The Top 100 Places to Drink Near Papi’s Munchies Pizza

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

The team behind Anchor & Hope, the Waterloo gastropub that quietly set the template for London pub dining, brought this Victorian corner pub to Stoke Newington Church Street. Original panelling meets brick, the doors fold out onto a courtyard, and the kitchen sends out boldly flavoured, generously portioned food, the kind of cooking that makes a shared pie feel like the obvious choice. The deli near the exit is easy to miss and worth not missing.

1. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #78 · Top 50 Gastropubs
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #32 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

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

The jet-black exterior marks this Newington Green gastropub from a distance, and the no-reservations policy means you either luck into a cosy booth or end up at a communal table getting absorbed into someone else's evening. Seasonal cocktails, natural wines, and well-kept ales cover the drinks side thoroughly, while the kitchen leans into the kind of confident, unfussy cooking that makes you order another round just to keep eating.

1. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #83 · Top 50 Gastropubs

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

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

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

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

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

1. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #35 · Top 50 Gastropubs

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

Baby blue walls, mismatched furniture, and mirrors over the fireplaces set the tone for this Islington neighbourhood pub, which takes its food seriously without making a point of it. A Breton-born chef means braised rabbit sits happily next to steak and ale pie on a daily-changing menu. The courtyard garden fills up fast in warm weather, and the wine list runs deeper than a pub strictly needs.

1. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #67 · Top 50 Gastropubs
2. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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

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

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

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

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

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

A corner pub on Northcote Road with bare wooden tables and plank walls that give it more country-inn energy than Battersea terrace. The glass-roofed dining room out back has an open fireplace for winter and air-conditioning for summer, which covers the meteorological bases as well as any London pub can. Pavement tables with heaters and an awning stretch the outdoor season considerably. Part of the Three Cheers group.

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

The bar top is cast from old pavement lights, and the water carafes are repurposed gin bottles, which tells you everything about the aesthetic before you've ordered. Sager and Wilde is a candlelit wine bar on Hackney Road, bare brick and unpretentious, where the list is the whole point. Early evenings, light cuts through the Venetian blinds at a mood-appropriate angle; after that, candles take over and the room does the rest.

1. Difford's Guide 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

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

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

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

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

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

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 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

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

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

A curtain just inside the door does a surprising amount of heavy lifting, shifting the mood from Stoke Newington high street to somewhere vaguely central European. This Hackney ale and cider house packs its tables with people in their late twenties and thirties who take the draught list seriously, and they have reason to: real ales, craft beers, stouts, lagers, and ciders stretch across a bar that nearly spans the room.

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

The building looks enough like a factory that you'll second-guess yourself on the walk up. Once inside, this cocktail bar in East London's Bethnal Green-Hackney corridor keeps the industrial mood going: white walls, exposed bulbs, and a big island bar where you can watch the dining room below get on with its evening. The crowd skews local and knowing, which is really the only way you'd find it.

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

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

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

A marble-topped, oak-clad bar inside a former Victorian textiles factory in Dalston, Jones and Sons is a coffee-forward bar that skews grown-up in a neighborhood that usually skews otherwise. White walls, concrete, and salvaged light fittings land somewhere between Scandinavian spare and genuinely warm. The crowd arrives for good coffee and a proper drink, not to perform coolness at a venue with pretensions to grit.

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

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

The Campari and Aperol left out on the bar-top are a deliberate tell: this isn't your average Islington local. Hunter S. is a spirits bar with around 150 bottles leaning heavily into Scotch, American, and international whiskies, plus rum, and respectable depth in everything else. The vibe runs closer to a relaxed brasserie than a reverent whisky library, which means you'll end up talking flavour profiles without feeling like you're taking an exam.

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

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

The name isn't a joke: the space was a dance school once, and you can still feel the bones of it, a big open floor with an island bar dropped in the middle like someone had to make a decision. Theatre flip-seats, barstools, and worn couches fill the edges in a pleasingly haphazard way. The stripped, slightly faded surfaces fit Dalston perfectly. A neighbourhood bar that doesn't try too hard, which in this part of east London counts for something.

