The Best Places to Drink and Stay in the United Kingdom

A private cove on the Irish Sea sits just steps from the front door, which tells you immediately what kind of place this is: a ten-room lodge on the remote Scottish west coast where the whole point is disappearing properly. The interiors run contemporary-classic, heavy on the classic, and one suite is named for Churchill, who once stayed here. A kitchen garden supplies a fine-dining restaurant doing four courses at lunch and seven at dinner.

A sleek boutique hotel in a Victorian port town that built its reputation on being a jumping-off point for the Hebrides rather than a destination. The Perle leans into both sides of that tension: rooms are contemporary with a nod to Highland roughness, the bathrooms have high-pressure rain showers, and there's a spa named for the Scots Gaelic word for sea. The Oban Brasserie and LULU Lounge handle food and cocktails when the scenery has done enough work.

Five hundred varieties of whisky behind the bar is a strong opening argument for any hotel, and the owners built this one after careers in the trade, so the selection is personal, not decorative. The Station Hotel is a handsome 15-room property in Speyside whisky country, with rooms that run from well-appointed singles to suites named for famous distillers, all Hypnos beds and spa-grade bathrooms. Two restaurants and the Spirit Safe bar mean you rarely need to leave.

The draw here is the Machrie Links, a windswept old course on Islay that golfers treat as a kind of pilgrimage. The hotel wraps around that obsession without being consumed by it: rooms are quietly luxurious, the spa is extensive, and the restaurant looks out over the sea with locally sourced food that suits the surroundings. Non-golfers find plenty of excuse to stay, mostly involving dramatic Hebridean scenery and not leaving the spa.

A converted Victorian station hotel sitting a short walk from Royal Dornoch Golf Club, which is almost certainly why you've found it. Inside, grand staircases and wainscoting set a properly baronial tone, stag's heads survey the scene without irony, and self-aware tartan accents keep things from tipping into theme-park Highlands. It's the kind of place that makes a cold, windswept round feel like a reasonable life choice.

Royal Portrush's fourth fairway runs past the window, which sets the tone: this woodland hotel takes golf seriously, with club storage, a putting green, and transfers to the course sorted before you ask. Nine acres of ancient forest shape everything else, from the wood-furnished, forest-hued rooms to a spa using locally gathered ingredients. The Vault downstairs stocks small-batch Bushmills whiskeys for guests who know what they're after.

Steps from Royal Portrush Golf Club on the Northern Irish coast, this old-school hotel has been around forever and wears it well: tartan fabrics, dark wood, maritime paintings, and a deep green and blue palette that nods to the Atlantic outside. The Red Sail Room, a bar and restaurant inside, goes velvet banquettes and glowing lamps, which is a different mood entirely. Retro bicycles are on hand for anyone who didn't come just to golf.

Flute is the rooftop cocktail bar at Broadwick Soho, where someone clearly signed off on an unlimited budget for pink cushions. Expect velvet everywhere, fruity cocktails that can climb to £40, and a wraparound terrace built for staring wistfully at the London skyline while a friend takes the photo. It's a dress-up, spend-a-bit kind of place, and The Infatuation has ranked it among the city's best bars.

The Painter's Room is a small cocktail bar tucked inside Claridge's, done up in the sort of pink shell and stained glass that makes your own flat feel like a storage unit. Expect champagne-forward drinks at Mayfair prices, around £22 for the priciest, ordered by people dressed for a premiere they may or may not be attending. It's the kind of room where a first date either gets engaged or gets the bill.

Le Magritte is the cocktail bar at The Beaumont hotel in Mayfair, reached through a chequerboard lobby, where a bartender in a white jacket stands before a golden art deco bar. The short menu runs from frothy and flirty to stiff and grown-up, though the Gatsby-adjacent room mostly invites a classic. Expect cashmere, Mayfair money, and the odd jet-lagged guest quietly steadying themselves with an Old Fashioned.

Red Room is the scarlet little sibling to The Connaught Bar, tucked into the Mayfair hotel and priced accordingly. Cocktails lean on wine and moody spirits, which makes the pastel pink sofas a source of low-grade dread if you order the beaujolais-and-pisco number. The rosé and Campari drink suits anyone who's been quietly cheating on Negronis. Dress like your trust fund is already vested.

