The Top 84 Places to Drink Near Swan Wine Kitchen
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Rank 1. Kentish Hare
Modern British Pub
A converted village pub in the Kent countryside, roughly split between bar and dining room so it never quite forgets what it is. The kitchen leans into seasonal produce from Kent and the West Country, mixing both in a way that reads as modern British without being precious about the label. The garden out back fills up when the weather agrees, and the crowd skews local and commuter, which is exactly what the place was built for.
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Rank 2. The Sportsman
Modern British Pub
A whitewashed pub on a windswept sea wall in Kent, where the chef makes his own salt by boiling seawater from the beach out back. The slip sole grilled in seaweed butter has become quietly famous, which the chef hates, because he doesn't believe in signature dishes. A Michelin-starred gastropub that somehow stays a proper pub, with locals nursing pints alongside pilgrims who've driven two hours for the tasting menu and pretend they haven't.
- Michelin Guide 1 Star
- Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #26 · Top 50 Gastropubs
- National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #58 · The National Restaurant Awards
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Rank 3. Fordwich Arms
Modern British Pub
Fordwich sits in a claim to fame as England's smallest town, and this ivy-clad Arts and Crafts pub beside the River Stour punches well above its postcode. A wood-topped bar and open fires give way to a panelled dining room where the cooking is modern and occasionally playful without letting cleverness override flavour. The kitchen leans hard on Kentish producers. It holds a Michelin star.
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Rank 4. The Bucks Head
British Pub
A Kentish country gastropub where the steak list leans on Ightham beef, with côte de boeuf cuts cooked for sharing, and the bar snacks include a venison and nduja Scotch egg that has no business being that good. The menu runs from battered fish and chips to roasted chalk stream trout, all of it grounded firmly in the surrounding countryside. It landed on the Top 50 Gastropubs list, which tracks for a place that manages to feel genuinely local rather than aspirationally rural.
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A gastropub in a Kentish village with eight bedrooms upstairs and a kitchen that takes the local-seasonal brief seriously. The crab and smoked eel crumpet is the kind of opening move that sets the tone, and the menu moves confidently from there. Eight rooms mean overnight guests fill tables without anyone rushing them out. Ranked twelfth on the Top 50 Gastropubs list, which is the sort of company that draws a knowing crowd down Canterbury Road.
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Hand-painted walls and an enormous rum selection do their best to conjure a Thai beach shack, which is an ambitious brief for a spot off a main road in central Birmingham. Island is a cocktail bar where the menu is organized by base spirit, running from a Piña Colada through to a Boston Sour. The vibe is deliberately groovy and unhurried, which helps you settle in while you decide whether to commit to the rum.
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Rank 7. The Fox Pub & Dining Keston
British Pub
A plush green and gold interior, walled prints, and a fire in the waiting area make it clear this Keston village pub took its refurbishment seriously. The Fox is a full pub and dining room, running from bar snacks with dogs welcome at your feet through to a kitchen that leans on seasonal, local produce for its menu of British classics with the occasional ecurious detour. The Great British Pub Awards named it Stonegate Group Pub Partners Pub of the Year in 2025.
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Rank 8. Perry Hill Pub
British Pub
A giant bowl of free dog treats greets you at the door, which tells you almost everything about this big, restored south London pub sitting between Catford and Sydenham. There's a kids' corner in the dining room, an adults-only terrace for anyone brave enough to call it date night, and a calendar of events so packed it makes community centres look idle. It won Best Pub for Families at the Great British Pub Awards in 2025.
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Rank 9. 40 Maltby Street
Mediterranean Wine Bar
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.
- Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
- National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #72 · The National Restaurant Awards
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Rank 10. The Ginger Pig
Modern British
The revolving oak door that greets you once belonged to a hotel, and it still carries itself accordingly. Inside, the old mock-Tudor pub has been opened up into a roomy gastropub with Chesterfield armchairs up front and a dining room that knows its place behind. The wine list leans into Sussex sparkling, with Ridgeview among them and over twenty pours by the glass, plus a compact cocktail menu for anyone not in a wine mood.
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Rank 11. Kerfield Arms
Modern British Pub
A Michelin-starred gastropub on a Camberwell corner that holds a large bar for walk-ins alongside a proper dining room, so you can commit to whatever level of evening you're after. The cooking is deceptively plain, leaning on good produce and classical technique without making a fuss about either. The weekday lunch with a pint or a glass of wine for under £20 has made it a neighborhood institution at impressive speed.
