The Best Places to Drink and Stay in the United Kingdom

Living green walls run floor to ceiling throughout this Mayfair hotel, which makes the sustainability pitch hard to miss but also, against all odds, genuinely beautiful. Two renovated buildings near Green Park read as a single purpose-built retreat, with clean Scandinavian lines softened by organic textures and actual plants. The Bamford spa is a draw on its own. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Painted concrete steps and a metal railing are the only entrance to this basement cocktail bar under Hoxton Square, which has been called the bartender's bar in London without anyone arguing too hard. The room is small and rough around the edges, guests are seated and served at the table rather than propped at the bar, and the drinks are precisely the kind that make you forget you walked down stairs to get them.

The menu is split into One Sheet, Two Sheets, and Three Sheets, which tells you exactly the kind of cocktail bar this Dalston spot is: knowing, a little cheeky, and very good at drinks. The Venning brothers have built something deliberately unfussy, with a tight seasonal list that changes often enough to reward repeat visits. Ranked 32nd on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list, it draws a crowd that actually reads the menu rather than defaulting to a gin and tonic.

A working cyder cellar, a replica Roman villa, and a honeybee colony grand enough to earn its own name, Beezantium, and that's before you've unpacked. The Newt is a Michelin three-key country-house hotel in Somerset, with forty rooms split between a limestone manor and Farmyard outbuildings, a spa with an indoor-outdoor pool, and three restaurants drawing heavily on the estate's own gardens. Serious gardens, by the way.

A Palladian mansion six miles from Bath, set on 500 acres of private parkland with its own equestrian center, spa, indoor and outdoor pools, and a fine-dining restaurant. The 42 rooms and nine cottages lean into antiques and four-poster beds high enough to need a footstool, though comfort wins out over museum-piece restraint. It holds three Michelin Keys. Mr. Darcy cosplay is optional but the grounds will not discourage it.

A secret code at an ornamental door off Cranbourn Street gets you into this cocktail bar tucked behind the Magic Mike Live entrance at the Hippodrome. Inside, exposed brick and vintage memorabilia set a moody, cabinet-of-curiosities tone, and the drinks lean into the theme: vintage spirits from past decades appear on the menu alongside more experimental builds. It landed at number 18 on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list for 2026.

The bar takes its name from a pre-Prohibition rye, grapefruit, and raspberry cocktail most people have never heard of, which tells you something about the intentions here. This is a serious cocktail bar on Spring Gardens, walk-in only, with a monthly-changing menu built around four seasonal British flavours. A dedicated Martini and Old Fashioned section keeps the classics honest, and snacks, including cacio e pepe toasties, arrive at the table. It landed at number 23 on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list.

A cocktail bar on Parnie Street where the menu asks you to make a choice before your drink arrives, picking your spirit or opting out of alcohol entirely, with the outcome shaping the flavour, texture, or strength of the serve. The team behind it came up from Shawlands and landed at number 22 on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list. Homemade pizza keeps things grounded, which is either a relief or a surprise, depending on how you found the place.

The marble bar inside the old Bow Street Police Station is a lot more welcoming than it once was for guests. Side Hustle is a Latin American cocktail bar inside the NoMad hotel in Covent Garden, with an agave-heavy drinks list that ranges from tequila and mezcal classics to more inventive builds. Tacos and tostadas keep things grounded. It ranked 12th on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list for 2026.

A tucked-away St. James's hotel in a series of Georgian townhouses with its own private courtyard, the kind of address you either know or you don't. DUKES LONDON runs to 87 rooms and leans into old-school discretion: attentive staff, classic decor, afternoon tea in the Drawing Room, and a basement health club with marble steam room. The bar next door has made the martinis famous, which is a fine problem to have.

Grosvenor Square has FDR and Reagan statues out front, which sets the tone nicely for a hotel that takes itself seriously without being stiff. The Biltmore is a luxury property in Mayfair, all Art Deco bones with contemporary softening, and it sits a short walk from Bond Street, Park Lane, and Oxford Street. There's no spa, but the fitness setup is substantial and several restaurants and bars are on-site, including a steakhouse.

Oscar Wilde was prosecuted in this building; now it's a hotel, which feels about right. The former Bow Street Magistrates' Court, jail cells and all, has been converted into NoMad London's warm, bohemian rooms, full of furniture and objects spanning half a dozen eras. The atrium restaurant anchors the social life, but Side Hustle and the Library give you options from breakfast through last orders. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

The signature martini is served at -20°, which is either an engineering feat or a dare, and the answer matters less than the fact that it arrives. This intimate cocktail bar on Notting Hill Gate builds its rotating menu around the team's travels through Latin America, so the spirits and syrups shift with the season and the itinerary. Ranked 33rd on Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026, it draws a dressed-up crowd who came prepared to be transported somewhere specific.

