The Top 100 Places to Drink Near Batas Tapas

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #72 · The National Restaurant Awards

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The elm counter runs eight metres and seats a dozen, which matters because where you sit shapes what you drink at this Japanese cocktail bar in Shoreditch. Counter seats unlock the full menu, split between seasonal pours and "Evergreen" cocktails built on fermentation, carbonation, and centrifugal clarification. The seasonal side nods to Japan's 72 micro-seasons. Ranked fifth on Top 50 Cocktail Bars, it pulls a crowd that knows the difference.

1. 50 Best #23 · Europe's 50 Best Bars
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #5 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · Best New International Cocktail Bar

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The all-Spanish wine list at this Bermondsey Street bar runs to some serious bottles, which gives you a decent excuse to linger over a glass of something from the Iberian peninsula's less-obvious corners. José Pizarro's bigger follow-up to his nearby tapas spot leans comfortable and stylish, the kind of room where a copa of Pedro Ximénez feels entirely reasonable at midday. Small plates circulate for those who can't just drink.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

One cocktail bar split into two very different moods. Elementary faces the street with draft Old Fashioneds and Aquavit on tap, a One Sip Martini menu, and prices that won't require a sit-down afterward. Pass through the partition and Tayēr goes darker and quieter, with seasonal menus that change fast and ingredients that lean toward the unusual. The brutalist concrete and exposed steel read warmer than they should. Ranked fifth on the World's 50 Best Bars.

1. 50 Best #5 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. 50 Best #12 · Europe's 50 Best Bars

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.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
2. 50 Best #86 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants
3. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Floor-to-ceiling glass on the 24th floor of Tower 42 catches the sunset over southwest London, which is a reliable trick. This cocktail bar is done up like a gentleman's club, all dark wood paneling, leather chairs, and golden library lamps, and the suited City crowd fills it as if central casting sent them over. It's part of Jason Atherton's group, so the drinks are competent and taken seriously.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The basement cocktail bar beneath the original Hawksmoor steakhouse, tucked under Spitalfields on Commercial Street. The drinks are complex but the staff wear it lightly, which is either the charm or the whole point. Named for the architect whose Christ Church looms just down the road, though the vibe runs more candlelit den than baroque monument. A five-star rating from Difford's Guide gives you a sense of how seriously the team takes a good cocktail.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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.

1. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #43 · Top 50 Gastropubs

Taxidermy on the walls, vintage booze ads by candlelight, and hip-hop on the sound system: Satan's Whiskers is a Bethnal Green cocktail bar that looks grungy from the outside and somewhat like hell from the inside, in the best possible sense. The menu changes daily, so regulars who've memorized the classics are always slightly off-balance. It holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Bars and has done the top-slot thing at Top 50 Cocktail Bars more than once.

1. 50 Best #21 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. 50 Best #11 · Europe's 50 Best Bars

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Ryan Chetiyawardana's cocktail bar on the South Bank builds its menu around five house-made ingredients, things like tree caramel and thunder mushroom, that sound like a fantasy novel and drink like a revelation. The space runs gold, blue, and silver, open and unhurried. The menu, called the Ancestral Cookbook, explains itself at the back for anyone who blank-stared at "death bitters," which is most people, and that's rather the point.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 3 Pins
2. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #25 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

Gerald Scarfe's caricatures cover the walls of this cocktail bar inside the Rosewood London, turning a room full of leather-bound books and low couches into something between a drawing room and a satirist's fever dream. The fire is real, the wood panelling is deep, and live jazz runs nightly. It holds a spot on The World's 50 Best Bars, and the crowd around the fireplace rarely whispers.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. 50 Best #31 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. 50 Best #47 · Europe's 50 Best Bars

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.

1. Difford's Guide 2.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Reclaimed oak panelling and copper-topped tables give The Rose the look of a Victorian tavern that was never actually Victorian. It's a gastropub near London Bridge, sitting in the shadow of the Shard, close to Bermondsey Street's more self-conscious end. The owners set out to build an old English pub from scratch, and the herringbone parquet and twin-seater benches suggest they took the brief seriously.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #26 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

The martini trolley arrives tableside like a small piece of theater, the bartender waiting while you choose your gin, your bitters, shaken or stirred. This is a cocktail bar inside one of Mayfair's grand hotels, all platinum silver leaf walls and candlelit grey marble, and it holds a Forbes Five Star and a spot on the World's 50 Best Bars. Bar snacks run through the afternoon; canapes take over by evening. Dress accordingly.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. 50 Best #6 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #44 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

