Pilgrim Bar — Restaurant in City of Edinburgh

We went to Pilgrim for a Harry Potter quiz and we're probably never going to go back there! The quiz itself was a bit odd, more on that later, but the bar and its staff were also pretty terrible.

We got there a bit early to get food and didn't realise that we were supposed to book a table for the quiz (fair enough, our fault) so we sat in the window that hadn't been reserved, and ordered some food and a cup of tea. It honestly must have taken about 25 minutes for the tea to arrive, just before the food did. We were literally the only people in the place at this point. It came in a dirty mug, and the milk was in a teacup which meant it got spilled, there was nowhere to put the teabag so we put it in the milk, and the sugar was in a tiny little mason jar that was too small for the teaspoon to fit in, so some sugar also got spilled. At the time we found this just a bit amusing but it became a bit of a running theme!

My friend arrived and ordered some food and some water. The water out of the skooshy gun tasted a bit weird and there was something floating in it so she went up to order a coke instead and told the guy behind the bar that it wasted weird. His reply was a very brusque "we clean our taps every day". No sorry or anything. After she'd got her coke (£2 for a half pint) he told the next customer quite rudely that my friend was being difficult. This customer was at the next table to us so came over and told us, and also said that she'd been waiting at the bar for a very long time, much longer than anyone else.

The coke also tasted weird so for the next round I went up and got a little glass bottle of coke and a pint-sized bottle of beer for me. Those 2 drinks cost £9.20.

On the plus side, we all liked the pretzel burger buns, but the rest of the burger was not that good.

Now for the quiz. The guy reading it admitted at the start that he'd never read or seen Harry Potter, and as a result he kept mispronouncing things. Most of the questions were about Harry Potter as you would expect, but the last round was 'general knowledge', except it wasn't general knowledge, it was actually about animals, and even within that 3 of the 10 questions were about snakes, and 2 of the answers were 'Black Mamba'.

There were 2 bonus rounds, one for the best name, and one for the best pickup line. There was supposed to be a prize for this but they never even announced a winner! There was also supposed to be free nachos for everyone halfway through but that didn't happen either.

He wasn't particularly entertaining either, not really any banter or anything, and he clearly didn't write the quiz, and he didn't know what the prize was, so I'm not really sure why he was even doing it.

We won the quiz, and since the prize had been advertised as £100 we thought we'd win that, but actually the prize was a £30 bar tab and you had to gamble on a higher or lower game to win the £100. We'd already decided that we were never going to come back so decided to gamble, lost and didn't get anything.

The event was advertised as something like "Harry Potter Quiz - Win £100 cash - Free Nachos" and one of those turned out to be a lie, and two of them were only partially true. And the bar itself was also terrible and really expensive. So we're...

Seeing as my last review was deleted..

Went on the first day opening since lockdown and the service was pretty shocking. We were told that we could order online or a waiter would come over. Not once did a waiter come over and ask what we’d like. So we ordered online with a service charge every time. There was posters in the bar saying that students get 15 percent off, however there was no option for that when we had to pay online. Our first order took around 20 minutes for two drinks and it was pretty quiet at this point. We then had another order which hadn’t arrived for 45 minutes. If we hadn’t paid already, we would have just walked out. My friend went to the bar and asked for our order, to be told to sit down. Nearly an hour later we finally got our drinks and nachos. Watching the staff behind the bar gave me anxiety with how stressed/unorganised the whole thing was. The manager then went around and started shouting at everyone and saying we couldn’t sing.. whilst wearing her mask as a chin strap and her mouth/nose fully out in people’s faces. The music was then turned down because people were having a good time.. even though there was plastic screens between all us. Quite disappointed to be honest as we would have spent twice the amount of money if the service was better. Food and drink is nice and for a good price, but I’d rather go somewhere else, pay more and receive...

Made a booking to watch the rugby and have food, despite allowing you to book children and being emailed (in which I responded to advise here with teenage daughter (19) at no point were we told to bring ID .. door staff totally unsympathetic and told their licence wouldn’t allow it without ID.. no place to watch the rugby at such short notice and licence allows entry if you buy food ! We were there to eat !!! Nowhere else in Edinburgh asked for ID. So South African supporters couldn’t watch the rugby … place was empty .. understandable why .. terrible approach and total lack of information , everywhere around this bar is slammed as they stand empty … take that as you will and avoid this place

Update .. instead of apologising the GM decides to take umbridge with the fact I have called out his staff , now I can see the issue is management not staff , lead by example is an approach they chose not to take . To clarify the management team feel visitors from outside the city deserve only condensation and are not welcomed , this is evident from reviews and his response such as “it’s a widely know fact in Edinburgh “ and “I’ll train you on licensing law “ I mean wow that’s how to attract some of the visitors to the city to this place … if your not from Edinburgh, let alone UK...