The Best Cocktail Bars in London

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

Diamond-studded Chesterfields and a members-only door policy set the tone at this tucked-away cocktail bar off Seven Dials. The room runs on silver, gold, velvet, and leather, and the cocktail menu is as lavish as the decor suggests. No flames, no rope out front, no scene to perform for, just a small, opulent lounge where the bar is well-stocked and the tables seat two.

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

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

You ring a buzzer on Earls Court Road, announce you have "an appointment with the detective," and a bookcase swings open into a cocktail bar. The speakeasy conceit is committed to the point of mild embarrassment if you slip up, which, honestly, is part of the charm. It's a properly atmospheric place to drink, the kind of room that makes gin taste more interesting than it did five minutes ago on the street outside.

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

A fire door at the top of a forlorn back staircase opens into a candlelit gin bar so small that twelve people is a squeeze. Hidden above the Portobello Star, the Ginstitute is part specialist bar, part gin museum, with a three-stool mahogany counter and a still room where you can blend your own bottle. No natural light, no fuss, no room for anyone to pretend they're just passing through.

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

Named for the man who built the whole circus around it, this cocktail bar sits in the lower ground floor of Selfridges, open from morning coffee through evening drinks. The room mixes raw wood and metal against marble and leather, which either reads as intentional contrast or a very confident decorator. Cocktails are new to the store, so there's a mild sense of occasion, even on a Tuesday afternoon surrounded by people who just bought a handbag.

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

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

The entrance corridor is fitted out like a train carriage, luggage racks and hanging straps included, which sets the tone for what follows. Hoxley and Porter is a cocktail bar on Upper Street where Art Deco styling meets colonial exotica in a way that somehow evokes Agatha Christie more than theme park. Islington's bar scene has historically punched below its restaurant weight, and this place arrived to do something about that.

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

The oval island bar looks as though someone carved it from a single slab of beaten metal, then topped it with thick glass and called it a day. Il Bar is a cocktail bar inside the Bulgari Hotel in Knightsbridge, which means the crowd skews toward people who iron their travel clothes. The room leans into understated rather than showy, which takes restraint when your parent brand puts gems on everything.

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

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

A wrap-around bar divided by pillars sits at the center of this cocktail bar inside a Park Lane hotel, framed by aged brass, leather, marble, and a mirrored fireplace. The room is doing a very confident impression of a grand Edwardian gentleman's club, and mostly pulling it off. The cocktail menu takes its cues from the restaurant kitchen, which is a more interesting starting point than most bars bother with.

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 neon parrot oversees the bar at this basement cocktail bar on Shaftesbury Avenue, where the décor splits the difference between a tiki lounge and a tattoo parlour. Rum anchors the cocktail list, which opens with a little editorial philosophy about the relationship between price and quality. The wallpaper looks expensive, because it probably was.

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

A cocktail bar on City Road where an artist draws directly onto the walls, so the place you walk into isn't quite the place you walked into last time. It sits across from Nightjar, which tells you everything about the neighbourhood's ambitions and nothing about the vibe here, which runs lively and loose rather than theatrical. Two floors, a ruby-leaning colour scheme that shifts over time, and drinks that lean casual rather than ceremonial.

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

Two floors of Polynesian-themed basement beneath Mayfair, where the "Lanai Lounge" comes lined with black bamboo and lauhala mats, and the "Aloha Party Room" below that pairs orange banquettes with 1970s lampshades. This is a tiki bar, not a quiet drinks spot, and the crowd arriving in evening wear to dance to funky tunes seems entirely unbothered by the contradiction. Come dressed for a party, because the room certainly has.

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

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

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

Graffiti covers every surface of this basement bar, which used to be a swanky Italian restaurant and now looks like someone handed the decorating contract to a very motivated teenager. The punk-meets-dive-bar vibe is deliberate, the cocktails are less of a joke than the décor implies, and the no-reservations policy means the queue outside is part of the experience whether you planned for it or not. Get there early.

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

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

A wraparound copper bar sits at the center of this cocktail bar on the upper floors of Centre Point, with panoramic London views doing most of the decorating. The guest list is non-negotiable, so a casual drop-in won't happen; call ahead or the lift stays closed to you. It's the kind of place where the skyline earns its keep and the crowd has already made a reservation somewhere else afterward.

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

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

Victorian bric-a-brac covers every surface at this Battersea cocktail bar, the kind of look that walks a fine line between car boot sale and curated chaos. London's serious cocktail scene rarely ventures past zone one, so finding a bar in SW11 that handles a shaker with conviction is its own small pleasure. Come for the drinks, not the decor, though the decor will absolutely try to distract you.