Space Talk is a hi-fi cocktail bar on St John Street in Farringdon, dressed in 1970s walnut and chrome like a record shop that went to finishing school. The panelling was designed by an actual acoustician, which is a job title that makes the rest of the interior feel unreasonably committed. Phones are banned, so couples on early dates have nothing to hide behind except a vermouth-forward drink and each other.

Tramps Bar is a cocktail bar tucked into a gallery space near Old Street, where an oil painting of a foot hangs on the wall and the menu bans vodka and dirty martinis outright. The cinema speakers look like aircraft engines and pulse along to whatever's playing. Everyone drifting around the handsome bar holds a well-made drink with an air of mild detachment, yet the tables are comfortable enough to stay put.

The blood-red leather chairs and black marble fireplace make it clear this is not a bar you stumble into. Le Salon Bar sits on the third floor of Joel Robuchon's London restaurant, reached by an escorted lift ride that does set a tone. The Art Deco room is operatically good-looking, all alligator leather tables and studied drama. Order something with ambition and don't check your phone too obviously.

A corner pub on the south bank, one building shy of Tower Bridge, with a beer list that leans hard into cask and craft. The room has been freshened up from its former smoke-stained self, lime green seating and all, though the bones of an old London boozer are still there. Tourists coming off the bridge mix with local office workers who'd rather not admit they work next to the Mayor.

A basement cocktail bar below a Malaysian restaurant in Queen's Park, where the first challenge is finding the bell push to get in. The plaster walls are styled to look damp, which is a choice, and the dimly lit room leans hard into cellar speakeasy. The house cocktails do the heavy lifting, though the kitchen upstairs means the bar snacks are far better than they need to be.

A wine bar tucked under the railway arches in Bermondsey, where the menu is a chalkboard, reservations don't exist, and the wine comes from a natural-leaning importer operating out of the same warehouse. Around a dozen small plates change daily, running from terrines and seasonal salads to something more substantial, and the idea is to order the lot and share. First-come seating keeps it lively, and nobody here seems to mind waiting.

A zinc bar, wrought-iron stools, and neon signs make the American Deco pitch boldly, but an open fireplace and vintage glassware keep it from feeling like a theme park. This Notting Hill cocktail bar leans into the Manhattan fantasy with enough warmth and genuine antique paraphernalia to make you forget it's a bit of a concept. The cocktail list is long and inventive, which is ultimately the whole point.

The cocktail bar inside 45 Park Lane, the Dorchester's boutique sibling, has quietly been letting Wolfgang Puck's restaurant take all the attention. That suits the bar just fine. The team behind the stick has pedigree from the Dorchester and the Savoy's American Bar, and the drinks menu shows it, with combinations that feel considered rather than clever-for-its-own-sake. A civilized place to drink well without the full Mayfair production number.

The bar is the first thing you see walking into Hotel Missoni, set dead center like a declaration of intent. It's a cocktail bar done in the fashion house's signature bold colors and two-tone patterns, which sounds like it could go wrong and somehow doesn't. The island counter gives plenty of room to perch, or you can sink into one of the deep booth banquettes if you'd rather commit to the evening properly.

The copper-topped bar and wood-panelled walls give this Soho cocktail bar the feel of someone's very well-stocked living room, which suits the mood upstairs from Jason Atherton's Social Eating House. The drinks are serious, and the bar snacks, pork sliders and duck rillettes among them, are the kind of thing that makes leaving harder than it should be. "Dill or No Dill" remains on the menu, which tells you enough about the room's personality.

The indoor cigar lounge is technically a "sampling room," which is the kind of legal creativity that keeps Scotch-and-jazz bars alive. This two-floor Canary Wharf outpost of the Belgravia original runs a crustacean and cocktail bar on the first floor alongside a heated terrace looking out over Cabot Square. Champagne and single malts do most of the heavy lifting, and pre-revolutionary Cuban cigars are available if the evening calls for it.

A small golden plaque at pavement level is the only hint that one of Edinburgh's best cocktail bars sits beneath a dry cleaner's shop. Down in the basement, bare brick walls, leather armchairs, and low lighting make it feel like a discovery rather than a destination. The gin list leans into Edinburgh's reputation for the spirit, and staff will happily build something bespoke. Weekend DJs keep the atmosphere from getting too precious about itself.