You get into this basement cocktail bar by walking through a Smeg fridge in the back of The Breakfast Club. Ask quietly at the door whether there's room downstairs, because the whole point is that it's a secret, and they'll let you hold that fiction together. Below, rough wood, vintage posters, and unsettling dolls set the mood, while the bathroom wallpaper is an education in one-hit wonders and deeply regrettable 1980s haircuts.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The oyster farm is owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, which is a sentence you don't get to say about many bars. This Borough Market oyster bar runs a chalkboard of a dozen-plus varieties on any given day, served at a narrow wooden counter or communal high tables under exposed brick and industrial light. It's a tight, warehouse-feeling room where the kitchen operates with no illusions of space, and the crowd leans into raw shellfish and porter with equal commitment.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The man who ran the American Bar at the Savoy for nearly eight years now runs this sleek Mayfair cocktail bar a short walk from Green Park. Erik Lorincz built Kwãnt around drinks that don't resemble anything else in London, layering fermented teas, misos, and awamori into compositions that feel genuinely considered rather than merely unusual. It ranks on the World's 50 Best Bars list. The room is calm and grown-up, which lets the cocktails do the talking.

1. 50 Best #79 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
3. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The cocktail menu here is built around restraint, which sounds modest until you taste what that actually means. Three Sheets Soho is a neighbourhood cocktail bar from the Venning brothers, landing on both the World's 50 Best Bars and Europe's 50 Best Bars lists. Seasonal rotations sit alongside signatures, oysters come free with a Martini order, and the whole room feels like it's trying less hard than it should be able to at this level.

1. 50 Best #80 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. 50 Best #41 · Europe's 50 Best Bars
3. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #11 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

The old Packman table in the corner sets the tone for this deliberately scruffy pub near London Bridge. Garishly painted booths, mismatched furniture, and a live music stage draw trainee medics from Guy's Hospital and anyone else who'd rather not be somewhere with a dress code. Gourmet hotdogs made with Bermondsey sausages are the kitchen's one serious move. A proper boozer wearing its rough edges without apology.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A long wooden bar, inherited from a pan-Asian predecessor that didn't stick around, anchors this subterranean cocktail bar beneath Hixter in the City. The look is New York basement, done in leather seating, low lighting, and exposed brick, and it pulls off the warmth that look usually just promises. A solid place to disappear after the Square Mile empties out.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Wine comes in tumblers here, which tells you everything about the Anchor & Hope's attitude. It's a proper Southwark pub with burgundy walls, mismatched furniture, and no reservations, so the scramble for a table is part of the deal. The food skews modern British and generous, the crowd mixes locals with people who crossed town on purpose, and the whole thing manages to feel like a neighbourhood place that somehow everyone claims as their own.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #64 · Top 50 Gastropubs
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Victorian banking hall on Threadneedle Street, all soaring ceilings and white linen that still feels vaguely capable of financing a railway. The cocktail list and crisp service quickly establish this as a serious cocktail bar, not just a power-lunch backdrop. City workers fill it noisily through the day, then the room empties fast when the commuter trains call. Come early evening for elbow room that, an hour later, would be genuinely hard to believe.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Floor 32 of The Shard is a lot of real estate to dedicate to a view, but Oblix earns the altitude. This sleek cocktail bar from the group behind Roka and Zuma arrives via a dedicated lift and a dark, scented entrance with water features, which is either very impressive or slightly airport lounge depending on your mood. On a clear London day the panorama stretches forever, and even on a grey one you'll find plenty to look at in your glass.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A champagne bar perched nearly 600 feet up in Tower 42, in the heart of the City, where the point is unmistakably the view. You reserve by phone, clear a security line that takes its cues from airport protocol, and take an ear-popping lift to the 42nd floor. London spreads out in every direction, which is fortunate, because the drinks list gives you time to look at it.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Three championship pool tables buried several flights below a City office block set the tone for this members' bar near Mansion House. The descent feels bunker-like, but the room that greets you is all brown sofas and warm lighting, somewhere between a private lounge and a well-funded man cave that's smart enough for everyone. A cinema and private rooms with self-service bars round it out for after-work groups.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #23 · Top 50 Gastropubs
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. 50 Best #73 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The bar itself is carved from a solid slab of cork, its surface made from port-soaked chestnut reclaimed from old Sandeman vats, which sets the tone nicely. This cocktail bar sits in medieval vaults beneath the City, where the Sandeman family once rolled barrels up from the Thames through a tunnel that's now bricked over. Big punchy cocktails and a serious wine list, for when the square mile needs a drink, which is always.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The coral reef ceiling by Damien Hirst sets the tone before you've ordered anything: this is Mayfair doing Asian-inspired food and cocktails with a straight face and a very large budget. The room is all bronzed mermaids and mirrored walls, and the crowd dresses accordingly. The bar program is serious despite the spectacle, and the kitchen sends out sushi and robata to tables full of people who booked weeks out.

1. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · Rising Star · Top 50 Cocktail Bars · Jelena Bulatovskaja
2. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The bar at Roast sits above the stall-holders' cages of Borough Market, inside a space built around the old Floral Hall portico salvaged from Covent Garden's Royal Opera House. It's a dedicated bar area within a larger restaurant, so you can drink without committing to a full meal. Bar snacks and cocktails are the move, with the Saturday morning market crowd browsing obliviously below.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #12 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

The church pew seating has been here since the Victorian era, and it does not pretend otherwise. This Farringdon wine bar sits inside an old-school institution, all chequered floors and panelled walls, with a list leaning toward interesting New World bottles and esoteric finds. The room rewards people who take their wine seriously but don't need a sommelier to prove it.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #85 · The National Restaurant Awards
2. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 2 Pins
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #43 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A scale model of Concorde suspended from the ceiling sets the tone at this rooftop fine dining room inside The Peninsula, named after the Surrey racetrack and decorated accordingly. Claude Bosi's team turns out precise, unhurried cooking built around British ingredients, Lake District lamb and Cornish squid given the kind of attention that earned the restaurant two Michelin stars. Floor-to-ceiling windows open onto a terrace with views to match the ambition.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

Candles stuck in wax-crusted bottles flicker under mismatched lampshades at this Tooley Street local, which has the look of a pub that never quite decided whether to go gastropub or stay a straightforward boozer. It landed somewhere in the middle, and mostly that's fine. The cask ales are the reason to come, with a rotating handful on tap and Green King IPA holding down a permanent stool at the bar.

1. Difford's Guide 2.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Two floors, two different nights out: the ground floor runs a tight list of classics and house cocktails, while the basement lounges deeper, with live music on weekends and over 300 whiskies to work through. Booking downstairs is advised, which tells you something. The cocktail menu leans into a travel theme the team rotates, and Swift landed at number 15 on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
3. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #15 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

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.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 2 Pins
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #21 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

A narrow old pub on Wapping High Street that's been around long enough to have its own hanging judge lore, which the regulars will tell you about unprompted. Judge Jeffreys sentenced hundreds here in the 17th century, and the gallows sat out back. These days, that back terrace leads straight to the Thames, the view partly obscured, the atmosphere several centuries deep. One of the older riverside pubs in London, and the kind that earns the description without trying.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Tucked under London Bridge's railway arches behind a door dressed up as old shipping crates from the Orient, Cecil's is a candlelit basement speakeasy that takes its own mythology seriously. The unmarked entrance is genuinely tricky before six, when a doorman materialises to make life easier. Inside, a cavernous room fills with mismatched tables, a bar wedged into the corner, and a raised platform that suggests something is always about to happen.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A proper pub tucked into a Bermondsey backstreet, The Grange has had its original brickwork and floorboards stripped back and cleaned up, which is a nicer way to gentrify than most. The ales are kept well, the Bloody Marys arrive with real heat, and once the weather turns, the garden and wood-fired pizza oven become the main event. A neighborhood local that hasn't forgotten what a neighborhood local is supposed to be.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #48 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

A flower-filled pool and a buzzing bar greet you on the way up to this Mayfair Indian dining room, which holds a Michelin star and pulls a crowd split evenly between power lunches and date nights. The chef's cooking takes Indian tradition somewhere more restless and precise, with the sourcing doing a lot of the quiet work. Private rooms make it a favorite with the suits, but the room itself earns the evening on its own.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

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.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #37 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

The lounge bar sits up a few steps to the right as you walk in, salvaged timber and exposed metal doing the heavy lifting on atmosphere. Village East was an early arrival on Bermondsey Street before the White Cube moved in and the expensive-small-thing shops followed, so there's a confident ease here that the newer neighbours are still working on. The restaurant fills the main floor; this is the bar, and it reads like one.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A walled beer garden on Bermondsey Street is a rare thing, and The Woolpack has one, complete with picnic tables, bamboo fencing, and a parasol heroic enough to deny the British weather. Inside, the booths run along original tiled walls uncovered during a refurb, and the overall vibe is 70s utilitarian rather than anything a designer touched. A proper pub, unpretentious and unapologetic about it.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