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

Dry ice curling off a coupe is a reasonable way to announce a cocktail bar, and Purl commits to the bit with smoke guns, blow torches, and foams deployed without apology. The basement setting, all candlelit arches and tucked-away corners off Blandford Street, does the rest, giving the whole thing a genuinely speakeasy feeling rather than just the aesthetic. Busy most nights, which tells you the theatrics haven't worn thin.

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

The cocktail bar inside what was once a notorious underground nightclub, Reason and Mankind pairs disco lights and dubstep with a serious drinks menu from the team behind Purl and Worship Street Whistling Shop. The room reads more bottle service than stirred and strained, but the cocktails lean inventive and molecular. A good place to feel slightly overdressed for the right reasons.

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

The pink bedroom wallpaper still shows the ghost of a cross where it hung above the headboard, the paint faded around the outline of furniture long gone. That level of commitment to a bit tells you a lot about this underground lounge bar on Goodge Street, which runs with the premise that you're drinking in a cleared-out vicar's flat. The team behind Bourne & Hollingsworth built the whole thing, and the chipped, faded aesthetic holds throughout.

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 cocktail bar that moonlights as a bartending school, so the person shaking your drink may have literally just learned how. By night it settles into something more relaxed, a cocktail-led pub with a long dark wooden bar, leather stools, brass lamps, and a belt-driven ceiling fan that all point firmly at a Victorian drinking den. A mural of bartending legends, Ada Coleman, Jerry Thomas, Trader Vic, keeps watch from the far end.

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

A neon Tracey Emin original reading "Keep me safe" guides you through the Royal Academy's courtyard and into a lift that opens straight into this cocktail bar, tucked in the old Keeper's House wing. The room is small and the setup is serious, with botanically driven drinks and service that manages to feel genuinely warm without trying too hard. An easy place to lose an evening, or an afternoon, for that matter.

1. Difford's Guide 4 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

Marble surfaces, dark wood, and low leather seating fill this basement cocktail bar beneath the Grosvenor Square Marriott, where a 1920s soundtrack sets the mood and a speakeasy entrance, complete with spy hole, keeps things theatrical. You reach it via a side door on Duke Street, knock, and wait to be appraised. The door from the hotel lobby is less cinematic but works just as well. Either way, the cocktails are the point.

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

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

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

Tucked in the basement beneath a Mexican restaurant on Brewer Street, this compact cocktail bar organizes its drinks menu around tequila and rum, divided into Batidas, Margaritas, Daiquiris, and the catchall "Gringos." Dick Bradsell, who invented the Bramble and the Vodka Espresso, has been known to hold court here, which is the kind of detail that makes a basement bar feel like a discovery rather than an oversight.

1. Difford's Guide 4 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

Canoes hang from the ceiling and buoys sway above the bar, which should tell you everything about what kind of tiki cocktail bar this is. Been around forever in the basement of the London Hilton, Trader Vic's leans fully into the bamboo-and-carved-heads fantasy without a flicker of irony. The menu is vast, rum and pineapple run through most of it, and nothing strays off-brand. Order something with an umbrella in it and commit.

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

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

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

The name is short for the Dutch East India Company, which tells you most of what you need to know about this cocktail bar tucked into a courtyard behind King's Cross. The drinks list leans into punches, barrel-aged cocktails, and other recipes that feel lifted from a ship's manifest, all developed with the consultancy behind Purl. It rewards the walk through the yard to find it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The cocktail menu runs long enough to need a table of contents, which sets the tone for what Adventure Bar is: a full-throttle party bar in Covent Garden where the vibe matters more than the drinks. Everything skews sweet, the bartenders bring the kind of energy usually reserved for chain restaurants, and nobody in the room seems to mind. If sugar isn't your thing, ask nicely and they'll improvise.

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

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

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

Cocktails served from a raised bar platform overlooking the bowling lanes, with the restaurant on one side and a fluorescent-lit diner area on the other. All Star Lanes is a bowling-alley bar chain that usually picks more characterful spots, so the Westfield Stratford address is a slight detour from the brand's natural habitat. Come for a drink, bowl a few frames, and don't overthink the decor.