- Michelin Guide 1 Star
- Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #25 · Top 50 Gastropubs
- National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #81 · The National Restaurant Awards
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The white weatherboarded facade is hard to miss on the village green, and the low salvaged beams inside make it feel like the pub has been standing forever, because it more or less has. The Hoop is a proper Essex country gastropub: real fires, friendly but not sloppy service, and daily menus that lean French and Italian while keeping toad-in-the-hole firmly on the card. Wash it down with a local ale and nobody will judge you.
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Rank 13. The Camberwell Arms
British Pub
The bread and ice cream are made in-house, which tells you something about how seriously this south London gastropub takes the everyday stuff. Seasonal cooking, a natural-leaning wine list, and simple cocktails fill out a room that feels genuinely neighbourhood, not aspirational. The chef's CV runs through St John and The Ledbury, though the food lands closer to comfort than show. The Sunday lunch has a devoted following.
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Rank 14. Garrison
Modern British
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.
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Rank 15. Pizarro
Spanish
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.
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Rank 16. Hotel Du Vin Bar
Wine Bar
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Rank 17. The Basketmaker's Arms
Beer Bar
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Two giant underlit crystals flank the entrance, which tells you everything about the ambition level before you've ordered a drink. This hotel bar inside MyHotel Brighton leans hard into the theatrical: a ten-metre copper bar counter, eye-shaped aquariums set into the walls, plasma screens cycling local art, and a terrazzo floor in a shade of blue that has no business being that confident. A lot of rooms try this hard and lose; this one has the bones to carry it.
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Rank 19. SOMA Canary Wharf
Indian
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Rank 20. The Great Eastern
Southern
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Rank 21. Brighton Rocks
Dive Bar
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A bowed Georgian window looks straight out over the Brighton seafront, which is a fine place to put a hotel bar. Drake's sits on the ground floor of the boutique hotel, a knocked-through room of olive-grey leather tub chairs and low tables arranged around a black marble bar. It's neat to the point of feeling slightly staged, but the premium spirits are well chosen and the quiet is genuine on a stretch of coast that rarely offers any.
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Rank 23. The Saint James
British
Reclaimed church pews and maroon walls set the mood in this Victorian corner pub, which spends its days as a quiet local serving food and coffee before steadily shifting gears toward a DJ-led night. The mix of office workers, pre-clubbers, gay and straight regulars somehow coalesces into a single collective energy that lands the moment you walk in. Mismatched furniture, candles, the faint suggestion of gastro-pub ambition, and a party by midnight.
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Rank 24. The Evening Star
Beer Bar
A serious beer pub on an unglamorous stretch of the one-way system heading toward Brighton Station, neighbors including several sex shops. The Evening Star has been around forever and the cellar once housed a microbrewery that grew into Dark Star Brewing Company, whose beers still pour here. Come for the cask ales, not the surroundings.
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A nondescript door beside El Mexicano leads up an unpromising staircase to this small first-floor bar in the North Lanes. The bare floors and magnolia walls are easy enough to forgive, but the vinyl banquettes and oddly shaped mirrors are working hard against the room. What saves it is a large bowed window with a view straight over Royal Pavilion Park, which is doing a lot of heavy lifting for the decor budget.
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Antique chamber pots hang from the ceiling, which tells you most of what you need to know about this pub's decorating philosophy. An old-school institution tucked into the Lanes, the Cricketers dressed itself in Chesterfield banquettes, burgundy flock wallpaper, and scarlet velvet drapes long before "Victorian" became an aesthetic choice. Graham Greene set a scene here in Brighton Rock, so the literary pilgrims share the room with everyone else who just wanted a pint.
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Polished dark wood, potted palms, and magnolia walls give this colonial-themed cocktail bar a warm, unhurried feel. Browns Bar sits a couple of doors down from the original Browns restaurant on Duke Street, part of a long-running UK chain with Brighton roots. It's the kind of place where nobody is trying to impress anyone, which is either a relief or a disappointment depending on your Thursday.
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Rank 29. Boisdale of Canary Wharf
Cocktail Bar
The indoor cigar lounge is technically a "sampling room," which is the kind of legal creativity that keeps Scotch-and-jazz bars alive. This two-floor Canary Wharf outpost of the Belgravia original runs a crustacean and cocktail bar on the first floor alongside a heated terrace looking out over Cabot Square. Champagne and single malts do most of the heavy lifting, and pre-revolutionary Cuban cigars are available if the evening calls for it.