A frosted window glowing from within is the only sign anything is happening on Rose Street North Lane, which is either charming or inconvenient depending on how long you've been walking. Bryant and Mack is a speakeasy-styled cocktail bar with seating for about twenty, a no-standing rule, and the kind of atmosphere that rewards the people who actually find it, assuming there's room when they do.

A cocktail bar on Rivington Street that takes its name from the Jabberwocky poem, which sets expectations correctly: the room is smaller than it looks, then larger than it should be, with a wardrobe somewhere in the middle that leads somewhere else. The Mad Hatter aesthetic could easily tip into theme-park territory, but the drinks keep it honest. Shoreditch has no shortage of bars pretending to have personality; this one at least has a family portrait on the wall.

A hole-in-the-wall bar and deli tucked into Covent Garden, Champagne et Fromage specializes in grower champagnes, the kind made by the people who grew the grapes rather than the big houses that get all the attention. Around two dozen options pour by the glass alongside a cheese counter, making it equal parts wine bar and very convincing argument for skipping dinner reservations entirely.

Patterned wallpaper, low-slung couches, and a bar running along one wall of a dimly lit basement room: this is a wine bar that takes itself seriously without making you feel underdressed. It shares a pedigree with Paris's Compagnie Des Vins Surnaturels and the Experimental Cocktail Club, which means the list is long and the staff know it cold. Neal's Yard is a strange little pocket of London, and this fits right in.

An antler chandelier greets you at the door of this two-floor cocktail bar on Cotham Hill, which runs bigger than its frontage suggests. The Scandinavian-leaning fit-out keeps things clean and calm, with booth seating that nudges the room toward intimate rather than cavernous. The team leans into service in a way that feels deliberate rather than performative, which on a Bristol hill is rarer than it should be.

A basement cocktail bar beneath a City pub, with a name that sounds like it handles mergers but actually refers to the house's two signature batched cocktails: the Demon, something stiff and stirred, and the Wise, a lighter sour. Each batch is different, and a snooker scoreboard above the back bar counts down however many pours remain. The suits filing in after close of trade probably don't mind the urgency.

White-jacketed bartenders shake the house martini the same way they do at the Barcelona original, which has been doing it this way for what feels like forever. This cocktail bar sits deep inside the Meliá White House Hotel, tucked into the no-man's-land north of Euston Road where tourists rarely wander and hotel guests sometimes stumble upon it by accident, which is arguably the correct way to find a very classical cocktail bar.

Four copper tanks of unpasteurised Pilsner Urquell, shipped weekly from the Czech Republic, greet you at the door and tell you immediately what kind of bar this is. Alan Yau, the name behind Hakkasan and Yauatcha next door, pitched it as a Chinese gastropub, which sounds like a PR concept until you're actually there with a cold lager and a plate of salt and pepper squid on a Soho afternoon.

Green tiles and a country-pub face on Bermondsey Street, then inside it's sage kitchen panelling, plush wallpaper, silk lamps, American diner booths, and space-age bucket seats all sharing a room without having discussed it first. The Garrison is a pub and neighbourhood bar with a devoted following on one of London's better eating-and-drinking streets, and booking ahead is less optional than it sounds.

The bar sits inside St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel, which means Victorian gothic arches, ornamental mouldings, and a ceiling hung with enormous church bells that are, it turns out, fiberglass. Nobody asks. The room leans into the maximalism hard, all gilt and warm colour, and it manages to feel intimate despite the grandeur. A cocktail bar where the architecture does a lot of the talking, and the talking is quite loud.

The polished bar hits you first as you descend into the old brewery basement, and it earns the entrance. This is a cocktail bar attached to the Hawksmoor steakhouse empire, which means the drinks are taken as seriously as the beef upstairs. The cavernous, low-lit room does read a little New York meatpacking district, but the building was brewing London's beer long before that neighborhood had a mood.

The concept started as a rotating bar that reinvented itself every few months, and somewhere along the way it just became a bar worth staying in. Hedonist on Briggate is a cocktail bar that has settled into its own skin, putting the focus on the drinks themselves rather than the next theatrical theme. The kind of place where the menu does the talking and the room doesn't need a costume to hold your attention.

Three Victorian cellars knocked into one give this basement bar its vaulted ceilings, still lined in original white porcelain tiles. The namesake Jake Burger has long since moved on to gin work in London, but the bar he built on Call Lane carries on with its reputation for being crammed, loud, and a little dangerous on a Friday. Arrive early later in the week or the door will make the decision for you.