1. Difford's Guide 4 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

You book online and put a card down just to get through the door, which tells you something about how seriously Nightjar takes itself as a cocktail bar. The pre-war speakeasy atmosphere on City Road runs to live jazz, blues, ragtime, and the occasional cabaret set, so you're choosing between a quiet corner for the drinks or a front-row seat to the whole production. Either way, the program is the point.

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

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

The name comes from the axe used to split an agave piña, which tells you everything about how seriously this Kingsland Road bar takes its subject. Around two dozen tequilas, mezcals, and lesser-known agave spirits rotate through the back bar, and the Mirror Margarita, served in tequila or mezcal form, has become the thing regulars order without looking up. A proper agave bar in a neighborhood that didn't need another generic cocktail spot.

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

Hine and Hennessey XO on the back bar of a Victoria Park pub is not something you see every day. This enormous East End boozer, sitting on the north edge of the park, leans hard into the Britannia theme, which is to say red, white, and blue on every available surface. No cocktail list in sight, but the spirit selection hints that someone behind the bar knows what they're doing with a shaker if you ask nicely.

1. Difford's Guide 3 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 split-level neighbourhood bar on Hackney Road, named for the man who burned the previous building down in 1883 after being refused entry. Arson as branding is an interesting choice, but it works. What was most recently a curry house is now a late-night drinking spot filling a gap in an area that wasn't exactly drowning in options, a short walk from Columbia Road.

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

The bar bills still come printed from "The Bar With No Name Ltd," even though there's now a branded canopy outside giving the whole speakeasy game away. This tiny cocktail bar on a quiet Islington corner seats fewer than forty, so ring ahead. Inside, eight green industrial lamps hang spider-like over a two-tone room that lands somewhere between 1950s Italian café and serious molecular mixology den, which is a combination nobody else is attempting.

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

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

A hostel bar turned Shoreditch cocktail den, Translate keeps things unfussy: wooden bar, exposed brick, drinks on a blackboard. The cocktail list leans playful, mixing rum, chocolate milk, and whipped cream alongside tequila-coconut builds that suggest the bartenders are having fun. Kingsland Road's southern stretch draws a crowd that's here to settle in, not to be seen, which makes it a useful place to actually get a seat.

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

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

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

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.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 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

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

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

The worn linoleum and unchanged fittings place this old pub firmly in the era before anyone thought pubs needed a rebrand. Sitting at the heart of Columbia Road, it gets absolutely heaved on Sunday mornings when the flower market fills the street outside, but weekday evenings are quieter and the beer flows steadily. Apparently the interior is convincing enough to double as wartime London on screen, which tells you something about how little has changed.

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

The daily menu goes live online at 11am, which tells you something about how seriously this Highgate gastropub takes its kitchen. Produce comes from Highgate Butchers and a careful roster of suppliers, and the wine list has a reputation that pulls people in from well beyond N6. White walls and light wood give it a New England boathouse feel, and on Sundays the roasts fill every table by early afternoon. Ranked third in the Top 50 Gastropubs.

1. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #3 · Top 50 Gastropubs

A Victorian pub in Kentish Town that became one of London's more talked-about gastropubs without appearing to try very hard. The stained-glass windows and long bar stay resolutely pub-like, while the open kitchen behind them turns out wood-fired sharing plates drawn from regenerative farms. The team came up through Brat, and the fire-cooking instincts followed. Sunday roasts, good wine by the glass, and locals who drink without ordering food keep it honest.

1. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #61 · Top 50 Gastropubs
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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

Two railway arches near Hoxton Station, with the London Overground still rumbling overhead, house this bar and restaurant combo named after one of the old North London line locomotives. The bar takes one arch, the restaurant the other, and old railway sleepers frame the terrace outside. Inside, the look is contemporary Danish furniture against sand-blasted brick, which sounds like a contradiction until you're sitting in it.

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

The bar sits at the base of the Canary Wharf tower, tucked behind head-height dividers that carve out something warm and human from an otherwise very serious corporate lobby. A mezzanine bar upstairs has a quieter, more private feel and tends to get booked for events. Cocktails are the reason to pull up a stool, and the after-work crowd in good suits fills the place fast on weekdays.