The entrance on Park Lane is so understated you could walk past it twice, which suits the guests here perfectly. An all-suites hotel on the Hyde Park edge of Mayfair, Grosvenor House Suites runs to penthouses and park views, corridors quiet enough to hear your own ambitions, and a hushed atrium restaurant where business deals and celebrations proceed at the same discreet volume.

A grand Park Lane hotel overlooking Hyde Park, Grosvenor House has been a fixture on this stretch of London for the better part of a century. The 423 rooms lean into crisp linens, dark wood, and marble bathrooms rather than boutique-hotel quirkiness, which suits the international business traveler set just fine. It's a large, polished property where the postcode does a lot of the work.

There's no reception desk at this Marylebone Lane boutique hotel, just someone with a tablet and a glass of something sparkling to check you in while you sink into a sofa. The rooms are modern in a neighborhood that usually defaults to Georgian formality, and the public spaces include an Italian restaurant in a double-height room and a bar that draws locals as reliably as guests. Butler service runs on every floor.

Peacocks wander the twenty-acre grounds outside, which does set expectations for what you'll find inside. Prestonfield House is a 17th-century country house hotel two miles from Edinburgh's Old Town, decorated in a style that can only be called Scottish aristocrat fever dream: marble, leather, priceless antiques, brocade everywhere. The Michelin Guide awarded it 1 Key. Guests who want to avoid the city entirely can, between the restaurant Rhubarb and several very well-stocked lounges.

A 57-room hotel in the middle of Soho where the designer drew from 1920s London opulence, Italian travels, and the world of disco, somehow without the result being a disaster. Rooms lean into unexpected colors, vibrant patterns, and the odd antique flourish. The rooftop bar, Flute, has a covered wraparound terrace with views over the neighborhood. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Down an easy-to-miss mews off Dean Street, this luxury boutique hotel holds a Michelin Key and rooms that are considerably more spacious than Soho square footage has any business permitting. Kit Kemp's decorating runs to rich color and oversized furniture that feels collected rather than procured, and the fifth-floor suites open onto private terraces with city views. Two private cinemas and drawing rooms with fireplaces mean you could stay in the whole time, which would be a waste of the address.

A copper-vaulted room below Charlotte Street that fits maybe six people around a central island bar, which means the bartender is always close enough to explain why there's blue cheese in your cocktail. This subterranean cocktail bar leans hard into savory and unexpected, pairing vodka with beetroot and walnut or whiskey with horchata and milk tea. Named in the Top 50 Cocktail Bars, and the non-alcoholic menu gets the same treatment.

A rotating menu, a backbar built around agave spirits, and a crate of rare records that actually gets played: this Hackney Road cocktail bar has a lot going on without feeling like it's trying. The whole team develops the drinks together, which gives the staff something to say about every bottle on the shelf. It landed at number 26 on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list, if that helps calibrate expectations. Open seven days.

A nine-metre steel bar anchors this tiny, dark speakeasy tucked beneath the Kricket restaurant group's original Soho site. The cocktail menu, called "In Search of the Divine," pulls from the Indian subcontinent, so your Old Fashioned comes with coconut and jaggery and your margarita gets chaat masala. It holds 23 people, runs until 3am, and operates mostly on walk-ins, which either sounds chaotic or ideal depending on your evening. Ranked in the Top 50 Cocktail Bars.

The current menu at this basement cocktail bar in Leeds is organized around Sugar, Salt, Acid, and Fat, which sounds like a food-science lecture but lands as a genuinely clever way to pick a drink without pretending you know what "amaro" means. Craft beer on draft and small-vineyard wines round things out. It landed at number 20 on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list, which should tell you what kind of crowd finds their way downstairs.

A proper South London pub on a corner you've probably cycled past without stopping, which would be a mistake. The Canton Arms is a gastropub where the blackboard changes constantly and the cooking leans serious, oxtail braised in Guinness, salt marsh lamb, foie gras on toast, all in a room that still feels like a pub rather than a restaurant pretending otherwise. It ranked eleventh on the Top 50 Gastropubs list in 2026.

Fordwich sits in a claim to fame as England's smallest town, and this ivy-clad Arts and Crafts pub beside the River Stour punches well above its postcode. A wood-topped bar and open fires give way to a panelled dining room where the cooking is modern and occasionally playful without letting cleverness override flavour. The kitchen leans hard on Kentish producers. It holds a Michelin star.

A small Italian cocktail bar on Bread Street where amari, vermouths, and bitters are treated less like modifiers and more like the whole point. The Negroni is a baseline, not a showpiece, and the menu moves from there into weirder, warmer territory. The playlist gets its own Spotify account, which tells you something about how seriously the team takes the room. Top 50 Cocktail Bars has it at number seventeen.

