Britain’s capital cities do bars better – or at least, that’s how it would seem based on the latest edition of the exclusive World’s 50 Best Bars list. The ranking features five British spots: four in London, and one in Edinburgh.
Every year the World’s 50 Best Bars publishes its list of, you guessed it, the 50 best places to drink on Earth. The list is voted on by an academy of industry experts, split into 29 geographical regions, each with their own panels and chairs. In order to get onto the list, a bar needs to be exceptional in everything that it does, from service, to creative cocktails, to interior design. It’s a real mark of quality to earn a spot in the ranking.
This year, most of the UK’s top 50 entries were in London (read more about that here), but in the past couple of years one Edinburgh joint has been consistently impressing judges. Panda & Sons came 34th in this year’s list of the World’s 50 Best Bars, making it the best in Britain outside of the Big Smoke.
In 2024, the ‘speakeasy style’ watering hole came 30th overall, so it has slipped down a few spots. It’s still definitely worth a visit though, if only to try out a cocktail menu that is so good it was actually named the best in the world at the Spirited Awards earlier this year.
Owner Iain McPherson likes to get pretty adventurous with some of his drinks, for instance swapping out water for coconut milk to make a properly unique coconut daiquiri, or by creating his own alcoholic ice cream and sorbet flavours. This isn’t a standard drinking hole.
World’s 50 Best described Panda & Sons as having ‘vintage vibe and stylings’, and said that ‘this is the kind of place where you’re as at home with a pint as you are a show-stopping cocktail’. The awards does highly recommend you try out a cocktail though, noting that ‘the latest cocktail menu Transcend 2.0 is a seminal piece of work’.
Top spot on the 2025 list went to Bar Leone in Hong Kong, which opened back in 2023 and came in second last year. Now, it’s become the first ever Asian bar to make it to number one. Not too shabby for a first couple of years in business.
You can have a look at the full global World’s 50 Best Bars list on Time Out here and on the official website here.
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