The Magnum
A two-course table d'hote runs until 5pm, Monday to Saturday, and it turns a room with a £34 fillet on the card into a £25 lunch.
Why go
CAMRA's own record of the place, updated in November 2025, sets out the geography: the left side has bare floorboards and is the friendliest for drinkers
, the carpeted side toward Dublin Street is for people eating, and the building has no television anywhere in it.2 The cask line is Stewart Brewing's Edinburgh Gold at 4.8%, poured from the tap with the long spout. The kitchen cooks the Scottish bistro standards straight: Cullen skink, haggis with neeps and tatties, king scallops by the piece, an 8oz dry-aged Scottish fillet.5 A two-course table d'hote runs Monday to Saturday until 5pm at £25.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Cullen skink. It is on the card twice, once as a starter and once at main-course size, which tells you the kitchen expects people to make a meal of it.5 Drinking side, ask for the Edinburgh Gold and watch which tap it comes off.2
- Avoid: treating it as a pub that happens to serve food. Lizzy Buchan's verdict in The Scotsman is the practical steer:
While it has a bar, the focus was firmly placed on dining so go for the full works or you will definitely feel left out.
1
What locals & experts say
- Lizzy Buchan, The Scotsman (2016): scored it Food 7.5/10 and Ambience 7/10, and landed on
The Magnum is not a cheap eat but it packs a punch beyond its price and offers a delicious meal with oodles of style.
Her one complaint was the bread,tasting slightly on the dry side,
which she calls the only lacklustre thing on the table.1 - The List, best pubs and bars in the New Town:
Half bar, half bistro, this long-standing cosy New Town establishment punches well above its weight.
3 - Time Out Edinburgh (2014):
A long-standing venue on the eastern fringes of the New Town, the Magnum seems to exist outside time.
4 That line is twelve years old and the menu it described has turned over completely, so read it as a note about the room. - Jeff's note: his saved row reads "Times rec." No piece in The Times naming this venue could be found, and thetimes.com blocks automated reading in its robots file, so it cannot be searched from here. The lead stays open, and no Times recommendation is asserted.
Good to know
- Timing: food from noon into the evening, finishing around 9pm, with the bar running to midnight. Check the venue site for exact hours.
- Booking: reservations on the venue's own site. Buchan found the place "bursting at the seams" at 6.30pm on a Saturday, and that was on a wet spring evening.
- Groups: the kitchen offers a three-course pre-theatre menu to parties of eight and up, pre-ordered, which makes this one of the few New Town rooms that will take a large table at a fixed price.5
- Kids and dogs: children are welcome in the restaurant and CAMRA records them admitted until 10pm; dogs are allowed. There is a garden with tables.2
- Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 13 February 2024. The result is clean and the inspection is over two years old.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Times rec." That is the whole of what his export says about this place, and the lead could not be closed. See the experts section above.
Verdict
could-visit — A New Town corner room that splits into three, keeps a drinkers' side with bare boards and a cask tap, and puts no televisions anywhere in the building. The kitchen cooks the Scottish standards at full price, Cullen skink and dry-aged fillet and scallops by the piece, and the two-course lunch is where the value sits. It stays at could-visit on the state of the evidence: the only independent verdict on the food is a 7.5 out of 10 from 2016, no source names who cooks, and craft weighs heaviest. Go when you are in that part of the New Town and want a real room, and choose your side before you sit down.