Not every cocktail that makes it onto the permanent menu was designed to be there. Some are built with that intention from the beginning: a concept developed over weeks, a technique refined across many iterations, a name chosen before the recipe is finalised. The Old Beanut was like that. So was the Tzatziki Martini. Both arrived with a deliberateness to them, a sense that they had been thought about until they were ready. The Raspberry Paloma arrived differently. It went ont

One of the things I enjoy most about being part of Edinburgh's bar scene is that the people doing the most interesting work in it are not far away. They are on the same streets, at the same events, in some cases a ten-minute walk from Broughton Street. Iain McPherson is the founder of Panda and Sons on Queen Street, which we have written about before as one of the best cocktail bars in the world. He has spent over a decade building a reputation for techniques that push what a

One of the questions we get asked most often is how we decide what goes on the menu. The honest answer is that the menu is never quite decided. It is always in the process of becoming something slightly better than it was. Every three months we reprint. Every month we run a special. Every week something new is being tried behind the bar or tested in the kitchen, quietly and without announcement, waiting to see whether it is good enough to earn its place in front of a guest. T