The Top 100 Places to Drink Near Mar I Terra

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

Rows of glass demijohns packed with house-infused vodkas line the bar, each one a slightly different shade of amber or red depending on what's steeping inside. This is a Polish vodka bar hiding behind a narrow Blackfriars Road frontage, opening up into a surprisingly long, modern space. The caramel and cherry infusions are the ones regulars point you toward. The vast coach-builder's dining room next door is its own operation; the bar is the move.

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

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.

1. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #18 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars
2. Difford's Guide 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

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 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

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

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 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

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 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

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

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 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.

1. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #46 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars
2. Difford's Guide 4 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

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

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.

1. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #39 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

The OXO lettering in the windows was a 1920s planning-permission workaround, and the building has been branded ever since. The bar itself sits on the 8th floor of that South Bank landmark, reached by an express lift, and the terrace views take in the Thames, St. Paul's, and a good stretch of London skyline. It's the kind of cocktail bar where the room does most of the work, and the room is very good at its job.

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

The back-lit bar front glows like a stage set, which is fitting given that this is exactly where the Savoy's old cabaret stage once stood. The Beaufort Bar is a cocktail bar done in black and gold, all deep carpets, plush upholstery, and enough gold leaf to make a Dubai hotel blush. The bartenders perform accordingly. A classic London hotel bar, except louder about it.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

The Savoy Cocktail Book was written here, which tells you everything about where this cocktail bar sits in the pecking order. Black-and-white photos of Sinatra and a roll call of legendary bartenders line the walls, and the room carries that weight without trying too hard. It's all dark wood, white-jacketed staff, and a sense that the person mixing your drink could answer almost any question about the Martini.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

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.

1. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #47 · Top 50 Gastropubs
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. The Infatuation The 24 Best Restaurants In Soho

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

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2. Difford's Guide 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

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 blackboard menu behind the bar changes so often that what you order at noon may be gone by dinner. The Eagle is an old-school Clerkenwell pub that helped invent the gastropub idea and still runs the same way: order at the bar, find your own table, no reservations. The kitchen is barely bigger than a wardrobe, which makes what comes out of it all the more surprising. The steak sandwich shows up most days, which gives regulars something to anchor to.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #77 · Top 50 Gastropubs

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. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

Floor-to-ceiling windows on the third floor of the Royal Festival Hall frame the Millennium Bridge, the Gherkin, and a wide sweep of the north bank. The bar sits on a raised island in the middle of a vast room hung with five bronze chandeliers, each ringed with fins. It's a cocktail bar that happens to come with one of the more theatrical views in the city, and the room itself is doing a lot of the work.

1. Difford's Guide 4 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

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 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

The square island bar takes up so much floor space a modern designer would have a small crisis, but that's rather the point at this back-street Waterloo pub. Dark wood panelling and mismatched dining chairs sit alongside 70s light fittings and what the décor trade might call "sparkly dangly bits." It's an old boozer that's had a gentle gastropub makeover without losing the feeling that it's been here forever and plans to stay.

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

Fleet Street's old Reuters building still has stories to tell, and the bar at Lutyens is a good place to hear them. The floor tiles are laid to mimic a stock ticker, a nod to the building's past that most people miss. It's a sleek, grown-up bar with charcuterie on hand, designed in that signature Conran way where minimalism somehow still feels warm. The crowd skews City, which tells you something about both the prices and the suits.

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 bar sits upstairs in Jamie Oliver's barbecue restaurant next to St Paul's, and the smell of smoking ribs hits you before you've even found a seat. Getting that seat is the sport: staff with headsets will try to park you in the basement holding area, so hold firm and wait for the bar proper. Once you're there, it's warm and easy, and the room does the rest.

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

The bar sits inside County Hall, the grand old Southbank municipal pile that now shares its corridors with a Marriott and, somewhere below, a slightly forlorn amusement arcade. Up the stairs, that awkward context falls away into an almost circular room that's eclectic and colourful, with Big Ben framed across the Thames. It's a cocktail bar with a steakhouse alongside, which means the crowd skews tourist but the view does the heavy lifting for everyone.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

1. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #45 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

Candlelight and wooden paneling do a lot of heavy lifting against the glass-and-steel hotel lobby just outside the door. This bar leans into rustic Italian warmth, with big flower arrangements that tip the room back toward opulence whenever it gets too cozy. It sits inside the ME Hotel on the Strand, so the crowd skews toward the well-heeled and the well-traveled, but the cocktail menu is doing its own thing.

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

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

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

The Anchor sits right on the Thames at Bankside, and the building itself is genuinely old, with five bars, a minstrels' gallery, and a riverside terrace that tourists photograph from every angle. This is a pub running almost entirely on heritage and a view, which is a perfectly honest business model. Order something simple, settle onto the terrace, and let the setting do what it does.

1. Difford's Guide 2 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

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

A cocktail bar born from misfortune, Casual by Tayēr started as the team's answer to a fire that shuttered their original spot. Tucked inside Cato on Mercer Street, it runs as a pop-up series, each chapter riffing on a new theme through the Tayēr lens. The drinks pull from both sides of the original pairing, Tayēr's creativity meeting Elementary's precision, and the tight space puts you closer to the bartenders than almost any bar stool could.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 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

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

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 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

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

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

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

Nine vaulted alcoves run beneath the pavement near Blackfriars, each lined with digital wallpaper depicting Champagne cellars and sized for two to eight people, which covers a lot of ground socially. This basement cocktail bar sits below the Crowne Plaza and draws the post-work crowd into its main space, where a long bar, big banquettes, and a resident DJ keep things moving. One of the few places in central London where you can still smoke inside your private vault.

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

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

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.

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

A two-floor bar tucked into the heart of Covent Garden, with a ground floor that wraps around a central staircase and a basement fitted with booths and a shelf of cocktail books for anyone who wants homework with their drink. The bar itself is the focal point, bottles lined up in lit rows against the dim room. Stools go fast, but there's standing room, and the crowd tends toward the pre-theatre and late-staying alike.

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

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

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

A big Victorian corner pub across from the Imperial War Museum, with stained glass dark enough to make afternoon feel like closing time. The cask ale selection is solid if unremarkable, and the food reputation that once drew people in walked out the door with the chef who built it. Come for the atmosphere and a pint, not a dining occasion, and you'll leave in better shape than if you'd expected otherwise.

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

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

The "Press for Champagne" button at every booth is not a gimmick so much as a philosophy. This reservation-only downstairs cocktail bar is all David Collins deco, monogrammed everything, and opulent blue-and-pink booths that somehow avoid being garish. Cocktails are the point here, served in surroundings that suggest a very glamorous train that never has to arrive anywhere.

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

A photo of a very young Sly Stallone holding a fish greets you somewhere near the bar, and that sets the tone nicely. La Perla is a Mexican cocktail bar in Covent Garden, nautical touches and a mermaid mural overhead, with most of the serious drinking happening up front rather than in the skylit dining room behind it. Margaritas are the obvious move, and the crowd tends to arrive knowing that already.

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

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

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

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 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

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 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A traditional pub named for Edgar Wallace, the thriller writer whose books were adapted into more films than anyone else in the twentieth century, which is a fine thing to put on a sign. It sits on a quiet corner off the Strand in legal London, where the barristers from nearby Temple come in for a pint looking either triumphant or philosophical. Old wood, framed memorabilia, and the general atmosphere of a place that has been here forever.

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