A converted village pub in the Kent countryside, roughly split between bar and dining room so it never quite forgets what it is. The kitchen leans into seasonal produce from Kent and the West Country, mixing both in a way that reads as modern British without being precious about the label. The garden out back fills up when the weather agrees, and the crowd skews local and commuter, which is exactly what the place was built for.

A Michelin-starred gastropub on a Camberwell corner that holds a large bar for walk-ins alongside a proper dining room, so you can commit to whatever level of evening you're after. The cooking is deceptively plain, leaning on good produce and classical technique without making a fuss about either. The weekday lunch with a pint or a glass of wine for under £20 has made it a neighborhood institution at impressive speed.

Neon red signs glow against the brick walls of this Soho dive bar tucked down a backstreet off Tottenham Court Road, and the name is the only thing scary about it. The team behind the Cocktail Trading Company runs the room, keeping cocktails at £11 and deliberately un-fussy while landing something that feels like beauty and filth in quiet agreement. Sick tunes, a pet piñata, and no pretension anywhere in sight.

The menu changes constantly by design, which is the whole point of the name. This cocktail bar in Digbeth's Custard Factory keeps only twelve drinks on the list at any given time, ranging from fruity and approachable to a rye-walnut-salt number that means business. The room is laid out like a kitchen at a house party, which sounds like a cliche until you're in it. It landed on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list at number sixteen.

A Victorian archway over a plain black door on Jackson's Row opens into a cocktail bar that feels like it borrowed its bones from an industrial New York loft, bare brick, dark wood, and velvet all somehow coexisting. The plant-based menu is a genuine commitment rather than a footnote, and the drinks lean inventive without being smug about it. It ranked fourteenth on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list for 2026.

Flagstone floors, colourful throws, and a blazing fire in winter frame the view across to the Gothic ruins of Byland Abbey from this classic North Yorkshire gastropub with rooms. The kitchen runs on produce from the owners' own farm, and the menu moves with the seasons while keeping a few crowd-pleasers nailed down permanently. Come summer, the garden terrace is a perfectly reasonable excuse for a pint in the afternoon.

A stripped-back Islington gastropub that Grace Dent called a benchmark for where pub dining is heading. Stools at the bar for a pint of Five Points and a snack, tables for a proper meal built around seasonal ingredients cooked simply and plated with care. The chef came up through Dabbous, which explains why the food feels more considered than the room lets on. Sunday roasts, organic wines, and a cocktail list that includes a Hogweed Martini, if you're feeling adventurous.

A wood-fired oven does a lot of the heavy lifting at this Cotswolds gastropub, turning out everything from flatbreads to pizza alongside a hearty, classic British menu that changes with the seasons. The kitchen leans on local game dealers, farmers, and fishmongers, so venison faggots sit comfortably next to chicken Milanese. It's the kind of pub where nobody's pretending the food is incidental, and the drinks list makes sure the evening doesn't end too soon.

A proper pub by the Quayside, named for the lane it sits on and stocked with more than fifty beers downstairs before you even think about heading up to the rustic dining room. The kitchen leans into hearty, punchily flavoured British cooking, the kind that suits a pint and doesn't apologize for it. A Michelin Bib Gourmand and a fixture on the Top 50 Gastropubs list, which seems about right for a place this committed to being an actual pub.

A traditional high-street pub in Tavistock where proper pints and carefully cooked food share equal billing, The Cornish Arms holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a spot on the Top 50 Gastropubs list. The kitchen leans into local produce without making a fuss about it, turning out dishes that look simple until you notice how much thought went into them. Locals and tourists seem equally at home, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.

A low-beamed country pub in a tiny Berkshire village, The Crown is the project of Dominic Chapman, who built his reputation at the Royal Oak in Paley Street and has done time with Heston Blumenthal. The menu runs seasonal British with occasional Continental drift, and the cask ales are treated as seriously as the wine list. It sits in the Michelin Guide and ranked 22nd on the Top 50 Gastropubs list, which does the talking for the kitchen.

A gastropub in a Kentish village with eight bedrooms upstairs and a kitchen that takes the local-seasonal brief seriously. The crab and smoked eel crumpet is the kind of opening move that sets the tone, and the menu moves confidently from there. Eight rooms mean overnight guests fill tables without anyone rushing them out. Ranked twelfth on the Top 50 Gastropubs list, which is the sort of company that draws a knowing crowd down Canterbury Road.

Slabs of red deer rump and sirloin cooked over an open fire in the flag-floored Elk Room is the main event at this gastropub on a thousand-acre Norfolk deer park. The menu leans hard on whatever the estate and the nearby Cromer boats bring in, with offal and nose-to-tail cuts sitting alongside the headline steaks. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, and the place earns it without trying to impress anyone.