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Rank 30. Lion and Lobster
British
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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.
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Rank 32. Union Street Cafe
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 33. Bar Tozino
Spanish
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Rank 34. Morgan Arms
Gastropub British
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.
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Rank 35. The Dean Swift
Beer Bar
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.
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Rank 36. Jose Tapas Bar
Spanish
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.
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Rank 38. The Rose Pub
British
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.
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Rank 39. Wahaca Terrace
Mexican
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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.
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Rank 41. One Canada Square
Cocktail Bar
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.
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The rear terrace looks straight across the Thames to the O2, which is either atmospheric or a conversation starter depending on your mood. The Gun is a Grade II-listed gastropub on the Isle of Dogs, old enough to feel genuinely weathered, tucked into a stretch of Canary Wharf's edge that still manages to feel like it belongs to a quieter London. The kind of place people make a small effort to reach, then stay longer than planned.
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Rank 44. The Grange Public House
Wood-fired Pizza
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.
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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.
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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.
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Rank 48. The Plume of Feathers
British
A classic neighborhood pub at the foot of Greenwich Park, sitting directly on the Meridian Line, which means the observatory's laser passes right over your head on a clear night if you take a table in the back garden. It's tucked far enough down a back street that the tourist tide rarely reaches it, making it the kind of old-school local that rewards anyone willing to wander a little past the obvious sights.
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Rank 49. Translate
Cocktail Bar
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.
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Rank 50. Goodman Canary Wharf
American Steakhouse
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Rank 51. Plateau
Cocktail Bar
A lift from outside the Waitrose deposits you on the fourth floor of Canada Place, where an all-glass bar looks out over Canary Wharf while the suits inside do what suits do: champagne, volume, competitive guffawing. The lounge area with low-slung seats offers some shelter from the open kitchen and the office-party energy. Jazz competes with everything. The cocktail list leads with classics, and they're done properly.
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Seven thousand square feet of bar in the shadow of the HSBC tower means The Parlour runs at a particular frequency: suits, pints, and the debrief after a long day of staring at screens. The industrial bones of the room are softened just enough by reclaimed pine, warm lamps, and a Japanese screen-style back bar. When the nearby towers empty, the long communal tables fill fast, and the overspill heads straight for the terrace.
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Rank 54. The Blacksmith's Arms
Beer Bar
A brass plaque on the bar marks the waterline from the 1928 flood, which tells you something about how long this Fuller's pub has been absorbing local history. It's an old-school neighborhood boozer on the Rotherhithe waterfront, the kind where regulars nurse pints of Fuller's ale without checking the ferry schedule. Nelson is said to have stopped in while his ship was fitted out nearby, though the pub isn't the sort to make a fuss about it.
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The floors here haven't been straight since Charles Dickens used the place as inspiration for the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters in Our Mutual Friend, and not much else has changed either. This tiny old pub backs onto the Thames on Narrow Street, and the building has been a drinking spot for centuries. Come for a pint in a room that lists and creaks, and possibly for the view of the river out back.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Rank 62. Exhibit
Cocktail Bar
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Two former shops knocked together give The Abbeville its warren of small, interconnecting rooms, which somehow feels very right for a neighbourhood pub this resolutely local. It sits on a residential stretch that feels nothing like nearby Clapham High Street, and the regulars would probably prefer to keep it that way. Two bars, an open kitchen at the back, and a skylight doing its best against the gloom.
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Rank 64. The Kings Arms
Beer Bar
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.
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Rank 65. 214 Bermondsey
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 66. Simon The Tanner Pub
Dive Bar
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Rank 72. Honky Tonk Clapham
Dive American
Scrawled tabletops and a blackboard wall of specials set the tone at this dive bar and American diner on the edge of Clapham Common. Bare brick, unfinished wood, and utilitarian seating make the casual-drinking intentions clear before you've ordered anything. The drinks list leans hard on bourbon, with riffs on the classics: a Maple Old Fashioned, a Herbal Julep, a Marmalade Margarita for the adventurous.
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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.
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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.
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Rank 76. The Old School Yard Bar
Cocktail Bar
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.
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Rank 78. House of Tippler
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 82. HEJ Coffee
Swedish Coffee
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Rank 83. Nine Lives
Mexican
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Rank 84. Gaucho, Tower Bridge
Steakhouse