight Friday to Sunday.
Booking: no policy is published anywhere, so walk in and take what is free. The room is small.
Price: The List bands it at the cheapest of its four bands. No current menu price exists in any source.
The website: getpickled.co.uk is the bar's own domain and it has stopped working properly. It is HTTP-only, the secure handshake fails, and its pages no longer serve readable content, so nothing on it could be used here.
Getting there: 60 Broughton Street, five minutes downhill from the east end of Queen Street. Jeff's list files this as New Town; The List and the address both say Broughton.
Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 24 July 2024, held under the name Pickles of Broughton Street.

Jeff's take (his words)

Note: "Cellar bar for bites"
On the cellar: half of that is now wrong and the correction is the reason this entry exists. The cellar was 56a Broughton Street, beneath L'Escargot Bleu. The bar has since taken street-level rooms at number 60, which is where the food hygiene register holds it. Several aggregators still print the old address.
On the bites: exactly right, and it is the whole menu. Boards, and a wine list to put them against.

Verdict

could-visit — A small Broughton Street wine bar whose food is cheese, charcuterie and its own pickles, which is the format that suits a bar with no kitchen and a long list. The List's 2026 wine-bar guide describes the room as dimly lit and atmospheric with boards piled high with locally sourced cured meats and cheeses, and records the thing that matters most for anyone holding an older recommendation: the bar has moved up out of its basement into larger rooms at street level. The owner's own pitch is that it works because it is very small and very informal. It stays at could-visit because no named critic has ever reviewed it, no current price for anything exists in any source, and the venue's own website has stopped serving readable pages, so almost everything here rests on one masthead write-up and a statutory register.

Pickles.