A three-floor pub in Maida Vale that somehow does everything without feeling stretched thin: cask ales and cheese toasties downstairs, open-fire grills on the first floor, classic cocktails in a cosy library above that. The team behind The Pelican restored this one with care, and the Michelin Bib Gourmand and a spot in the UK's Top 50 Gastropubs suggest the neighbourhood got rather lucky. Traditional British pub food is the backbone, done without irony.

Tucked into Lilliput Court, this cocktail bar occupies a building that locals will tell you was bricked up and forgotten for years, historically used by thieves and smugglers who found Bath's Georgian law enforcement inconvenient. The outlaw theme runs through the menu, with cocktails named for famous criminals. An extensive whisky selection sits alongside, for when you'd rather just drink like a reprobate without the narrative. Ranked 13th on Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026.

The brown-tiled facade on Hackney Road hides a gastropub that genuinely runs on two speeds: a wood-panelled bar downstairs that feels like it hasn't shifted since the 1970s, and a calmer dining room upstairs where the kitchen, staffed by alumni of St. JOHN, turns out proudly seasonal British cooking. The philosophy is that eating should never feel like a hushed ordeal, and the menu, built around dressed crab and proper Sunday roasts, argues the point quietly but well.

Old oak beams, a roaring fire, and a menu that changes daily depending on what came off the farm that morning. The Merry Harriers is a proper country gastropub in the Surrey Hills, the kind that's been around forever but got a serious kitchen upgrade when the current team took over. Shepherd's pie uses lamb they raised themselves, the wine list is quietly considered, and local ales share the bar with an actual cocktail list. Fifteen rooms mean you can stay.

Margot Henderson of Rochelle Canteen brought her London following to a 17th-century Somerset pub tucked between the village church and the hall. Beamed ceilings, flagstone floors, and open fires set the scene for a daily-changing menu that leans hard on local produce, the kind of cooking that makes cottage pie feel like a considered choice. Ranked 14th on the Top 50 Gastropubs list, it draws visitors who book the five antique-furnished rooms upstairs and stay longer than they planned.

The cocktail menu arrives styled as a 1920s pocket encyclopedia, which tells you most of what you need to know about the register here. This is a glamorous hotel cocktail bar inside Gleneagles, with a dress code to match the room's Art Deco opulence. The team forages the Perthshire estate for ingredients, then does something faintly eccentric with them. Ranked in the Top 50 Cocktail Bars, it draws an equally turned-out crowd who take their vintage champagne seriously.

A grand Scottish resort that once ran on society-calendar logic, open summers only, for the kind of people who made a point of venturing north. Now it's year-round and rather more international, but 850 acres of Perthshire, three championship golf courses, and a spa with an outdoor hydrotherapy pool under open sky have a way of making that feel irrelevant. It holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Hotels. You can still arrive by train, which feels correct.

Thirteen connected Georgian townhouses stitched into a single hotel, which means the classic atmosphere isn't manufactured. Flemings is Mayfair without the frost: posh but not aggressively exclusive, contemporary interiors that respect the architecture rather than fighting it. Rooms run from cozy singles up under the eaves to a seven-bedroom townhouse, with Hyde Park and Green Park a short walk in opposite directions. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

A honey-colored manor house in the Oxfordshire countryside, its two-acre kitchen garden supplying Raymond Blanc's celebrated restaurant below. Inside, chintz cushions, flagstone floors, and wood-beamed ceilings make it unmistakably English, until you notice the oversized baths and the Champagne waiting regardless of the hour. There's no gym or pool, but there is croquet, and a cooking school for guests who'd rather not forget any of this when they get home.

A Georgian manor in the Berkshire countryside that happens to have its own polo field, which tells you something about the clientele. Coworth Park is a country-house hotel with 70-odd rooms spread across the main house, old stables, and outlying cottages. The spa, half-buried under a living herb garden, is a genuinely unexpected piece of architecture. Ascot is nearby, Windsor Great Park even closer, and the horses are not metaphorical.

A Roman-style bathhouse on an 85-acre Oxfordshire estate is the kind of detail that stops you mid-sentence. Estelle Manor is a country-house hotel designed by Roman and Williams, the New York studio behind some of America's most talked-about interiors, and the result is less heritage pastiche than something stranger and more alive. Rooms range from the main house to cottages scattered across the grounds. It holds a Michelin Key and ranks on the World's 50 Best Hotels list.

