The Best Places to Drink in the United Kingdom

Hand-drawn murals cover every surface, curtains and cats and plates of food rendered in ink across the walls of this candlelit Kingsland Road cocktail bar. What started as a pop-up settled in for good, and the room has the low-key Brooklyn energy to prove it. Stainless steel sharing tables up front, a few bar stools tucked in the back, floor-to-ceiling windows letting the street watch you drink.

A basement cocktail bar across from Liverpool Street, where the City crowd unwinds with varying degrees of dignity. The space goes big on colour against classic bones, with a long bar for standing room on packed evenings and a cavernous main floor running on table service. The cocktail menu is extensive enough that nobody has to make a decision under pressure, which the after-work crowd seems to appreciate.

A bowed Georgian window looks straight out over the Brighton seafront, which is a fine place to put a hotel bar. Drake's sits on the ground floor of the boutique hotel, a knocked-through room of olive-grey leather tub chairs and low tables arranged around a black marble bar. It's neat to the point of feeling slightly staged, but the premium spirits are well chosen and the quiet is genuine on a stretch of coast that rarely offers any.

Ibérico hams hang from the ceiling at the back, but this is a sherry bar first, a snack stop second. The front room is all wrought-iron lamps, thin wooden benches, and sherry butts doing double duty as furniture, which gives it the feel of a Jerez side-street dive, almost certainly because the budget demanded nothing grander. Standing is the default, which suits the pours. It's in Fitzrovia, though nothing about it remembers that.

The name sounds like a pub, but the Duke of Cambridge is a cocktail bar, and a proudly self-proclaimed long-standing one at that. A long wooden bar runs one wall, circular booths line the other, and the wide-open floor between them exists for a reason: this place fills up. Happy hour runs four nights a week for four hours, which tells you more about the vibe than any descriptor could.

Perrier-Jouët's Belle Epoque anemones climb every surface of this lower-ground-floor champagne bar inside the grand St James's hotel, giving it the look of a drawing room that took a wrong turn somewhere floral. The fizz is the focus, poured in a room that leans heavily into the brand's art nouveau palette. Dukes is famous for its Martinis next door, so the champagne lounge feels like a deliberate counterpoint, softer and more decorative, but no less serious about what's in the glass.

A Wurlitzer, formica surfaces, and rough wood paneling set the tone in this basement cocktail bar tucked into the rabbit warren of rooms beneath Earlham Street. The space has old-school Americana bones, and the bar itself has history: the room previously housed Detroit, where bartending legends once poured. The crowd tends toward people who know what they came for and probably don't need to see the menu.

Casks of sherry sit among wine-laden shelves behind a mahogany bar that looks unchanged since Fleet Street still ran on ink and gossip. This old-school wine bar opposite Fetter Lane draws barristers and whatever journalists are left in the neighbourhood, who seem to regard the place as a private club they happen to share with the public. Grab a bottle from the off-licence at the front or settle in the back for table service.

The name is Latin for horse, and the gentleman's club aesthetic takes that theme and runs with it. This cocktail bar sits deep inside the Royal Horseguards Hotel, past the lounge and the grand piano, which is already doing some filtering work before you even arrive. The room skews older and male, and it makes no apologies for either. Finding it at all counts as a minor achievement.

A 13-metre bar painted in shades of red, black, and white occupies the basement where Mezzo once ruled Wardour Street, modelled on Havana's famous original. This Cuban cocktail bar has a stage for live Latin American music and enough square footage to feel like you've descended into somewhere slightly louder and more rum-soaked than you planned. The Rolling Stones played upstairs in 1964, which the bar had nothing to do with but everyone mentions anyway.

The cocktail bar on the fourth floor of Harvey Nichols earns its keep through the window: Edinburgh Castle in one direction, the Firth of Forth in the other, and a G&T arriving just in time to soften the credit card damage from the floors below. The room itself leans burgundy leather and teak, somewhere between airport lounge and a 1970s sitting room that never quite updated. Comfortable, unpretentious, and better on a grey afternoon than it has any right to be.

Down a precarious iron staircase off Shaftesbury Avenue sits a basement cocktail bar that's been around forever, looking exactly as scuffed and comfortable as it did at the start. Bare wooden tables, dim light, and rotating art on the walls give it the feel of a gallery that never quite finished moving in. The crowd leans Londoner and unpretentious, which suits the whole thing perfectly.

