Six of the best dog-friendly places to eat in Edinburgh

In Edinburgh, the dog can accompany us to a serious steak pie in Stockbridge, a shellfish lunch on the Shore or a basement bar where the drinks involve rather more confectionery than we anticipated. These are different propositions, and the distinction matters. A pub that welcomes dogs may also welcome an entire rugby audience. A restaurant can be generous about canine company and exacting about the bill. Knowing where the dog belongs matters to us, but so does the meal.

That double appetite guides us through six places. There is smoked haddock with haggis, a croissant pressed into a waffle iron, whisky from an Edinburgh distillery and a cocktail made with the city's fallen apples. We take the dog inside at each stop, choosing the permitted part of the room and giving the food the attention that brought us through the door.

1. The Scran & Scallie

The marrow bone is the first thing we notice about the steak pie. It stands through the pastry, making the dish look faintly unfinished, as though the butcher has left a tool in it. The decision is more useful than that. Marrow belongs with beef; putting the bone in the middle gives the eater access to a richness that a smooth brown gravy might otherwise conceal. We have brought a dog to lunch and ordered something with a conspicuous bone. Neither fact has escaped our companion's attention.

We settle inside the Stockbridge pub, where dogs are welcome in the dining space as well as the bar. Exposed brick, reclaimed furniture and tartan keep the surroundings informal; the cooking has a more formidable ancestry. Tom Kitchin and Dominic Jack, who opened the Scran & Scallie in 2013, first met as young apprentices at Gleneagles. Both went on to work in demanding European kitchens. The point of their pub is that this knowledge can be applied to a meal people already understand. Jamie Knox now leads the kitchen, and whole fish and meat are prepared on the premises. The pie has a considerable amount of work behind it before we pick up a knife.

Beneath our forks, the puff-pastry lid gives way around the central bone. When restaurant critic Andy Hayler examined the dish in 2022, he identified Angus shoulder among the stewing cuts, with root vegetables beneath the pastry; the bone-centred pie remains a signature in recent diners' accounts. Slow-cooking cuts are the important choice here. Shoulder offers connective tissue that can become part of the sauce, rather than an expensive piece of steak whose tenderness was bought at the butcher's counter. Pastry, beef and marrow give us three ways of approaching the same mouthful. We use the knife to bring them together, keeping the dog below the table and the bone firmly above it.

There are Scottish ales to consider, alongside a substantial wine list. We choose beer with the pie: the attraction is a whole pub meal, rather than an attempt to reproduce dinner at Kitchin's more formal restaurant. That does not make it an inexpensive one. Harden's 2026 guide estimates £86 a head for three courses with half a bottle of wine, coffee and charges. Our pie-and-beer order is a smaller commitment, but the estimate usefully corrects any expectation that the word “pub” guarantees an everyday bill. Check the day's menu before booking if price will determine the choice.

The room also requires a little realism. CAMRA notes that bar space is frequently used for dining; this is a food-led pub, and bringing a large dog deserves a conversation when reserving. We choose an early lunch and leave enough room beside our feet for it to lie down, rather than assuming an unoccupied patch will remain unoccupied. There is no dress code, and the welcome to dogs is explicit. Those details allow a meal of this ambition to remain part of a day spent walking, without a return to the hotel to change clothes or rearrange the dog.

The pie brings us here because it explains the pub more convincingly than its famous founders alone could. The dish takes a familiar pleasure seriously, down to the choice of stewing meat and the troublesome, rewarding bone. For a dog owner who wants lunch to be the main event, and has budgeted accordingly, this is our first booking in Stockbridge.

1 Comely Bank Road, Edinburgh EH4 1DR.

2. The King's Wark

We follow the Shore to the King's Wark, bring the dog in from the waterfront and take a seat among stone walls and dark wood. The pub asks for advance notice of our dog, a small piece of planning worth doing here. Leith rewards walking, but arriving with an appetite and a lead is not a reservation. Once settled, we give the window and the menu roughly equal attention. The water explains our interest in fish; the kitchen proposes several less obvious things to put beside it.

Smoked haddock comes with haggis, streaky bacon, peas, garlic butter and crushed new potatoes. We order it and put a glass of white wine within reach. This is a busy assembly, but its Scottish ingredients do more than announce a postcode. Smoked fish has enough authority to stand up to the peppery grain and offal of haggis; bacon adds another kind of pork-rich saltiness, while potato gives us somewhere to take a mouthful when our appetites need less argument. We separate a piece of haddock, then draw a little haggis towards it. The attraction is that deliberate overlap of fish supper and butcher's shop, rather than seafood treated as something too delicate to have company.

