The Top 43 Places to Drink Near University Arms Hotel
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Rank 1. The Burleigh Arms
Modern British Pub
A Cambridge gastropub where the head chef's West Indian roots run quietly through an otherwise modern British menu, turning a neighbourhood pub into somewhere you'd actually plan around. The bar side has its own themed cocktail menu, so drinkers aren't an afterthought. Regulars from the surrounding streets mix with people who drove across town, which tells you most of what you need to know.
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A thatched-roof country pub on the Great River Ouse, The Sun has the kind of postcard exterior that makes you wonder if the food can possibly keep up. It does. The kitchen runs its own farm, so "local ingredients" isn't just menu copywriting here. The bar hatch turns out goat curry and fritto misto alongside pints, while the seasonal tasting menu leans into beef shin, smoked trout, and whatever the farm is doing that week.
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Rank 3. The Dog and Pickle
Seafood Pub
Oysters three ways (natural, Rockefeller, tempura) sets the tone early: this is a seafood-leaning gastropub in a quiet Essex village that takes its cooking more seriously than the postcode might suggest. The wood fire runs through much of the menu, from dry-aged beef to Scottish scallops, though beer-battered fish and chips holds its ground alongside the lobster bouillabaisse. The pear tarte tatin with gorgonzola ice cream suggests a kitchen that enjoys keeping you slightly off balance.
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Rank 4. The Silver Cup
Modern British Pub
A gastropub on the Harpenden common that has been pouring pints since the Victorian era, The Silver Cup pairs local ales with modern British cooking that takes seasonal produce seriously. The room is contemporary and relaxed, the kind of place where you can eat well without performing about it. Rooms are available if you'd rather not navigate the train home. It sits in the Top 50 Gastropubs list and is selected by the Michelin Guide.
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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 6. The Red Lion and Sun
Modern British Pub
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.
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Rank 7. Bull & Last
British Pub
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.
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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.
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Rank 9. Three Sheets
Cocktail Bar
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.
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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.
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Rank 11. The Parakeet
Modern British Pub
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.
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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.
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Rank 13. UnderDog
Beer Bar
The entrance is a hinged picture frame in a stairwell that appears to lead nowhere, which sets the tone pretty well. UnderDog is a low-lit, deliberately scuffed speakeasy-style cocktail bar tucked beneath the Bethnal Green BrewDog, and the brewery doesn't advertise it at all. Just ask to be taken downstairs. The drinks lean toward beer, as you'd expect given the parentage, but the hidden-door theatrics justify turning up curious.
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Rank 15. Union Street Cafe
Cocktail Bar
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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.
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Rank 20. Hunter S.
Wine Bar
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.
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Rank 21. The Jolly Butchers
Beer Bar
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.
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A blood-red leather chesterfield and a pair of wingback chairs anchor the centre of this Victorian gastropub, tucked down a back street between Archway and Tufnell Park. Exposed brick, antique mirrors, an open fireplace, and a cosy yard out back make it feel more like a found object than a designed one. The kind of pub that rewards the ten-minute walk from the tube.
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The white weatherboarded building juts so far into Spaniards Road that traffic through Hampstead Heath has been yielding to it for centuries, and both the pub and the old toll keeper's cottage opposite are listed, so that's not changing. This is a classic English pub on the edge of the Heath, the kind where a long walk through the trees earns a pint at a very old bar. Dick Turpin drank here, allegedly, which every old London pub says but fewer can almost prove.
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Rank 25. Jones and Sons
British Coffee
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.
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Rank 26. High Water
Cocktail Bar
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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.
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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.
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Rank 30. Rita's Bar and Dining
Southern
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.
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Rank 31. All Star Lanes Whiteley's
American
Tucked beneath Whiteley's shopping centre, this retro bowling bar leans hard into the American theme, right down to what is reportedly London's largest bourbon selection. Diner food runs all evening, burgers and steaks and serious desserts, but the real draw is the lanes themselves, where celebratory knee slides are not uncommon. Karaoke nights have since joined the rotation for anyone whose competitive spirit lives in their vocal cords.
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Rank 32. Megaro
Cocktail Bar
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.
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Rank 33. Bar 55
Cocktail Bar
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.
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Rank 34. Viva Tapas y Bebidas
Spanish
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Rank 38. Dead Dolls Club
Cocktail Bar
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.
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