The wood carvings don't stop at the bar, or the walls, or the ceiling; they continue, the source confirms, all the way to the urinals. This sprawling Camden bar sits above the Stables Market and leans hard into its ancient Babylonian namesake, the result being somewhere between an Indiana Jones set and a Vegas hotel lobby. Dramatic doesn't cover it, but the drama is the whole point.

On a quiet side street off Borough High Street, this tiny pub fits a six-piece band and their gear into what is essentially a large sitting room, which tells you most of what you need to know. The 70s kitsch ground floor hosts live gigs on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, drawing a friendly mix of locals and music obsessives. Cosy is an understatement, but the intimacy is the point.

The candlelit basement has been pouring wine since the Victorian era, and the atmosphere has barely moved since, which is either the charm or the problem depending on your relationship with cobwebs. Gordon's is an old-school wine bar tucked under Villiers Street, all low ceilings, wobbly wooden tables, and bottles lining walls that once housed Samuel Pepys. It draws tourists and City regulars alike, and the outdoor terrace fills fast in summer.

Bentwood chairs, potted palms, and a mosaic-fronted brass bar give this coffee house the air of a Victorian parlour that somehow survived several centuries of undergraduates. Samuel Pepys apparently traced it back to 1650, which makes it older than most of Oxford's excuses. Afternoon tea draws the tourists and the occasional American president; regulars come for coffee and the pleasing sensation of drinking it somewhere that has been around essentially forever.

The cocktail bar attached to Harts restaurant tends to get overshadowed by the dining room next door, which suits the regulars fine. It's a small, relaxed space with red leather sofas and generic hotel art that nobody is here to look at. The drinks list runs classic cocktails alongside wines and champagne options, and the mixing is careful without being showy. A quiet spot to start an evening before the kitchen calls.

Scrawled tabletops and a blackboard wall of specials set the tone at this dive bar and American diner on the edge of Clapham Common. Bare brick, unfinished wood, and utilitarian seating make the casual-drinking intentions clear before you've ordered anything. The drinks list leans hard on bourbon, with riffs on the classics: a Maple Old Fashioned, a Herbal Julep, a Marmalade Margarita for the adventurous.

The Georgian townhouse at the top of Greek Street has been a lot of things over the centuries, and its current life as a private members' bar might be its most unexpected. The interior has been polished back to its original grandeur, all ornate plasterwork and period detail, while the staff include people learning a trade through the club's social mission. Drinking here comes with a cause attached, which is either reassuring or a lot to hold with a cocktail.

A basement tiki bar in the Northern Quarter where palm fronds, fish tanks, leopard print, and sand somehow coexist without anyone feeling the need to explain it. The menu leans on classics but throws in sharing drinks, including three-litre Powder Kegs of house secret potion that suggest you came with friends and plan to stay. DJs run things deep into the night, which the decor, frankly, demands.

Kazbar is a Moroccan-themed bar on Cowley Road where the staff dress like they wandered off a film set and the seating is all low tables piled with cushions and carpets. The L-shaped wooden bar anchors the room, surrounded by wrought iron, orange trees, and sandy walls that commit to the bit without tipping into theme-park territory. The drinks list skews Spanish more than Moroccan, which is either a surprise or a relief depending on your expectations.

A cocktail bar built around the 1998 Coen Brothers film, which means the menu runs to 25 variations on the White Russian and the drink names lean deliberately absurd. This is not a place for painstaking craft cocktails; it's a place for a sweet, boozy Dude and a good laugh with friends who've seen the movie too many times. A solid rum and bourbon selection, and Deuchers on draught for anyone who just wants a pint.

A white baby grand piano anchors the ground floor of this polished cocktail bar on High Pavement, part of a chain but cleaner and lighter than that suggests. Dining is upstairs, so the street-level room is drinks only, with windows looking out onto what is now a Pitcher & Piano, which does give the whole thing a mildly recursive quality. Cocktails are solid; the menu leans into "house favourites, irresistibly priced," which is doing some work.

The cocktail bar at Malmaison Oxford is set inside a former Victorian prison, and the original cell bars are still on the windows. The main bar sits on the third floor in what used to be the visitors room, high-ceilinged and dressed in the plush fabrics and dark furniture the Malmaison group does reliably well. It's the kind of place where the surroundings do most of the talking, which is fine, because the surroundings are a jail.

A curving antique bar with gilded numbers painted on it anchors this dark-paneled Astoria cocktail bar, where the Venetian blinds and shabby-chic worn edges feel less designed and more just right. Oysters share the menu with a well-chosen list of cocktails organized by spirit, which is the kind of small decision that tells you someone actually thought about the room.