The pub's published sample menu lists the haddock at £22. That menu is dated May 2025 and should be treated as a guide to the kitchen and the likely bill, with the current version checked before a special trip. It also sets out a more economical weekday lunch at £14.50 and a £30 seafood bowl involving salmon, mussels, prawns, scallops and clams in a Thai green broth. The latter is a substantially different appetite: shellfish, chilli and a bowl to linger over. For a simpler order, half a kilo of Shetland mussels with white wine, shallots, garlic and fries is listed at £19.50. We prefer the haddock for its particularity, but a couple wanting to spend less need not treat a large mixed seafood dish as the compulsory Leith experience.

There is a temptation, with an old waterfront pub, to turn the building into a larger story than the evidence allows. The King's Wark's association with James I's royal complex does reach back to the fifteenth century: residence, storehouse and armoury belonged here. Historic Environment Scotland dates the present building principally to the early eighteenth century, with possible earlier remains. The distinction improves the place. These walls belong to the continuing use and rebuilding of a working shore, rather than an improbable claim that every stone has stood untouched since 1434. We look back towards the water with a better sense of what a royal presence in a port involved: storage and administration as well as a place to sleep.

Back at the table, the dog has settled and the menu has given us good reasons to stay. The room's enclosed, traditional character is part of the pleasure, though it makes advance notice of a large dog especially sensible. Allow for the sample menu's discretionary 10 per cent service charge and confirm the current food selection. Our recommendation is the smoked haddock: a distinctive Scottish plate at a more manageable price than the mixed seafood bowl. We finish our wine and leave enough afternoon for the walk along the water.

36 Shore, Leith, Edinburgh EH6 6QU.

3. The Queens Arms

Down at the Queens Arms, the dog joins us in a basement doing a remarkably thorough impression of an old library that has acquired a bar. There are books, exposed stone and a copper-topped counter curving through the room. The antiquity is largely decorative; CAMRA describes the interior as faux-antique, and there is no need to supply it with imaginary centuries. We settle in, put the dog beside our chair and examine the drinks. A pub can be persuasive without having witnessed Mary, Queen of Scots, after whom this one is named.

Our first discovery is an Orchard Highball, £12, which uses Pochle, a spirit made with Edinburgh's windfallen apples. Vodka, apple liqueur, lime, agave and tonic join it. The recipe interests us because an urban harvest has found its way into a city-centre basement, where the usual invocation of local ingredients might stop at a Scottish gin. We order one alongside a pint of Cold Town lager, £6.75, and return to the food. The lager is the uncomplicated choice for someone who wants a drink with lunch; the highball gives the apple drinker a more specific reason to be here.

The steak pie is £21, with Cold Town's Robert the Juice ale in the filling, shortcrust pastry, carrot and gravy. We add mash for £2.50. That supplement matters: this is a £23.50 pie-and-potato lunch before a drink or the optional 10 per cent service charge. We cut into the pastry, moving some of the filling towards the mash. Shortcrust makes a different claim on the plate from the Scran & Scallie's puff lid; it gives beef and gravy a firm, buttery companion rather than a stack of fragile leaves. There is a useful directness to the order. There is a proper meal on our drinking-pub table, with the dog resting beneath it, and neither party has been asked to relocate to the pavement.

At weekday lunchtime, a £15 plate of venison sausages and mash with juniper gravy offers a less expensive route to much the same comfort. We pause over it before committing to the pie. Venison and juniper are an intelligible pairing: the berry's resinous character belongs with game, and the mash leaves room for both. The menu's range is broad enough for companions who want fish and chips or a burger, but the Scottish details are most interesting when they change the food rather than merely label it. We finish by sharing the £8 cranachan cheesecake, which carries the raspberry, whisky and oats of the traditional Scottish pudding into a more structured dessert. Honeycomb adds another reason not to order two automatically.

Then there are the screens. Five of them make the pub's sporting intentions plain, and it serves as a gathering place for supporters watching Edinburgh Rugby away matches. For us, with a dog, the fixture list is as useful as the menu. A sociable animal accustomed to an animated room may manage happily; a dog that startles when a room cheers deserves a quieter appointment. The Sunday evening quiz adds another reason to choose the time deliberately. We favour an ordinary weekday lunch, when the lower-priced menu is available and sport is less likely to dictate the conversation.

Before leaving, we notice the break-even whisky bottle, sold at cost while that selection lasts. It is worth asking which whisky is being poured, rather than assuming a particular label. Between that invitation, the Edinburgh apple drink and the steak pie, the Queens Arms has more to offer than its collection of attractive pub furnishings. Book with the dog mentioned, check the match schedule, and give the drinks list a few minutes of its own.