A bronze sculpture of a man hauling the Palace of Westminster on his shoulder greets you in the lobby, which tells you everything about where you are. This Westminster hotel leans hard into its political past, and the wrought-iron stair railings suffragette Emily Wilding Davison once chained herself to are still in place downstairs. The 256 rooms read bigger than the number suggests, with natural light and a boutique calm that survives the refurb.

The rococo plasterwork spiraling through the lobby feels like a baroque fever dream squeezed inside a red-brick Westminster hotel. St. Ermin's has a covert past to match: Churchill's Special Operations Executive ran clandestine operations from one of the upper floors, MI6 set up here too, and a rumored tunnel still connects the building to the Palace of Westminster. The velvet Chesterfields and collection of teapots make it all feel very civilized, which was presumably the point.

A cocktail bar in a former Leith pub that kept the draught beer when it went upmarket, which tells you something about its priorities. The nautical theme runs to iridescent walls that genuinely do suggest mermaid scales rather than a seaside gift shop. The drinks lean hard into Scottish producers, and the bar team will steer you toward something you'll like without making you feel quizzed. It landed at number 27 on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list.

The entrance was once a guard room, and the spy theme here stops well short of kitsch. This cocktail bar at 57 Whitehall forbids photography, which feels appropriate given the building's history, and the moody, close interiors make the rule easy to respect. The Martini is the organizing principle, with drinks named for Cold War tradecraft and wartime intelligence networks. It ranked 43rd on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list for 2026.

Perched on the Thames in the village of Bray, this riverside hotel and restaurant from the Roux family has been a fixture of the French-in-England fantasy for decades. Rooms are tucked into an old farmhouse and scattered cottages around the grounds, giving the whole thing a quiet, country-house feel rather than a hotel feel. Forbes Four Star. Bring someone you'd like to impress, or just yourself, which is arguably more romantic.

Four red-brick Victorian townhouses in Chelsea, joined together and dressed up as a 56-room boutique hotel that fits so neatly into its residential street you could walk past without a second look. Inside is a warren of rooms, a moody cocktail bar, a library stocked with well-thumbed books, and a conservatory for the morning papers. No two rooms share a floor plan, which keeps the place feeling like a house someone actually lives in.

Soho House's Shoreditch outpost sits on a quiet backstreet a minute from Shoreditch High Street, and overnight guests check in as temporary club members, which means the front desk skips the performance. Rooms run from genuinely compact Tiny configurations to Large ones with roll-top tubs, all done in the brand's signature mix of modernist furniture and flea-market charm. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key. Cecconi's downstairs draws a crowd well beyond the membership.

Cricket balls serve as doorknobs here, a nod to Dorset Square's history as Thomas Lord's original ground. This 38-room boutique hotel in Marylebone occupies a Regency townhouse where designer Kit Kemp gave every room a different treatment, so you genuinely can't predict what you're walking into. The Potting Shed bar pulls in locals alongside guests, which keeps it from feeling like a sealed-off hotel bubble.

The former home of the London County Council sits on the South Bank with the Thames out front and the Houses of Parliament across the water, which is an unreasonable amount of drama for a hotel lobby. Vaulted ceilings and wood-paneled chambers keep the Grade II-listed bones intact, while art-deco carpets and a red phone booth on the ground floor remind you this is a Marriott, not a museum. Six floors, no chaos, and a genuinely quieter corner of a very busy riverbank.

Porters in tartan kilts meet you at the door of this Forbes Five Star Ayrshire resort, which sits on 800 acres of links land above a coastline rugged enough to explain the Scottish temperament. Three courses hug the cliffs, the Ailsa among them having hosted multiple British Opens. When the wind finally defeats you, there's a spa, archery, horse riding, and a lighthouse you can actually sleep in.

A gastropub in the Gwent countryside where the menu changes every week, following whatever's coming in from local farms and suppliers. Josh and Hannah Byrne run the room while the kitchen turns out seasonal plates that lean into the landscape around them. The wine list favors small European producers working sustainably, which sounds earnest until you taste it. Good spot to land after a walk along the Usk.

The Scotch eggs here have a reputation serious enough to anchor a cookbook. Perched at the northern end of Highgate Road, the Bull & Last is a proper gastropub, landed in the Michelin Guide and on the Top 50 Gastropubs list, with a handful of boutique rooms upstairs if Hampstead Heath has done its work on you. The menu runs British pub classics with a continental lean, and the room feels bright without trying too hard about it.

Art deco interior, deliberately low-lit, tucked into Kingly Court's covered yard off Carnaby Street. This is a cocktail bar that leans Italian aperitivo: the menu summarises itself as "luxurious libations and late-night liaisons," which is either perfectly on-brand or mildly incriminating depending on your evening. Drinks are elegant without being theatrical, garnishes kept in check. It ranked 45th on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list, which the room carries without making a fuss about it.