A 6.8-metre Chesterfield sofa is a bold statement for any bar, but Tanner and Co. earns it, given the building's past life outfitting Victorian tanneries in Bermondsey. The cavernous space splits the difference between school gym and leather showroom, with climbing frames, pine floors, and ropes from the ceiling alongside staff in bespoke leather aprons. It's a lot, in the best pub-as-performance-art tradition.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A riverside pub on Wapping High Street where the walls tell the story of Captain Kidd, the privateer hanged nearby at execution dock, which gives the place a historical hook that most theme bars don't quite manage. You walk down a cobbled path through a stone archway into a big, flagstone-floored bar kitted out in convincingly aged seventeenth-century style. The Thames view does a lot of work, and the room is cheerful enough that nobody minds the pastiche.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 2.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A pub on the Thames Path where Bermondsey slides into Rotherhithe, sitting opposite the ruins of a manor house built for Edward III. Monks originally ran a guesthouse on this spot, and the place has been pulling people off the river ever since, Samuel Pepys and Captain Cook among them if the stories hold. A good old-school pub with the history to back up the worn-in feel.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

Floor-to-ceiling windows flood this split-level City cocktail bar with enough light to remind you it's actually a weekday. Part of the Drake & Morgan stable, The Folly is big enough to swallow a whole office outing, but rough wooden tables, church candelabras, and patterned wallpaper keep it from feeling like a chain. A reliable after-work refuge near Monument when you'd rather not explain yourself to anyone who knows you.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Cockney rhyming slang gives this Brick Lane-area bar its name, which means "stairs" for anyone not raised within earshot of Bow Bells. Inside, green pendant lights hang against exposed London brick, the armchairs are comfortably battered, and the terrace out back is about as no-frills as it gets. A second bar downstairs opens when the weekend crowd warrants it. The whole place wears its East End scruffiness without apology.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The curved corner frontage wraps around Great Dover and Trinity Streets like the prow of a ship, and inside the Roebuck earns its old back-street boozer status without apology. Mismatched wooden tables ring an island bar, with a slightly loungy back room for when you need to feel less like you're in a pub but still want to be in a pub. Cask ales on handpump, Meantime on keg, and Cotswold cider cover the bases.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A cocktail bar spread across the ground and mezzanine of Heron Tower, The Drift seats over 400 people while somehow carving out corners that feel almost intimate, which is no small trick in a glass-and-steel skyscraper. Retro soft furnishings and tactile finishes do the heavy lifting against the corporate bones of the building. A few decorative shells are the only nod to the nautical name, which is probably for the best.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The ground floor is a proper pub, rammed most hours with people working through what regulars insist is the finest pint of Guinness in London. Climb the stairs and The Devonshire becomes a grill room, where dry-aged beef butchered on site meets an open-fire kitchen. The team behind it includes a former Heston Blumenthal lieutenant, which explains the quiet technical seriousness underneath what looks, pleasantly, like a Soho pub having a very good time. Top 50 Gastropubs ranked it first in 2026.

1. World's 101 Best #45 · World's Best Steak Restaurants
2. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · Gastropub of the Year · The National Restaurant Awards
3. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #1 · Top 50 Gastropubs

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

Betty Boop perches at the end of the bar like she owns the place, which more or less sets the tone. This unpretentious Bermondsey local hides over a hundred single malts behind an otherwise ordinary pub facade, drawing hospital staff and office workers who clearly need a drink more than a scene. Old church pews and beaten-up leather sofas ring the central bar, and the food is priced for people on an actual budget.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

Tucked down Swedeland Court, a passageway beside Dirty Dick's, this whisky and cocktail bar carries a Scottish theme that stops well short of tartan overkill. It's the City outpost of the Belgravia original, which means suits from Liverpool Street fill the room early and stay late. The kind of place where the whisky list does most of the talking and you find yourself ordering a second dram before you've finished deciding on a first.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

