56 North Cocktail Bar & Restaurant
2-8 West Crosscauseway Edinburgh EH8 9JP
Any place which devotes as much shelf space to gin as it does whisky (4 and a half, to be exact) has to be a winner in our book, and 56 North is a rare oasis of civilised, spacious, outdoor drinking in the Southside, with screen windows which open out onto a large pavement bar spreading out onto the promonotory between Buccleugh Street and Nicholson Street. It's busy enough to people watch, but not so much that you feel like you're sitting on a roundabout somewhere just off the M8. Its really strong suit is delivering a dizzying array of cocktails – most, but not all, involving a generous dash of gin. Especially macho, sherberty variants include the Pom Pom Collins and Pink Panther. There's a decent range of gourmet burgers, flatbreads, sharing platters and 'bigger bites', to soak up all that hard, fizzy stuff, and its Sciennes locale also means it's just a short stagger to Teviot Square, George Square and most other Edinburgh Fringe Fest hotspots. A winner.
