Lady Libertine, Edinburgh

A prominent, street corner pub just off St Andrew’s Square, it really is very much a pub of two halves with the elegant street level rooms being in stark contrast to the more rough and ready basement area. It’s divided in to a couple of different rooms, the larger one containing a large bar counter, and an elegant drawing room off to one side. Table service seems to be the order of the day here, and we were shown to a table in the side room by a friendly barmaid. The larger of the two rooms is quite elegant with black and white chequered tiling on the floor, green wallpaper on much of the walls and a few artistic prints dotted around. Despite being a large room, seating was fairly limited with some bench seating along one wall and stools at the bar. The smaller room was equally elegant with light wood panelling covering the walls, large arched windows and further colourful artwork, much of it with a cocktail theme. Seating here was much comfier with padded benches segregated in to different areas with partitioning between them and some curved benches in the centre of the room forming circular pods. Downstairs was a complete contrast as mentioned, much lower lighting levels, bare concrete supporting pillars, exposed ducting and wiring on the ceiling and glazed butcher’s style tiling covering much of the walls. It’s difficult to imagine more of a contrast between the two. What the two halves did have in common however was the atrocious drinks selection. Upstairs the solitary tap on the bar dispensed Pilot Libertine lager, whilst downstairs the equally lonely pump had Pilot IPA on keg. I sort of get that upstairs, I guess the target clientele is more your wine or cocktail drinking type, but it seemed odd to have such a woeful selection downstairs.