Edinburgh built its drinking life on steps, the closes that stitch the New Town below to the Old Town above. The Halfway House sits in the middle of one such flight, a pub so small it feels like a secret the staircase keeps.
The bar stands at 24 Fleshmarket Close, the steep lane that climbs from Market Street near Waverley station toward the High Street. It calls itself the smallest pub in Edinburgh, and the room makes the claim easy to believe.
The room
The front holds window seats, stools and a handful of tables, while the back tucks in semi-circular booth seating, all of it wrapped in railway memorabilia that nods to the station below. According to the Old Town Pub Co, the bar runs four handpumps of cask-conditioned ale from Scottish and English microbreweries, with the guest beers changing on a daily basis. Heated pies, pasties and sausage rolls are kept going through the day, the honest food of a railway pub.
The cask focus is the room's whole argument. Real ale is a living product, conditioned in the cask and poured by hand, and a tiny bar that turns four lines over daily is making a case for freshness against the convenience of keg. The CAMRA awards the pub has collected reflect that the case lands.
The setting deepens it. A close was once the working artery of the Old Town, and a pub lodged halfway up one is drinking inside the city's medieval plumbing, a layer most visitors climb past without noticing. Among Edinburgh's hidden gems, few are so literally hidden by the geography.
What to order
Ask which of the four cask ales is freshest, since the line-up turns over daily and the staff know what dropped that morning. A Scottish microbrewery pour is the right first choice, the local expression of the style the pub exists to champion. The pub also keeps a wide malt whisky range, including its own Halfway House Tullibardine bottling, which is the dram to order if you want something you cannot get elsewhere. Pair either with a heated pie, the railway snack that suits a pint between trains. Take a half rather than a pint if you mean to try more than one ale, since the daily rotation rewards breadth over depth. The bar staff track which cask was tapped that morning, so a quick question is the fastest route to the freshest glass in the house. The whisky range runs wider than the small room suggests, and the house Tullibardine bottling is a fair benchmark for a first dram before you wander further down the list.
Who it is for
The Halfway House is for the cask drinker, the traveller killing an hour before a Waverley departure, and anyone who likes a pub small enough to learn in one visit. It is the wrong room for a large group, which is part of its charm. For two more cask-led Old Town rooms, the wall of taps at The Bow Bar and the folk nights at Sandy Bell's carry the afternoon on.
Best time to go
The pub keeps long daily hours from late morning, so a quiet weekday afternoon is the easiest window to find a window seat. The room fills quickly when trains disgorge or the Old Town wakes at night, given how few seats there are. Set the wider walk with our Edinburgh guide or the global hidden gems collection.
Sources
Reporting for this profile draws on the Old Town Pub Co page, the pub's Tripadvisor profile, and its CAMRA WhatPub entry.
