What makes a great bar? Great drinks, nice decor, friendly bar staff and comfortable seats are all important, but to stand out, you need to do something exceptional.
And that’s exactly what the team at Panda & Sons has done. This independent Edinburgh watering hole has just been named the best bar in the entire world by Top 500 Bars, an online ranking website that does exactly what it says on the tin.
The 500-strong ranking is based on so much more than how much the team team enjoyed the cocktails. It was created ‘by the people, for the people’, and utilises a complex algorithm which feeds off of ‘thousands of [data points] – rankings, publications, platforms and others – in over 20 languages’ then calculates exactly how well each bar has been reviewed. Think Silicon Valley meets good old-fashioned guidebooks.
After the number-crunching was done, Panda & Sons came out on top, jumping up a few places from 2024’s ranking where it came fourth. Just as much of a creative outlet for its founder Iain McPherson as it is a place to come and drink, this bar offers a range of cocktails you won’t get anywhere else.
You can be absolutely certain that cocktails here are unique, because Panda & Sons literally distills its own kind of alcohol to put in them. Using a process called ‘switching’, McPherson and his colleagues have figured out how to remove the water from a spirit and replace it with a new, different alcohol, creating franken-spirits to put into cocktails.
Top 500 Bars notes that ‘it’s all about friendly Scottish service’ at Panda & Sons. Pair that with an ‘intimate and cosy’ interior and city-centre location, and you’re onto a winner.
World’s 50 Best Bars, a completely separate ranking, also placed Panda & Sons among the best bars on Earth, although in that list it came 34th. You’ll have to go and try it for yourself to see which you agree with more.
European bars dominate the top 10
Six of the top 10 best bars in the world are in Europe, according to the ranking. Second place went to Paradiso, a legendary Barcelona speakeasy that’s consistently crowned one of the best in the world by the likes of World’s 50 Best and the Pinnacle Guide. In sixth place was HIMKOK in Oslo, a moody cocktail bar with its own micro-distillery. London’s Tayēr + Elementary came seventh, Moebius in Milan came ninth and SIPS, another highly rated Barcelona bar, came eighth.
Bars in Hong Kong, Mexico City, Singapore and Cartagena took the other four spots in the top 10. Read on for the top 25.
Top 25 bars in the world
Here are the top 25 bars on the planet, according to Top 500 Bars.
- Panda & Sons, Edinburgh
- Paradiso, Barcelona
- Bar Leone, Hong Kong
- Handshake Speakeasy, Mexico City
- Jigger & Pony, Singapore City
- HIMKOK, Oslo
- Tayēr + Elementary, London
- Alquimico, Cartagena
- Moebius, Milan
- SIPS, Barcelona
- Salmon Guru, Madrid
- Connaught Bar, London
- Tres Monos, Buenos Aires
- The Cambridge Public House, Paris
- Locale Firenze, Florence
- Maybe Sammy, Sydney
- Danico, Paris
- Bar Nouveau, Paris
- Tan Tan, Sao Paulo
- Baba au Rum, Athens
- Scarfes, London
- Satan's Whisker, London
- CoChinChina, Buenos Aires
- Angelita, Madrid
- Zest, Seoul
You can see the other 475 spots that make the ranking here.
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