A 17th-century Grade II listed building on Denmark Street hiding two bars, a whisky shop, an outdoor terrace, and a private pool room with a cocktail vending machine, which feels either ridiculous or brilliant depending on your mood. This multi-floor cocktail bar puts serious thought into its drinks, with menus shifting by floor and cocktails available both on tap and made to order. It landed on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list in 2026.

Graffiti-style caricatures mark the black exterior on Cheltenham Road, and inside, moody lighting and leather stools across two rooms make this cocktail bar feel like a neighbourhood spot that takes its drinks more seriously than its name suggests. The menu leans into an Asian-inflected playfulness, with the Scotch and Champagne, a Chinese classic dressed up with single malt and Moët, a good place to start. It placed 29th on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 list.

The front bar still takes walk-ins for a pint and a freshly made pie, which tells you everything about what Heft is trying to be. A gastropub in a 17th-century Cumbrian inn, it holds a Michelin star for the tasting menu served out back, where the chef's foraging knowledge and deep roots in the local landscape produce dishes that are playful in name and serious in depth. All tables eat at the same time, so don't be late.

An old village pub in the East Neuk of Fife that runs a daily-changing menu built almost entirely around what Balcaskie Estate and the nearby coast can offer. The cooking is stripped-back and unfussy, which takes more confidence than it sounds. Fried Chicken Mondays have developed a cult following, which tells you something about the tone. It landed on the National Restaurant Awards list and the Top 50 Gastropubs in 2026.

The seasonal menu at this cocktail bar inside Cardiff's Duke Street Arcade is organized by decade, so you can sip something from the era of your choosing while pretending your taste was always this refined. Tucked just off the castle, Lowkey keeps the music low enough for conversation and runs on table service, which sets the tone. It landed on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list for 2026, and the classics are there if the concept doesn't grab you.

A small nameplate and a rather larger bouncer mark the entrance on Gerrard Street, with red stairs climbing past Chinatown's rooftops to one of London's few cocktail bars that also runs dim sum until late. Three floors, three distinct moods: a casual lounge at the top, an apothecary bar where you sit amid the bartending action in the dark, and a curtained back room for 30 if you know to look. Ranked among the UK's top cocktail bars, and the menus alone are worth examining.

A bookcase that opens into a bar is either very cool or a cry for help, and in Harrogate it turns out to be the former. Over & Above is a two-floor cocktail bar where the menu leans into signatures and elevated classics with enough personality to stay on the right side of try-hard. Sundays bring soul, Motown, and jazz into the evening. It placed in the Top 50 Cocktail Bars in 2026.

A Michelin-starred gastropub hidden down the country lanes of East Yorkshire, where Barnsley chops and locally shot game arrive in portions that mean business. The kitchen refines pub classics without making them feel precious, and the wine list runs deep enough to keep you at the table longer than planned. Smart rooms converted from old lambing buildings make spending the night a reasonable excuse.

Tucked into a mill fold on the edge of the Shibden Estate, this gastropub has eleven rooms if the drive home feels ambitious. The kitchen runs proper à la carte and tasting menus alongside Sunday lunch, with cooking that leans into Yorkshire produce without making a big speech about it. Gentle Brontë country walks are right outside, and the Anne Lister connection means someone at the bar is always mid-rewatch of Gentleman Jack.

Wolstenholme Square's late-night cocktail bar takes its name from a Pavement album and its atmosphere from a record shop that actually has good taste. Scandinavian-lit interiors, a long counter where you can interrogate the bartenders, and a soundtrack curated by local DJs set the room. The menu runs fun and seasonal, and a kitchen pop-up covers food on weekends. Ranked 34th on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list, and barely a year old.

Every cocktail on the menu comes in two versions, light or dark, so you're choosing a mood as much as a drink. Slowpour is a cocktail bar tucked into the basement of Ropes and Twines on Bold Street, built around the idea that nobody should be rushed, least of all you. The drinks are considered and the pacing is deliberate, which in a city that usually wants to get on with it, counts as a quiet act of defiance. It landed on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list in its first year open.

Art deco bones, marble and gold tables, and green velvet stools set the mood at this Eastgate cocktail bar, which runs from coffee and pastries at nine in the morning all the way through aperitivo hour to late-night classics with cheese and cold cuts. The team sources ingredients from Kirkgate Market and lets the cocktail menu get genuinely odd, in a good way. It landed a spot on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list in 2026.

A rotisserie turning at the center of the room sets the tone at Tom Kerridge's no-reservations gastropub in Marlow: casual, a little louder than you'd expect from a Michelin-starred room, and genuinely good at sharing plates. Small dishes are the move, and the kitchen makes punchy, satisfying food without the ceremony. Marlow locals come for a pint; others make the trip for the cooking. Either way, the pub holds a Michelin star.

