Four floors above the last fairway of the Old Course, behind a wall of glass, a bar and grill looks straight down the eighteenth to the sea. Go for oysters and a cocktail as the light goes, Sunday lunch, or the walking tour that ends at the bar. Dinner is the bigger bet.
Every town has one room that everyone ends up in eventually, and in St Andrews it is now the top of Rusacks. When the hotel was rebuilt in 2021 its new wing was given a fourth floor of glass, and 18 — the name is the hole under the window — opened as a bar and grill with a view no restaurant on earth can copy: the eighteenth fairway of the Old Course running away below you to the Swilcan Bridge, the R&A clubhouse across the green, the West Sands beyond and the whole grey-blue sweep of the bay behind. At seven on a summer evening, with the last groups walking up and the light coming in flat off the sea, it is the best seat in golf, and you do not need a tee time to sit in it.
The room has been done to match. Dark green leather, club chairs, brass lamps, booths along the glass, a locker of dry-aged Scotch beef by the door and a Robata grill in the open kitchen — a 1920s clubhouse redrawn by someone who has been to Manhattan. Outside, a terrace with a putting green on it, for guests who have not had enough. It is, by some distance, the most glamorous place to drink in the town.
Why go
For the view, first, and it is reason enough. Then for the way the place is best used, which is not necessarily dinner. The bar runs from midday until eleven, and the smart move is a table by the glass at six with two Cumbrae oysters each, one classic and one with charred cucumber and gin, and a Rusacks Old Fashioned, watching the eighteenth do its thing. Sunday lunch is the other reliable pleasure: roast rump of Scotch beef, a Yorkshire pudding the size of a bunker, beef-fat roasties and coal-roasted roots, in a room full of people who have just walked the course. And from Wednesday to Saturday there is afternoon tea in the window, which for the non-golfing half of a golf trip is a better afternoon than the golf.
There is also, every day at five, a walking tour of St Andrews that ends here with a classic cocktail, which is the best way we know to get a first-time visitor from the cathedral to the Links with a drink at the end of it.
The table
Dinner is where 18 divides people. The kitchen cooks over open flame — Robata-grilled scallops with a white-bean and smoked-bacon cassoulet, Highland venison with Jerusalem artichoke and brambles, salt-aged duck, a St Andrews farmhouse cheddar soufflé — and on the right night it is very good: the Courier gave it four and a half for food and five for service early in 2024, and the Scotsman ate a four-course tasting menu here and left happy. The steaks, chateaubriand and tomahawks from the locker by the door, are the headline and the sticking point. At fifty pounds and up, with the sides charged separately, they need to be perfect, and the run of visitor reviews through 2026 says they often are not, and that service on a busy night can lag well behind the room. Prices reflect the view; the view is worth it; the steak has to earn its place on the bill.
Our advice is simple. Book the window for drinks and oysters, or for Sunday lunch, without hesitation. Book dinner if you want the room at night and are ordering from the grill rather than the locker — the scallops, the venison, the duck — and ask for a booth along the glass. If you want the best steak in town, that is a different article.
"The best seat in golf, and you do not need a tee time to sit in it."
The detail people remember
The moment the floodlights come on. Around half past nine in summer the R&A clubhouse across the green is lit from below, the last golfers have gone, the town's spires go dark behind it, and the eighteenth becomes a stage with nobody on it. People who came up for one drink at seven tend to still be there.
Who it is for
Anyone in St Andrews for the first time, for a drink before dinner elsewhere. Golfers walking off the eighteenth, who can be at the bar in four minutes. Couples on the Sunday, for lunch and the walk afterward. The non-golfer, for afternoon tea in the window while the golfer is out. And anyone who wants one big-night room in a small town.
It is not the place for a quiet, cheap or quick dinner, and it is not the place to send a steak purist. The room is loud when full, the bill is a St Andrews bill, and the terrace is Scottish: bring a layer.
A little history
Rusacks has stood on Pilmour Links since 1887, when Wilhelm Rusack built the first hotel in the world designed for visiting golfers on the best ground beside the course. For most of its life the eighteenth was seen from the ground-floor windows and the balconies. When Marine & Lawn bought the hotel in 2019 and spent seven million pounds rebuilding it, the new wing went up rather than out, and the roof became the point: 18 opened with the hotel in September 2021 as the first place in the town where you could look down on the finishing hole rather than across it.
What to do nearby
Stay downstairs: the hotel itself, with balconies over the fairway. Read: Rusacks, the hotel at the end of the eighteenth. [when published]
Walk the Old Course on a Sunday, then come up for lunch. Read: St Andrews Links, more than the home of golf.
The R&A World Golf Museum, across the road, before your drink. Read: The R&A World Golf Museum. [when published]
For the steak, or a quieter dinner in town: Read: Forgan's, St Andrews and Little Italy.
The other rooftop, with the whisky: the Road Hole Bar. Read: The Old Course Hotel, the hotel golfers aim over. [when published]
Know before you go
Address: 18, fourth floor, Rusacks St Andrews, Pilmour Links, St Andrews KY16 9JQ. Tel +44 (0)1334 474321.
From the Old Course: On it — the eighteenth green is under the window. Four minutes' walk from the first tee; three from Market Street.
Hours / season: Bar daily 12pm–11pm; dinner 6pm–10pm. Afternoon tea Wednesday to Saturday 12.30–3pm. Sunday lunch 12.30–3.30pm. Walking tour daily at 5pm.
Price: Starters from around £12, mains from around £30, steaks from around £50 with sides extra; Sunday roast and afternoon tea considerably less. Cocktails from around £11. Expect £60–£120 a head for dinner with wine.
How to book: Reserve through the restaurant's page or call; a window table at sunset needs a week's notice in summer. Walk-ins for the bar.
Good to know: Smart-casual; golf clothes are fine at the bar. The terrace is weather-dependent. Private dining and event spaces available. Gift vouchers. Ask for a booth on the glass.
Best time: Six to half past nine on a clear evening from May to September, arriving in time for the sunset and staying for the floodlights.
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