The last galleried coaching inn left in London sits in a cobbled courtyard off Borough High Street, which is already doing a lot of the work. The George is a pub owned by the National Trust and leased to Greene King, so the olde-world atmosphere comes with a corporate pour. The timber galleries and latticed windows pull in tourists by the coachload, but on a quiet afternoon the courtyard still feels like Dickens could wander through.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The shutters go up on Saturday mornings and that's the only schedule that matters here. Kernel is a craft brewery tap under a Bermondsey railway arch, open one day a week, where you can taste before you buy and then stay to drink in a makeshift beer hall next door. Mismatched furniture, no frills, and a crowd that arrived knowing exactly what they wanted before they walked in.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

A twenty-foot copper-topped bar sits at the back of nine bowling lanes inside the Old Truman Brewery, which tells you more about this place than any sign out front does. It's a cocktail bar you can walk into without booking a lane, pouring classic American drinks, a long list of beers, and what the management modestly calls the largest bourbon collection in the UK. Large booths make it a natural group outing, bowlers and non-bowlers sharing the same cheerful noise.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The bar inside this modern Asian restaurant near Liverpool Street looks a little sparse in daylight, which is the kindest framing available. Come evening, the low lighting does the heavy lifting, and the cocktail list earns its keep regardless. The drinks lean into bold, unexpected pairings, the kind that make you wonder why nobody combined those two things before. Service keeps pace without fuss.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The bar worth finding at Gordon Ramsay's Bread Street Kitchen is upstairs, not the low-key lounge you walk into on the ground floor. That front room handles daytime coffees and quiet drinks just fine, but the real reason to come is the upper bar, where you're above the dining floor action and the cocktails have clearly had some attention paid to them since the early days.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Forty floors above Liverpool Street, the lift opens onto a lounge bar where plastic chandeliers and fairy lights share wall space with Asian-style graffiti, and the view does most of the work. The cocktail list is short and built around house infusions, though the City crowd at the island bar skews heavily toward bottled beer, which tells you something about the room's priorities. Come for the altitude; the drinks are secondary.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

The Wheatsheaf sits right at the edge of Borough Market, which means the Friday afternoon crowd has usually come straight from a cheese stall. It's a pub with reclaimed wood tables on flagstones, pastel panelling that nods to a Shaker kitchen, and a vintage frontage that somehow outlasted Thameslink construction work overhead. The vibe is designer rustic, the pints are cold, and the location does most of the heavy lifting.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

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.

1. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #17 · Top 50 Gastropubs
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Old school lockers with graffiti line the walls, a chopper bike leans against something, and a ghetto blaster sits where a till might otherwise be. This Bermondsey cocktail bar runs its menu by school subject, so the Cosmopolitan lives under History and the Hemingway Daiquiri files under English, which is the kind of logic that rewards a second drink. Tonka trucks and 80s nostalgia do the decorating; flair bartending does the rest.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The license starts at 6am so Borough Market workers can get a pint in before most of London has had breakfast. This old-school pub on Stoney Street has been around forever and keeps a serious cask ale selection, pump clips covering the walls and rafters like wallpaper someone forgot to stop hanging. The burgundy paint and bare wooden floor make it feel lived-in without trying too hard, and it draws a crowd that actually uses the market, not just photographs it.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A narrow Italian cocktail bar on Old Compton Street that sells bottled Negronis to go, which tells you most of what you need to know. The menu is short by design, built around a handful of Aperol spritzes, Marsala Martinis, and wine cocktails, with enough burrata and charcuterie to keep you honest. The bar staff will make classics off-menu without fuss. Ranked eighth on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list for 2026.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #8 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

Red leather booths and floor-to-ceiling windows onto the old market square set the scene at this American diner-style bar tucked into Spitalfields. Boozy milkshakes and alcoholic slushies handle the drinks, which pair with the kind of food, burgers and ribs, that exists primarily to justify the shakes. The neon and the street theatre outside do most of the decorating, and neither asks anything of you.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Three railway arches behind Borough Market, and each one earns its keep: the first holds a bar counter lined with gleaming pumps, the middle an open kitchen and glass-fronted beer cellar, the last a view of the actual brewing vessels. It's a beer hall and microbrewery with a walled yard out front, simple wooden tables throughout, and bare brick rising to arched ceilings. The kind of place where the pint comes from the building you're sitting in.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The pub that claims to be the oldest on the Thames sits on Rotherhithe Street with its feet practically in the river, all low beams and the distinct feeling that the floorboards have heard some things. The Mayflower is named for the ship that carried the Pilgrim Fathers to the New World, and their captain is buried just up the road. Come for a pint, stay because leaving requires more willpower than the room tends to inspire.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide