4042 Edinburgh — Late Night Liquor on Grindlay Street

Not every great night out in Edinburgh comes dressed up in velvet ropes and cocktail menus written in cursive. Sometimes it comes in distressed walls, peeling fly posters, a ping-pong table in the corner and a bar that keeps going until 3am. That's 4042. It sits at 40-42 Grindlay Street — the same address that housed the Citrus Club for over twenty-five years — and it brings its own identity to a building with a lot of history behind it.

The Address and Its History

The building at 40-42 Grindlay Street has been part of Edinburgh's nightlife since 1991, when the Citrus Club opened its doors and helped kick off the city's dance music scene. The Citrus Club ran for over twenty-five years, making it one of the most enduring independent venues in Scottish clubbing history. Its Wednesday night residency, Tease Age, became the longest-running and most successful weekly club night in Edinburgh, and the address carried weight that outlasted individual promoters and DJs.

When the Citrus Club closed in 2017, the building could have gone the way of so many venues — converted into flats, turned into a restaurant, quietly erased from the nightlife map. Instead it reopened as 4042, which took the address and built something new without trying to replicate what had been there before. That's the right call. Chasing the Citrus Club's legacy would have been a losing game. Instead, 4042 carved out its own identity: rawer, more casual, with a different crowd and a different energy.

What 4042 Actually Is

The full name is 4042 Late Night Liquor, and that tells you most of what you need to know about the approach. This is a late-night bar that takes its drinks seriously, stays open until 3am every single night of the week, and wraps it all in a space that looks like it was designed to feel genuinely lived-in rather than curated within an inch of its life. The walls are deliberately distressed. There's graffiti. Metal grate partitions break up the space. The fly poster aesthetic runs throughout — the kind of look that takes real effort to pull off without looking like a corporate attempt at being underground. Here it reads as authentic because the venue commits to it completely.

The result is somewhere that sits comfortably between bar and club. Early in the evening it functions as a bar where groups can settle in, have a drink, get competitive over the ping-pong tables. Later on, when the DJs are on and the crowd has built, it shifts into something closer to a proper club night without ever losing the casual energy that made the early part of the evening work. You do not need to be in a certain outfit or arrive at a certain time. You just show up.

The Ping Pong

This is one of those features that sounds like a gimmick and isn't. The table tennis tables at 4042 are a central part of what makes the venue different from every other late-night bar on the Edinburgh circuit. On Tuesdays they're free — walk in, pick up a bat, play. On other nights a £5 refundable deposit secures a table. Either way, having something to actually do while you're drinking changes the dynamic of a group night completely. You're not standing around waiting for the room to fill up. You're playing, which means the group is already having a good time before the music has even kicked in properly.

Beer pong runs on the same tables, which is the natural progression of any evening that starts with table tennis and gains momentum. For groups that want a destination rather than just a venue — somewhere with a reason to be there rather than just a bar to pass through — the ping-pong element is what makes 4042 a genuine option rather than a fallback.

The Music

The music policy at 4042 runs across hip-hop, R&B, and house, with DJs on Friday and Saturday nights taking the floor properly. Large screens throughout the space show sport during the earlier part of the evening, which reflects the dual identity of the venue — it's genuinely comfortable as a sports bar in the way that most Edinburgh bars claim to be without pulling it off, and just as comfortable as a late-night club space when the evening shifts in that direction.

The transition from pre-drinks venue to club space happens naturally rather than through a forced gear change. The crowd that's been playing ping pong and watching sport from 6pm has usually warmed up the room by the time the DJs are on, and there's enough energy in the space that the later arrivals slot in rather than having to build an atmosphere from scratch. That organic progression is harder to engineer than it looks, and it's part of what makes a 3am finish at 4042 feel earned rather than just late.

Cocktails and What to Drink

The cocktail menu at 4042 delivers on the "Late Night Liquor" name. The drinks are strong, reasonably priced for Edinburgh, and the bar can handle most classics off-menu if you know what you want. The signature cocktail list covers enough ground that there's something for everyone in the group without the menu becoming a thirty-page production that takes ten minutes to navigate. Reviewers consistently single out the value — the combination of strong pours and fair prices makes 4042 one of the better options in the city for a long group night that doesn't require a designated budget manager.

Student and hospitality discounts apply — 15% and 20% respectively — which is a detail worth knowing if you're in either category. It's the kind of offer that turns a reasonable night into a very good-value one, and the venue is genuinely welcoming to both crowds rather than offering the discount in name only while treating those groups as an afterthought.

Groups and Getting There

Grindlay Street sits just off Lothian Road, minutes from the Usher Hall and the Lyceum Theatre, and within easy reach of Haymarket and the West End. It's not in the thick of the Old Town club strip, which is part of its appeal — the crowd it draws tends to be people who found it rather than people who ended up there by default after walking past the queue. For groups, table bookings can be made by emailing jenni@4042.co.uk, which is worth doing on busier nights if you want to guarantee a base rather than scrambling for space when you arrive.

The venue opens at 5pm daily, which makes it a strong option for early-evening group gatherings that evolve into a full night rather than venues that don't come alive until 10pm. If your group wants to start early, play some ping pong, eat elsewhere, come back and drink properly, and still be in a live room with DJs later — 4042 is set up for exactly that kind of night.

Should You Go?

If you want a relaxed, no-pretension late-night bar with something actually going on beyond standing with a drink — yes. 4042 is at its best for groups who want flexibility: start with ping pong, move into cocktails, stay for the DJs, leave at 3am. The Grindlay Street address carries history that most Edinburgh venues can't match, and the current incarnation does something different enough with it that the comparison doesn't feel like pressure. Come on a Tuesday if you want the free tables. Come on a Friday or Saturday if you want the full music night. Either way, bring a group and give it time to build — 4042 rewards staying rather than passing through.