A marble bar counter, two chalkboards, and a corner shop footprint that gives the whole thing a slightly miraculous quality. This is a sherry and tapas bar on Bermondsey Street, small enough that standing room feels like a personality choice rather than an oversight. The team knows their palo cortado from their manzanilla and will tell you which glass to order with whatever the kitchen is turning out that day.

A sliding door at the back of a fake launderette leads you into this speakeasy cocktail bar tucked inside The Breakfast Club's Clapham spot. It's the South London sibling to The Mayor of Scaredy Cat Town, where the trick is a vintage fridge. Here the ruse is spin cycles and detergent shelves. Book ahead if you can, or ask nicely at the front and keep your voice down about why you're really there.

Down a cobbled passage off Bow Lane, past the church whose bells once defined who counted as a true Cockney, this subterranean lounge bar takes the British Empire as its organizing obsession. Gin and rum anchor the menu, with bottles running from rare old releases to new arrivals, and the cocktail list follows suit with imperial-themed drinks. The kind of dim, tucked-away room that feels like a find every time.

Black-and-white prints of rock legends cover the walls, the music is loud and non-negotiable, and the shots keep coming. Mojo is a rock-and-roll bar with no pretensions and no apologies, the kind of place that gets rowdy early and stays that way. The crowd is genuinely mixed in the best dive-bar tradition, all packed in under the noise. The holy Mojito is apparently on the menu for theological reasons.

Fairy lights and a narrow passage off the Royal Mile lead you downstairs into three rooms that feel nothing like the street above: a proper bar, banquette seating, and a back room with an open fireplace and bookshelves that leans hard into gentleman's club territory. The Royal Mile earns its tourist reputation, but this basement cocktail bar is the exception serious drinkers make before moving on to lecture everyone else about avoiding the Royal Mile.

A steel grid on the end wall doubles as a gallery, local art priced and ready to go home with you. This is a proper East End corner pub, all comfy sofas and battered wooden tables, sitting among Victorian terraces just off Mile End Road. Gastro pubs tend to cluster where the money already is, so its presence in Bow says something about the neighbourhood's direction of travel, though regulars seem unbothered by the symbolism.

The room is shaped like a ship's bow, with arched windows on two sides flooding the zinc and marble tops with light. This gastropub on a quiet Pimlico corner has the feel of a country kitchen that wandered into the city and decided to stay, all painted panelling, oak floors, and stripped pine shutters in creamy, pastel tones. The name is borrowed straight from the address, but the setting more than compensates for the lack of imagination.

A converted textile warehouse on a quiet lane off Chapel Street, Peggy's is a dimly lit cocktail bar named after a local landlady legendary for her parties. It sits a solid walk from the busier Manchester bar strips, which keeps the crowd self-selecting and the atmosphere easy. The bones of the old building do a lot of the work, and the drinks keep pace with them.

House sourdough with beef dripping and Jersey butter for a pound a head is the kind of opening move that sets the tone immediately. This Islington gastropub has a dark wooden floor, chunky tables, and mismatched chairs giving it a lived-in feel despite few original Victorian bones surviving. The beer list gets taken as seriously as the food, and the crowd skews toward locals who've figured out they can afford to eat here regularly.

A cocktail bar spread across three retro-styled levels in Jericho, Raoul's crams Oxford's largest spirits selection into alcoves behind a surprisingly small bar. Rum is the obsession, including a house blend aged in a Madeira cask, though bourbon runs a close second. The fruit-forward cocktails go through more produce than most grocers shift in a week, and the room has the easy, happy hum of a place that's been doing this for a long time.

A graffiti-scrawled doorway, a seedy pay phone, a luminous red light, and then you're in. The neon sex sign above the stairs does a good job setting expectations that the bar itself immediately subverts: downstairs is calm, clean, and quietly serious about cocktails. It's a speakeasy in the Bristol tradition of making you work a little before rewarding you, and the theatrical entry is genuinely half the fun.

A nondescript door to the right of London's oldest restaurant leads upstairs to this cocktail bar, and finding it feels like being let in on something. Dark wood panelling, plush bar stools, and the kind of unhurried quiet that Covent Garden rarely allows make it easy to linger. Order something classic and let the room do the rest.