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

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

1. Difford's Guide 4 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

Meat butchered on site, much of it smoked or grilled over charcoal, is the reason a forgotten backstreet boozer in Canonbury became somewhere people make a point of visiting. The Smokehouse looks like a pub from the outside, and it mostly is, though the inside skews closer to a restaurant than a proper dive. It sits at a fork in the road a short walk from Highbury Corner, which is exactly the kind of neighborhood detail that makes locals feel smug about where they live.

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

Concrete floors, exposed pipes, and a crowd that collectively owns more frames without lenses than an optician's skip. Rita's is a bar and diner in Dalston where the vibe is studied-casual and the southern fried chicken arrives, charmingly, in a brown paper bag. The room is intentionally unfinished but lands warmer than it has any right to. Order a drink, find a table, and try not to feel self-conscious about your prescription glasses.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 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

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

1. Difford's Guide 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

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

1. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #39 · Top 50 Gastropubs
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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

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

The cocktail menu is daubed in red paint on the wall, which sets a certain tone. Bar 55 is a small, unhurried cocktail bar on Stoke Newington Road that doubles as a cafe by day, with colourful chandeliers, bare wooden boards, and enough Victorian parlour atmosphere to feel deliberate rather than accidental. Look for the London road signs on the frontage; the name itself won't give you much. A basement handles private events when the mood calls for 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

A Spanish cocktail and tapas bar on a Stoke Newington corner where the surrounding block runs almost exclusively Turkish. Inside, kitsch furniture and bare brick set the scene for a rum and tequila-forward menu that leans into the classics while making room for wilder combinations. The tables are small and close together, which means the room feels busy even when it isn't, and the low lighting at night does its job.

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

The name is borrowed from the Greek for "the common people," which makes the irony of its Ace Hotel address fairly rich. This ground-floor bar in Shoreditch pulls the expected east London crowd, laptops and carefully considered facial hair very much in evidence, but the room reads warmer than that demographic tends to promise. Order a drink and settle in; the self-consciousness is mostly on the outside.

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

The stamp you get at the door has been described as lewd, and that tells you almost everything you need to know about Dalston Superstore. This long, thin bar runs from brunch into the small hours, with a rotating DJ lineup that spans gay club nights, drag, and Bowie appreciation evenings, each with its own crowd to match. The bar dominates one wall; the decor leans deliberately unfinished.

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

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

The centerpiece is an island bar with a tiled mosaic that anchors a huge open room somewhere between American diner and grungy music venue. It's a cocktail bar leaning hard into bourbon, with a short list of well-made classics and one of the more serious American whiskey collections in the neighborhood. Come early enough and you can actually perch at the bar before the live music takes over and the volume becomes non-negotiable.

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

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

A Spanish bar tucked below Westferry Circus where the bank-to-bank ferry actually docks, with a patio that puts you close enough to wave at the party boats passing on the Thames. Inside, the decor leans loud and the music louder, with visiting DJs turning a tapas bar into something closer to a night out. Sangria and Spanish beer flow freely, and no one seems to be here for a quiet drink.

1. 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.

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2. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · Gastropub of the Year · The National Restaurant Awards
3. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #1 · Top 50 Gastropubs

A Damien Hirst cow and cockerel, suspended in formaldehyde, preside over the cathedral-scale bar inside a converted Victorian power station in Shoreditch. The drinks program is the work of a serious collaborator, so cocktails get as much thought as the famously binary food menu next door. The room does the heavy lifting, and it lifts heavy: high ceilings, industrial bones, and faces pressed to the glass outside.

1. Difford's Guide 4 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

Factory-style skylights flood the room by day; after dark the same space goes low-lit and conspiratorially dim. This bar and brasserie in Shoreditch is Angela Hartnett's place, and her presence here is itself a small sign of how far the neighborhood has drifted from its rough-edged origins. The room has the look of somewhere that's been around forever, which it hasn't, but the trick works. Come for a drink and stay longer than you planned.

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

A stripped-back Kingsland Road pub with live jazz and zero posturing, which is a rarer combination than it should be. One big open room on the ground floor, a terrace for smokers, and a crowd young enough to keep the energy up even on a slow Tuesday. Weekends get properly heaving. It wasn't always a traditional boozer, but it plays the part well enough that nobody seems to mind.

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

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.

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