49 Frederick Street, Edinburgh EH2 1EP.

4. The Tolbooth Tavern

The projecting clock above the Canongate is a useful landmark when we approach the Tolbooth Tavern with the dog. It looks inseparable from the old tower, although the clock's present arrangement belongs to nineteenth-century alterations. The tower itself dates from 1591, when this was the administrative centre of a separate burgh, with a court, council and jail. Beside it stands the early-seventeenth-century building occupied by the pub. Edinburgh is generous with old things; it pays to distinguish which old thing we are looking at.

Inside, we keep to the bar, where well-behaved dogs are explicitly welcome. The dining space extends to a mezzanine, but a general reservation is not enough for this visit: we need a food table in the dog-permitted area. We settle at one, draw the menu towards us and start with Cullen skink, £9.25. Smoked haddock, potato and onion in cream make a soup substantial enough to influence everything ordered afterwards. We break the accompanying roll and use it at the edge of the bowl. There is no benefit in hurrying from this to a large main course simply because the menu calls it a starter.

Macsween's haggis follows, served with neeps and tatties—swede and potato—and a whisky cream sauce. At £9.45 as a starter or £18.55 as a main, it can occupy either place in a meal. We choose the smaller serving to share after the soup. Haggis asks for a little explanation if the reader has met it only as a national emblem: offal, oats and seasoning make a savoury pudding whose appeal lies as much in the grain and pepper as the meat. Here the familiar accompaniments let it remain the subject. A vegetarian version is available, so a meat-free diner can join in without having to order an unrelated token dish.

Whisky needs an equally considered approach. The £23 Holyrood flight brings together three changing small-batch whiskies from the Edinburgh distillery. We choose it because it gives a local producer room to show differences between bottlings, rather than requiring us to commit to a single familiar name. There is also a £24 Peat Ladder, moving through Highland Park 12, Talisker 10 and Ardbeg Corryvreckan. That is the more purposeful choice for someone who already knows they enjoy smoky whisky; sharing the tasting gives us room to compare them without making three drams an individual obligation. The dog, who has no interest in distillery geography, remains comfortably outside this deliberation.

There is a practical boundary to the welcome. Live-music evenings can turn the bar from somewhere to eat quietly into somewhere to stay for another drink, and the late-bites menu is tied to those occasions rather than offered every night. We choose an earlier meal with the dog. The kitchen also states that it has no dedicated allergen-free fryers, a detail far more useful to some diners than another paragraph about medieval Edinburgh. Discuss dietary requirements before ordering, and allow for the menu's 10 per cent service charge.

For a first encounter with Scottish food, this is an unusually manageable meal: smoked-fish soup, a small serving of haggis and a shared whisky flight. We can adjust the portions, keep the dog with us throughout and take our time beside the bar. Reserve the right table and the Tolbooth makes a useful, satisfying stop on a walk through the Canongate.

167 Canongate, Edinburgh EH8 8BN.

5. Copper Blossom

We take the steps down from George Street with the dog and enter a room that has used flowers and pink with very little hesitation. Copper Blossom is a cocktail bar, and it looks prepared for a celebration before anyone has supplied an occasion. Dogs are welcome, as the city's tourism guide confirms, but we arrange a suitable table in advance. Stairs and a basement room also make this a less straightforward choice for a dog or owner with limited mobility. Our visit is an early one, with food and a drink in mind rather than a late evening in a busy bar.

The Banana Ball, £11.50, makes a fairly decisive statement of intent. Banana milk-washed Bumbu rum meets banana liqueur, salted caramel, chocolate bitters and soda, with a foam banana to finish. We order it for the wholeheartedness of the idea: an adult drink that has retained a serious attachment to the sweet shop. The chocolate bitters suggest some resistance to all that sugar, but anyone who dislikes sweet cocktails should read the ingredients rather than hope the bartender has secretly made a martini. Across the table, Rhub Me Up, £13, takes gin towards rhubarb, vanilla, Cocchi aperitif and champagne. These are drinks to choose according to appetite, not merely the colour of the photograph.

The drinks call for something to eat. From Monday to Thursday, three-for-two small plates make a useful way to try the kitchen, and our choice begins with halloumi wrapped in kataifi pastry. Kataifi consists of fine strands, so it gives the cheese a quite different casing from a sheet of filo or a breadcrumb coat. Chilli-lime honey supplies sweetness and acidity around the salty cheese. We cut it to share, then bring over chorizo croquettes with smoked-lime mayonnaise and a dish of edamame, hispi cabbage and cucumber dressed with soy, ginger and sesame. The vegetable plate has a job to do among the cheese, cured meat and sweet drinks. Ordering only the fried things would be easy; we prefer the meal with something green in it.