Blown-up photography canvases cover one wall, and the other is dressed up as a darkroom, because someone had to commit to a theme. This basement cocktail bar sits beneath a hotel opposite King's Cross and St Pancras, all heavy blacks, deep reds, and curtains swagged dramatically around certain tables. The menu arrives on wooden photographic plates. The cocktail list is short and tightly edited, which tends to mean fewer misses.

A long bar stretches the full length of a candlelit underground room near Trafalgar Square, separated from the restaurant behind it by dark slatted wooden screens. The cocktail bar leans hard into modern Indian flavors, which means the drinks are a genuine departure from the lager-and-vindaloo script. It pulls a dressed-up crowd who've figured out that nobody needs to see natural light to have a good evening.

Underneath Escucha and very aware of it, Minus One is a basement cocktail lounge that leans closer to club than it usually lets on, with low light, polished surfaces, and a touch of bling. DJs are a regular fixture, live music turns up occasionally, and the food menu is more substantial than the vibe suggests. Order something off the beaten track and you may watch the bartender quietly consult the spec sheet, but the classics come out well.

The mezzanine is inside an actual bus, steering wheel and all, which tells you most of what you need to know about Moniker's. This cocktail bar on Hoxton Square occupies a converted school gym, and the old blackboards, lab stools, and gym benches have been left more or less in place. It's the kind of interior that sounds like a gimmick until you're sitting in it, at which point it just works.

The arched room beneath Tower Bridge was a coal store before it was anything else, which makes it an odd candidate for a cocktail bar, but here we are. The back window, once the hatch where barges offloaded coal, now looks straight up at the bridge's underside with the Thames right below. Most is the Russian word for bridge, which earns its keep as a name. A solid spot for a drink when you want the view without the tourist-trap markup.

A sleek, almost spaceship-adjacent cocktail bar on the ground floor of the Nobu restaurant in Mayfair. Part of the operation draws its crowd from diners waiting on a table upstairs, but plenty come straight here with no dining ambitions at all. The room is sharp and minimal, the drinks leaning Japanese, and the general atmosphere suggests everyone is dressed a little better than they needed to be. Which, in Mayfair, is saying something.

The bar at this Primrose Hill restaurant sits one floor below street level, down a staircase just inside the front door. It's a neighbourhood drinking spot in the kind of postcode where the shops sell things you'd never actually buy, and the locals include enough familiar faces to make staring impolite. A calm, low-key place to have a drink away from the room above.

A candlelit basement cocktail bar tucked under The Mitre Townhouse, reached by a staircase from the street despite the "speakeasy" billing. Fuller's runs this one, and the layout wanders through what used to be servants' quarters, so you get a rabbit warren of low-lit rooms and dark corners that make it easy to disappear for the evening. The kind of place where people lean in close and stay longer than planned.

A lift from outside the Waitrose deposits you on the fourth floor of Canada Place, where an all-glass bar looks out over Canary Wharf while the suits inside do what suits do: champagne, volume, competitive guffawing. The lounge area with low-slung seats offers some shelter from the open kitchen and the office-party energy. Jazz competes with everything. The cocktail list leads with classics, and they're done properly.

A hangman's noose still hangs over the Thames foreshore out back, which tells you most of what you need to know about this pub's social history. Been around forever under various names, the most diplomatic of which replaced one that nodded to the smugglers and thieves who drank here. Samuel Pepys was a regular; so was the judge who sent men to Execution Dock just up the river. One of the oldest riverside pubs in London.

Named after the grass squares at the centre of Oxford's college quads, this hotel bar sits on the High Street with arched windows, exposed brick, and a central island bar that draws a steady crowd from opening time onward. It has the loose, lively feel of a brasserie rather than a quiet hotel lounge. A courtyard out back turns it into a genuinely pleasant spot when the weather cooperates, which in Oxford is, statistically, an optimistic bet.

A rooftop cocktail bar perched high enough above Aldwych to catch St. Paul's, the Shard, the London Eye, and Big Ben in a single sweep. The heated terrace has the plush seating of a place that knows people are really here for the panorama, and the angular island bar inside the sliding glass walls gives you somewhere to stand with your drink while pretending you weren't just gawking at Tower Bridge.

A cocktail bar inside the Grosvenor hotel near Victoria, Réunion has a mirrored ceiling, a glossy flagstone floor, and a long island bar that reads more nightclub than railway-adjacent hotel lounge. The entrance from the lobby leans into that contrast, dark enough to make you pause. The concourse windows remind you where you are, though the room itself seems determined to make you forget.

