The Royal Dick Pub.

The Royal Dick Pub

The gin is piped in from the distillery across the courtyard, and the brewery is directly behind the bar.1

Why go

This room shut in the autumn of 2024, while Summerhall's finances were coming apart, and reopened in stages: a Barney's pop-up in November 2024 pouring beer and serving no food, a refurbishment through the spring, and a full reopening in May 2025 with a kitchen following on 5 June.3 What came back is run by the two producers themselves, Pickering's Gin and Barney's Brewery in a joint venture on behalf of the arts charity that operates the complex.1 Both make their product inside these walls, which is why Time Out describes the bar's range as Barney's Beer and Pickerings Gin, both of which are brewed and distilled in the Summerhall complex.4 The building was the Small Animal Hospital of the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, and the bar spreads across five rooms with old projector slides set into the counter and dental surgery equipment on the walls.3 The spring refurbishment thinned those displays out, so the room is quieter than the older write-ups promise. The courtyard is the biggest thing here in warm weather, and the pub bills it as one of Edinburgh's largest beer gardens.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the cask. Rahman-Jones's verdict on the range in 2024 was short: Try any of them and you will not be disappointed.2 One cask line survived the relaunch, with a wide Barney's keg selection behind it, so a cask drinker has less choice now than then.1
• Order: Pickering's on draught, which is the thing you can only get here.3
• Order: the Irn-Bru frickles, GBP 8. Pickles battered in Barney's Stones Throw and Irn-Bru, with vegan ranch. It is the one plate on the menu that could not exist anywhere else.5
• Avoid: treating this as a dinner. Rahman-Jones summed the food up in two words, burgers, basically, and gave his praise to the drinks. Burgers run GBP 14.50 to 17.50 and a ten-inch margherita is GBP 11.50, which is city-center pricing for pub food.1

What locals & experts say

• Imran Rahman-Jones, Edinburgh Pub Reviews (June 2025), went back after the handover and split his verdict cleanly. There's a new menu, too, from Dick's Scrannery (burgers, basically)... one cask ale survives, supplemented with a wide selection of Barney's keg beers... Happily, the drinks are just as good as before - this new version of The Royal Dick is very much evolution rather than revolution.1
• The same critic a year earlier (June 2024), on the beer under the old operator: Barney's knows its beer. A couple of casks and countless kegs from the house brewery and beyond dominate the bar. Reading the two together is how you see that the cask count fell and the drinks quality did not.2
• CAMRA's Edinburgh and South East Scotland branch records the mechanism: The real ales are from Barney's Brewery, which is just behind the bar. The quiet suntrap courtyard is billed as Edinburgh's biggest beer garden. The phrase is billed as, which is a branch reporting a claim.3
• Time Out Edinburgh (February 2024) put it in a 24-pub roundup and described the room as it stood then: what was once the Small Animal Hospital of the Dick Vet School... you can marvel at some unique bits of artwork and veterinary artefacts which decorate the interior. A compiled list, so it is a placement and not a review, and the artefacts line is now partly out of date.4
• No award, checked. The Scottish award rosters and CAMRA's own Edinburgh and South East Scotland Pub of the Year 2025 results were searched on 4 August 2026, and this pub is on none of them.

Good to know

• Hours: bar Tuesday to Thursday 4pm to 11pm, Friday and Saturday noon to 1am, Sunday noon to 10pm, closed Monday. The kitchen stops at 9pm, and at 7pm on Sunday, so the last two to four hours are drinking only.5
• Ordering: food is ordered at the kitchen hatch, in the menu's own capitals.5
• The Sunday roast pauses over the busiest weeks of the summer, so check it is running before you build a Sunday around it.5
• Dogs are welcome and children are admitted until 8pm.5
• Hygiene: the kitchen trading here is a separate business, Dick's Scrannary, and it holds a Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass inspected 5 February 2026, with no re-inspection pending as at 4 August 2026. That is the current rating on the food. The bar's own registration carries a Pass from 1 February 2024, which is two and a half years old and predates the closure and relaunch.7
• The building is under a conditional sale. Brian Ferguson and Jane Bradley reported in The Scotsman that AMA Homes was named preferred bidder in October 2024 and had entered a contract by April 2025, subject to planning consent, with the arts use secured for roughly three years from then. The pub trades normally and this is about the landlord.
• Getting there: 1 Summerhall, in the courtyard at the middle of the complex, at the Meadows end of the Southside. It is not on the street frontage, so walk in through the arch.
• Not the cafe: Summerhall Cafe is a different business in the same complex, with its own hygiene record and its own kitchen.

Jeff's take (his words)

The case for going is a brewery behind the bar, a gin line running under the courtyard, and a critic who went back after the handover and found the drinks intact.

Verdict

could-visit — Two producers make their drink inside this complex and both now run the pub between them, which is a supply arrangement no other room in the city can copy, and the one critic who went back after the handover found the drinks intact: happily, the drinks are just as good as before. That earns a stop. It does not earn a detour, and weighing craft first is why. Look at what is actually in the glass and it is one brewery's range, one surviving cask line where there used to be a couple, and one house gin. Nobody here is buying across a market, because the two owners are the two suppliers, so the depth on offer is the depth of Barney's own list and nothing wider. The uniqueness everybody quotes is a pipe. Gin piped from a neighbouring distillery is a mechanism, and what a drinker walks out having tasted is a Pickering's and a Barney's, both of which pour all over Edinburgh. Novelty counts as a footnote here and never as the rung. The food is burgers at GBP 15.50 to 17.50 and a ten-inch margherita at GBP 11.50, ordered at a hatch, which is city-center money for an offer the only critic who ate it summed up in two words. No award of any kind, checked on 2026-08-04, including the branch's own Edinburgh and South East Scotland Pub of the Year 2025 results. What is genuinely good is the room and the courtyard: five rooms in the former Small Animal Hospital with projector slides set into the bar counter, a beer garden Rahman-Jones calls a rare thing in Edinburgh, and a licence to 1am on Friday and Saturday. That is Experience and it is weighed after craft, so it cannot carry the rung on its own. Go if you are at Summerhall or crossing the Meadows, take the courtyard on a warm afternoon, drink the cask and a Pickering's, and eat first somewhere else.