There is a more substantial reason to read beyond the small plates. The £22 steak salad combines flat-iron steak with rice noodles, edamame, pak choi and a soy-and-ginger dressing. It originated with a recipe by nine-year-old Tait for an Edinburgh Children's Hospital Charity fundraising cookbook; £5 from each sale goes to the charity. The story is worth knowing, though it does not have to carry the dish. Steak, noodles and vegetables already make a coherent lunch for someone who wants a single plate rather than the negotiation of sharing. The rice noodles make it a fuller meal than the word ‘salad’ might suggest. We keep our smaller dishes, but this is the main course we pause over.

For dessert, we share the £7.50 apple-pie spring roll with miso custard. The custard is the interesting part of the description. Miso brings a fermented, savoury saltiness to an otherwise familiar apple-and-custard pairing, giving the pudding something to say beyond the novelty of its wrapper. We divide it while the dog remains beside our table. By now the menu's method is clear: recognisable pleasures, given a different texture or an unexpected ingredient, in a room designed for people who want to make an event of lunch.

That mood will suit some dogs better than others. For a companion unsettled by groups and animated conversation, one of the quieter pub lunches is a better choice; here, book early and explain the size of the dog. Allow for the 10 per cent service charge, and use the weekday small-plate offer if variety matters more than a large main. We recommend Copper Blossom for the owner who enjoys cocktails and wants the dog to join a sociable city-centre meal. The halloumi and apple pudding give the food enough interest to keep pace with the glass containing the foam banana.

Basement, 107 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 3ES.

6. S&B Brunch Bar

We return to Stockbridge for S&B, the Raeburn Place café formerly called Sip & Bark, and bring the dog into a business conceived with canine company in mind. Craig and Kasia Neilson opened it in 2024; the subsequent shortening of the name has not removed the dog menu. We put our own blanket beside the table and let the dog settle while deciding what sort of breakfast can reasonably follow a walk. The menu's answer involves a croissant, a waffle iron and Korean fried chicken.

The croffle begins with croissant dough pressed in the iron. That distinction matters. A conventional waffle rises from batter; croissant dough carries laminated layers of butter and dough into the same grid. The resulting base is pastry with places for sauce to collect. We order the Korean chicken version, with sesame, honey-gochujang sauce and a fried egg, and cut down through the stack. Gochujang, the fermented Korean chilli paste, brings heat and savoury depth to the honey. The egg and pastry make this recognisably brunch, while the chicken gives us a reason to stop treating it as breakfast with an unusually late start.

It is a rich order, and the appeal depends on enjoying sweet and savoury food together. The maple-bacon croffle makes that preference even more explicit, using Ayrshire bacon, egg and syrup. We stay with the chicken because the chilli introduces another consideration beyond butter, salt and sweetness. Across the table, a melting dipping toastie offers a different kind of excess: brioche, fries and a sauce for dipping, with fillings that include beef and mustard mayonnaise or blue cheese and caramelised onion. The business's listed menu puts the toasties at £11.50; confirm the current dine-in price when booking. This is a place where the supposedly modest sandwich deserves to be read in full.

Coffee from Santu, the Edinburgh roaster with Brazilian roots, is enough alongside our already elaborate plate. The café also serves cocktails; its 2025 menu refresh introduced a spicy margarita and a raspberry mojito alongside the waffles and toasties. That gives the visit room to move from breakfast towards lunch, although we are content with coffee and the dog at our feet. The owners have built the menu around the kind of food people come out specifically to eat: assembled, indulgent dishes that would require rather more washing-up at home than putting bread in a toaster.

The dog has its own menu to investigate, a more substantial commitment than merely permitting a lead through the doorway. We look at it before ordering anything for our companion, who is quite capable of finding brunch interesting without being fed from our plates. This is the best fit of the six for someone who actively wants a dog-centred café visit. That emphasis also means another dog may be part of the room; owners of animals that struggle with close canine company should discuss the table and timing before they come.

Croffle finished, we gather the blanket for the walk out. Book under S&B and confirm opening times directly with the brunch bar; older listings still carry the Sip & Bark name. Come for the chicken croffle if chilli, honey and pastry sound like an agreeable use of the morning. The dog belongs in the plan from the beginning, and the human breakfast has enough character to justify making that plan around it.

108 Raeburn Place, Edinburgh EH4 1HH.