A bar that leans hard into the industrial-chic aesthetic, with a long white-tiled counter fronted by distressed leather stools and a top made from salvaged planks. Old theatre seats pull up to a scaffold-framed bench table, and wood-panelled nooks offer something softer. The whole thing reads as very New York, which in Fitzrovia lands somewhere between a compliment and a lifestyle statement. Book ahead if you want a proper table for food.

Half-height net curtains are doing a lot of heavy lifting here, softening what is otherwise an unvarnished backstreet pub with bare boards, worn rugs, and old wooden furniture. The lounge and saloon are still split by an island bar, and regulars skip the vestibule by cutting behind it, which nobody bothers to object to. A proper ale-and-grievances sort of place, and all the better for it.

A velvet-rope cocktail den in Kensington built around Russian vodka and caviar, where the golden rope at the door stays clipped unless your name is on the list. Arrive before eleven and it behaves more like a serious cocktail bar with canapés than a bottle-service showcase. The drinks are the point here, carefully made and worth the effort of booking, which you will need to do.

Wood-panelled walls, green leather seats, and a marble counter set the tone for this late-night hotel cocktail bar on High Pavement. The Nottingham Arena is close enough that whoever's headlining that night might be on the next barstool. Ring the bell if it's late and the door's locked. The menu runs from classics to house concoctions that are genuinely divisive, which is at least more interesting than inoffensive.

The cocktail bar tucked beneath Sake No Hana is easy to miss: you push through two Japanese curtains that only reach your waist, which does make an entrance. It sits in the basement of the old Economist building in St James's, a listed piece of sixties architecture that drinks people still mourn as the former home of Che. Small, composed, and Japanese in spirit, it draws a pre-dinner crowd that the menu occasionally persuades to stay put.

The roof garden is the reason to climb to the third floor of what is generously described as a food court, plastic palm trees, fairy lights, and all-weather heaters doing their best to make Forman Street feel like somewhere. This cocktail bar splits its menu into Old Skool and Nu-Skool drinks, which is the kind of branding that dates itself immediately, though the drinks themselves hold up well enough to earn three stars from Difford's Guide.

Spanish movie posters and dark wood booths line this subterranean tapas bar and late-night spot a stumble from Leicester Square tube. The steep descent into a dimly lit, Gothic-ish basement sets the tone before you've ordered anything, and a 3am licence keeps the night going long after the tourists have called it. There's a cover charge some nights, which is the clearest possible sign of what the room becomes after midnight.

Tables made from metal prison doors set the tone at this Shoreditch cocktail bar and nightclub, which took over the old XOYO space with corrugated iron walls, urban sculpture, and a voodoo flourish or two. The same crew runs Paradise and Blues Kitchen, so they know their way around a room built for dancing. A subwoofer the size of a small car sits in the middle of the floor, and the DJs, live acts, and dance parties are the real point of the evening.

The pub sign pictures a man who turns out to be a Coptic Orthodox saint credited with moving a mountain in Cairo, not a local drunk with leather-stained hands, which sets the tone nicely. This is a small, unpretentious neighborhood boozer in Bermondsey, mismatched dark wood furniture and all, the kind of place that quietly resisted any pressure to become somewhere clever.

The spy-themed cocktail list, with drinks named The Spy Who Loved Me and Enigma Code, sets the tone at this hotel lobby bar in the City. Floor-to-ceiling windows keep things light, and you can settle at the long bar, scattered lounge chairs, or a central sharing table. The cocktails run grown-up and simply constructed, though they lean sweet, with caramel popcorn arriving alongside to lean into it further.

The Victorian tilework outside promises a sedate local; the oak-panelled 1930s interior delivers exactly that, and then the beer list quietly contradicts both. This is a proper pub on the corner where Stoney Street meets Borough Market, which means on Fridays and Saturdays it fills up fast with market-goers and young professionals who end up drinking on the pavement whether they planned to or not.

The DJ booth is the tell: this is a cocktail bar pitched somewhere between a steakhouse and a nightclub, with indoor cherry blossom trees and a pink-purple palette that makes the whole thing feel like a mood board escaped into real life. It lives inside the ME London hotel on the Strand. The crowd dresses accordingly, and the drinks lean bold and photogenic, which here is less a criticism than a description.

A Broadway Market bar that moonlights as a community arts project, Stories runs talks, installations, and events alongside the drinks, all sourced from the local Hackney creative pool. It's the kind of all-day spot where someone at the next table is either pitching a zine or launching one. The sister bar to The Book Club in Shoreditch, it shares that same formula of cold beer and intellectual ambition, which sounds exhausting but usually isn't.