Seven tables in a handwritten-menu dining room above one of Soho's most storied pubs, where the portraits of former regulars like Lucian Freud watch you eat calves' brains with brown butter. The kitchen, now run by Angela Hartnett's husband Neil Borthwick, keeps the menu brief, French, and unapologetically meaty. Madeleines arrive fresh at dessert. Downstairs, no phones, no music, and thirty champagnes by the glass keep the bohemian faithful happily off-grid.

A pub sitting in the middle of nowhere on the Cornish coast, surrounded by fields and sheep with the Atlantic just over the hill. The team forages hogweed and Japanese knotweed from nearby hedgerows, which sounds alarming until the plate arrives and makes complete sense. Fires burn, the décor is cheerfully worn-in, and the seafood stays simple enough to let a fresh sole fillet speak for itself. Bedrooms upstairs if you'd rather not drive those lanes at night.

A Michelin-starred pub tucked into a Fulham backstreet, the Harwood Arms has held its star longer than most restaurants in proper dining rooms, which says something about the kitchen's commitment to seasonal British cooking and careful sourcing. The room stays genuinely pubby, which makes the food feel like a pleasant ambush. Book well ahead, especially for evenings, and keep an eye on how enthusiastically you're working through the wine list.

Sausage rolls baked to order, ham carved from the joint and finished on the open fireplace, a dedicated mustard menu: the Highland Laddie is a pub that takes the pub seriously. It landed on the Top 50 Gastropubs list, and Jimi Famurewa called it out in The Observer as a northern boozer of unexpected finesse. Come for a pint and leave having somehow eaten rather a lot.

A 17th-century stone inn near Blenheim Palace that the owners rescued from dereliction and turned into one of the country's more serious gastropubs. The kitchen bakes its own bread, butchers its own meat, and leans hard on organic sourcing. A bar menu, set lunch, Sunday roast, and tasting menu mean you can pitch your visit anywhere from a quiet pint to a proper occasion. Eight rooms upstairs if you'd rather not drive back to Oxford.

A Grade II listed corner pub on Bethnal Green Road that spent decades as a restaurant before someone had the sense to bring back the Guinness. Downstairs is a proper East End boozer built around a rotisserie grill; upstairs, One Club Row takes the room somewhere closer to a New York tavern by way of a French brasserie. Pre-batched negronis and a short wine list round things out for the Shoreditch crowd who like their gastropubs with a little ambition.

The raised beds on the terrace grow the herbs and vegetables that end up on your plate, which sets the tone nicely for this gastropub in Old Windsor. Adam Handling's country inn holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a place on the Top 50 Gastropubs list, and the kitchen earns both by taking pub classics seriously without taking itself too seriously. The haggis Scotch egg and the seasonal trifle are regulars worth knowing about.

A ferry ride from Padstow drops you in Rock, where this large, buzzy gastropub sits right on the estuary with terrace views over the Camel. Part of Paul Ainsworth's Cornish stable, it leans into hearty, no-nonsense British cooking: shepherd's pie and fish and chips alongside whatever the day boats brought in. The crowd arrives sunburned and hungry, which is more or less exactly the clientele the place was built for.

The bar at this Cotswold gastropub was built from reclaimed church panels, which tells you something about the seriousness of the refurbishment. Flagstone floors, lime plaster walls, and heavily beamed ceilings survived intact, and tankards of Black Velvet now get poured from a 1920s pewter oyster bar. The menu runs from prawn cocktail to something more considered, with a daily blackboard filling the gaps. Sunday roasts, with a few quiet twists, draw a crowd that plans ahead.

Four floors of a handsome old Bristol building given over entirely to cocktails, which feels like the right call. The Milk Thistle is a cocktail bar spread across a hidden vault, a lounge, and an attic, with the kind of eclectic decor that earns the word without apology. Drinks lean classic with house riffs woven in, and the team tends toward recommendations rather than leaving you to flounder. It ranks in the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list.

Follow the neon sign up the stairs and you land in a cocktail bar that categorizes its drinks as funky, fizzy, shaken, stirred, sub zero, and sensible. The Northern Quarter energy is baked into the concept: retro-spirited classics alongside playful originals, all in a low-lit room with an 80s soundtrack. Bar snacks run from snacking cheese to Pepperami, which keeps the nostalgia theme going. It ranks among the Top 50 Cocktail Bars in the UK.

Park Hill's brutalist housing estate has had pubs since it was built, then didn't for a long while, and The Pearl is their return: a cocktail bar folded into a proper neighborhood local, with a seasonal menu that rotates, craft beer, natural wine, and bar food to keep things grounded. The team behind Bench in Nether Edge runs this one too, and it landed a spot in the UK's Top 50 Cocktail Bars. Sheffield's skyline looms outside; good drinks happen inside.