A Georgian townhouse parlour turned cocktail bar, a short walk from Oxford Street's chaos. Persian rugs, leather chairs, a fireplace, and a grandmother clock keep the fantasy of a quieter century alive. Photographs climb all the way to the ceiling, which feels like either very good decorating or a small cry for help. The kind of place where nursing a drink while rain hits the windows outside feels like a perfectly valid plan.

A corner bar named for the two streets it splits, Tariff and Dale has a long two-tone counter and booth seating running the length of the room. The cocktail list is the thing to study: classics are grouped in threes, each trio running from the original recipe to a mainstream riff to the bar's own version, which is a quietly clever way to show your working. Downstairs there's food if you need it.

Wisteria climbs the exterior of this large Georgian pub tucked into the residential quiet between Islington's Upper Street and the Caledonian Road, far enough from the tourist drag to feel like a neighborhood secret. Inside, a sweeping oak bar counter rises from worn floorboards, and the walled garden out back is why people bother with the walk. The kind of pub that makes the surrounding gentrification feel earned rather than imposed.

The Sunday flower market on Columbia Road starts right at The Birdcage's corner, which means this old East End pub spent years famous almost entirely for its postcode. Gentrification caught up with the street eventually, and the surrounding restaurants and bars have turned it into a nightly destination rather than a once-a-week pitstop. A proper neighbourhood pub, worn in the right ways, with a crowd that arrived before the area did.

Cherubs drip from a ceiling above walls painted in a shade of blue that became known as "Lutyens" blue after this room, which is a bit like naming a color after a single very good outfit. The Blue Bar, tucked into the Berkeley Hotel, is a small, opulent cocktail bar with a white onyx counter and a black crocodile-print floor. Sit at the bar itself; the entrance annex is quieter but you'll feel like you're watching through a window.

Bare brick walls and mismatched chairs upholstered in Chelsea blue give this Fulham Road gastro pub away before you've ordered. It sits directly opposite Stamford Bridge, which is either a selling point or a warning, and the football club was reportedly founded here when the place went by a different name. A long communal table keeps things convivial, and the overall room lands somewhere between slick and genuinely warm, which is harder than it looks.

The house martini arrives before you've settled in, which tells you everything about the bar at this Shoreditch Town Hall restaurant. It's a place to drink while the open kitchen fires on all cylinders around you, the kind of pre-dinner perch that makes waiting feel like the point. The room carries the weight of the old civic building without taking itself too seriously, and the team moves like they've done this a few thousand times.

A members-only cocktail bar perched above one of London's great theatrical restaurants, where getting in requires an invitation rather than a reservation. The Ivy below has been a star magnet for generations, and the club upstairs distills that mythos into something even more rarefied. If you have to ask whether you're a member, you are not.

Brown and white Victorian factory tiles wrap the corner exterior of this Spitalfields pub, a former industrial boozer that had its brickwork stripped bare and its bar topped in zinc during a thoughtful renovation years ago. Named after the 17th-century herbalist who lived nearby, it sits opposite Middlesex Street Market and carries its history lightly, the kind of place that looks like it always looked this way, which is the highest compliment a pub can get.

A corner pub in Bermondsey where the Victorian bones are still visible under a liberal coat of white paint, with crystal chandeliers doing their best to class the place up. The beer list leans heavily London-brewed, and the room fills fast with warehouse-flat residents and office workers who treat it like a local because it is one. Named for the satirist dean himself, which feels right for a pub that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Seven hundred and fifty scarlet glass spikes cover the back wall of this hotel cocktail bar, which is not what anyone walking through the Dorchester's stately lobby expects. The room went full nightclub somewhere along the way, all high-backed booths and bronzed glass, with a DJ where a pianist used to sit. The drinks, to their credit, stayed classical, which is probably what the older regulars are quietly clinging to.

Stained glass panels divide the booth seating in this cozy Argyle Street bar, giving it the feel of a pub that got a quiet upgrade without telling anyone. Stone walls, wood panelling, and low ceilings keep things intimate. The team behind nearby Lebowskis runs the room, so the drinks are taken seriously and the bartenders know what they're doing. A local crowd of genuinely mixed ages fills the place most nights.

The bar's name comes from an old method of slow-stewing whole hare in an earthenware jug with red wine and juniper, which should tell you something about the kitchen's seriousness with game. This is a City gastropub, the kind where the suits come in loud and leave later than planned. The drinks list is long and handled properly, and the food leans heavily British, with the eponymous dish on the menu for anyone who wants to commit.