Cruz 14 The Shore, Leith Style: All at sea Price: Cocktails £5.95; pint of beer £2.90; wine from £3.15; champagne £6.95; smoothies £3 Best for: Pre-clubbing Not for: Shore leave Wheelchair access: No Apparently the Russians are selling boats equipped with nuclear-power plants. Once you know that, the idea of Cruz seems a model of good sense. It is, after all, merely a boat equipped with a restaurant and a bar and, although it is moored on the Water of Leith (not a place associated with sun, surf and cruising), it offers a novel alternative to all those landlubbers' pubs on dry land. Who knows, once those Russian boats screw up the climate, everyone in Scotland could be clamouring to cool down with a waterborne pint.
In the meantime, I have to disappoint my editor, who had visions of me sipping pina coladas with the captain on the upper deck while slapping on the factor 12. It's been unseasonably warm of late, but the Main Bar and its adjacent Blue Room piano bar are very much internal affairs. On balance, that's a good thing.
Were you in a cocktail frame of mind, however, Cruz would be your first port of call. Its menu includes 16 classics, including bloody Mary, mai tai and Moscow mule, and a further 14 "retro fusions" such as apple-crumble martini, Singapore sling and strawberry cosmopolitan. The Shore might not be the French Riviera, but there's nothing to stop you dreaming.
It's this sense of retro fantasy to which Cruz seems to be appealing. With its all-white fittings, padded leather couches and Perspex stools, it's a bit like being dropped into a 1980s pop video - although more Club Tropicana than the full Duran Duran. The boorish group of loud young men at the bar further suggests a throwback to the loadsamoney era of the yuppie, as does the insipid middle-of-the-road soul on the "state-of-the-art sound system", but maybe I picked the wrong night.
What Cruz has on its side is novelty. That's possibly not what they said when a freak natural-gas explosion shook the ship a couple of weeks ago, but it's not every night that you can enjoy a drink in a place where a wobbly table makes you feel sea sick, the ceiling is only an inch above your head and the circular windows give you a view of the wide-open ocean (OK, the flats across the water).
There's a restaurant upstairs, serving a Scottish-Mediterranean hybrid menu to up to 90 diners, plus a week-round programme including Sunday afternoon jazz, midweek salsa and weekend DJs in the Engine Room. The only question is whether a "cutting-edge style bar" makes the most of such a distinctive setting.