A gastropub on the Harpenden common that has been pouring pints since the Victorian era, The Silver Cup pairs local ales with modern British cooking that takes seasonal produce seriously. The room is contemporary and relaxed, the kind of place where you can eat well without performing about it. Rooms are available if you'd rather not navigate the train home. It sits in the Top 50 Gastropubs list and is selected by the Michelin Guide.

A whitewashed pub on a windswept sea wall in Kent, where the chef makes his own salt by boiling seawater from the beach out back. The slip sole grilled in seaweed butter has become quietly famous, which the chef hates, because he doesn't believe in signature dishes. A Michelin-starred gastropub that somehow stays a proper pub, with locals nursing pints alongside pilgrims who've driven two hours for the tasting menu and pretend they haven't.

A converted Victorian pub in Islington running South Indian food alongside proper pints, which turns out to be a combination nobody should have waited this long for. Two floors, low lighting, a playlist that earns its reputation, and a menu that moves between small plates, curries, and cocktails without any fuss. Sunday brings an Indian-spiced roast that makes the usual pub lunch feel like it was missing something all along.

A haggis Scotch egg on a Cornish pub menu is either very confused or very deliberate, and at The Tartan Fox it's very deliberate. Adam Handling's gastropub sits inside a stone country inn tucked into a forest on a caravan park outside Summercourt, which is a more charming setting than that sentence suggests. The kitchen leans on local Cornish producers while threading in Scottish touches throughout a generous, changing menu. The cheese doughnuts have become something of a signature.

The Patty & Bun founder's pivot from smash burgers to Thames-side gastropub is less of a stretch than it sounds. The Waterman's Arms sits right on the river in Barnes, with a balcony view that earns its keep and a bar downstairs for anyone who just wants a pint. Upstairs, the kitchen runs a produce-led menu of seasonal modern British cooking, with a blackboard of steaks and market fish doing the heavier lifting alongside bar snacks worth lingering over.

A country gastropub east of the River Dee that the village literally helped rebuild, lending tools and labour when Gary Usher's team took over a shuttered local. The seasonal menu runs to comforting bistro dishes, and the guest chef series has pulled in names like Tom Kerridge and Angela Hartnett, which is not nothing for a pub in a Cheshire hamlet. It landed on the Top 50 Gastropubs list, and walkers and cyclists seem to find it without much trouble.

A Palladian mansion on the eastern edge of the Yorkshire Dales, Grantley Hall is a country house hotel with fewer than 50 rooms, three bars, and five restaurants, which sounds like a lot until you see the grounds. Rooms split between the old house and a newer wing; the suites in the main building follow the old walls at odd angles, and the Presidential suite has a grand piano. It holds a Forbes Four Star and two Michelin Keys.

A converted Victorian grammar school on the South Bank where the rooms are called classrooms and one of the bars is the Headmaster's Room, which either charms you immediately or it doesn't. This 70-room boutique hotel is the first London outpost of an Indian luxury group, and the Indian influence runs deep, from the cobalt-blue interiors and gold tapestries to staff in traditional dress and an Ayurvedic spa tucked in the basement.

Some of the oldest trees in Britain shade the 430-acre Hampshire estate surrounding this Georgian country house hotel, which takes about an hour from London to reach but feels several centuries further. The organic farm supplies the kitchens, the Land Rovers meet you at the train station, and the 45 rooms run from cosy to enormous, all done in a style that manages to be stylish without trying to impress you. Michelin awarded it 2 Keys.

Two restored Georgian townhouses on Sloane Street, dressed up in interwar glamour and, unexpectedly, Japanese art, a combination that sounds like a dare and reads as a personality. The 14 rooms lean intimate rather than grand, with Nicola Harding's color palette doing most of the heavy lifting. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Key. Cadogan Place Gardens sit across the street, which is a very civilized thing to wake up to.

Houses 15 and 16 of Bath's famous Georgian crescent, with no sign out front because the doorman is considered sufficient. This is a full-service hotel where the interiors lean contemporary-classic rather than period-room solemn, with four-poster beds, marble baths, and a spa that actually earns the town's Roman-waters reputation. The Michelin Guide awards it 2 Keys. A restaurant, bar, conservatory, and garden round things out.

A Chelsea townhouse hotel just off Sloane Square that reads more Paris than SW1, which is precisely the point: it's a Jean-Louis Costes production, and the Franco-Sloaney collision shows in every gilded detail. Rooms and suites lean deep into the opulence, and the public spaces hold a top-floor restaurant and a cocktail bar styled as a speakeasy. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.