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

Red leather booths, dark wood laminates, and round-cornered mirrors give this Islington cocktail bar the feel of a New York lounge that got off at the wrong Tube stop. Spread across two compact floors on a scrappy market street, it runs on cocktails and music in roughly equal measure. The name is Gaelic for "life and soul," which sets expectations clearly. A bouncer at the door means some nights you're in, and some nights you're politely not.

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

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

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

Wood-panelled walls and a recording-studio vibe make this cocktail bar feel like the grown-up secret Hard Rock Cafe didn't tell anyone about. Tucked around the corner from the Mayfair flagship, it trades the memorabilia frenzy for something quieter: properly mixed drinks in a room that reads more gentleman's library than rock temple. Surprisingly few people know it exists, which is probably why the atmosphere stays so easy.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 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

Dark wood walls, dim lighting, and soft leather chairs sit below street level near Piccadilly Circus, giving this classic cocktail bar the feel of somewhere that has always existed, deep underground, waiting for you specifically. The room strikes a balance between sophisticated and slightly conspiratorial, the kind of place where you order a second drink before finishing your first and nobody thinks less of you for it.

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

A uniformed attendant operates the lift down to the basement, which sets the tone before you've ordered a drink. This Shoreditch cocktail bar leans harder into the kitsch than its Notting Hill predecessor ever did, with international DJs, live cabaret, and a rooftop that opens London up beneath you. The Pornstar Martini, done with vanilla and passion fruit, is the crowd's clear favorite, and nobody here seems embarrassed about that.

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

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

The bar sits on the first floor of a former Art Deco car garage on the King's Road, reached by lift and centered on a polished steel island bar in a room that feels cathedral-large. It's a cocktail bar inside Terence Conran's old "gastrodome" project, which means the bones are ambitious and the crowd dresses accordingly. The whole thing carries the confident, slightly frozen energy of something that was very much the future once.

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

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

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

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

1. Difford's Guide 3 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

A basement cocktail bar across from Liverpool Street, where the City crowd unwinds with varying degrees of dignity. The space goes big on colour against classic bones, with a long bar for standing room on packed evenings and a cavernous main floor running on table service. The cocktail menu is extensive enough that nobody has to make a decision under pressure, which the after-work crowd seems to appreciate.

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

A Wurlitzer, formica surfaces, and rough wood paneling set the tone in this basement cocktail bar tucked into the rabbit warren of rooms beneath Earlham Street. The space has old-school Americana bones, and the bar itself has history: the room previously housed Detroit, where bartending legends once poured. The crowd tends toward people who know what they came for and probably don't need to see the menu.

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

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

The name is Latin for horse, and the gentleman's club aesthetic takes that theme and runs with it. This cocktail bar sits deep inside the Royal Horseguards Hotel, past the lounge and the grand piano, which is already doing some filtering work before you even arrive. The room skews older and male, and it makes no apologies for either. Finding it at all counts as a minor achievement.

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

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

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

A 13-metre bar painted in shades of red, black, and white occupies the basement where Mezzo once ruled Wardour Street, modelled on Havana's famous original. This Cuban cocktail bar has a stage for live Latin American music and enough square footage to feel like you've descended into somewhere slightly louder and more rum-soaked than you planned. The Rolling Stones played upstairs in 1964, which the bar had nothing to do with but everyone mentions anyway.

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

Down a precarious iron staircase off Shaftesbury Avenue sits a basement cocktail bar that's been around forever, looking exactly as scuffed and comfortable as it did at the start. Bare wooden tables, dim light, and rotating art on the walls give it the feel of a gallery that never quite finished moving in. The crowd leans Londoner and unpretentious, which suits the whole thing perfectly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The mezzanine is inside an actual bus, steering wheel and all, which tells you most of what you need to know about Moniker's. This cocktail bar on Hoxton Square occupies a converted school gym, and the old blackboards, lab stools, and gym benches have been left more or less in place. It's the kind of interior that sounds like a gimmick until you're sitting in it, at which point it just works.

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

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

A candlelit basement cocktail bar tucked under The Mitre Townhouse, reached by a staircase from the street despite the "speakeasy" billing. Fuller's runs this one, and the layout wanders through what used to be servants' quarters, so you get a rabbit warren of low-lit rooms and dark corners that make it easy to disappear for the evening. The kind of place where people lean in close and stay longer than planned.

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

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.

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

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

A rooftop cocktail bar perched high enough above Aldwych to catch St. Paul's, the Shard, the London Eye, and Big Ben in a single sweep. The heated terrace has the plush seating of a place that knows people are really here for the panorama, and the angular island bar inside the sliding glass walls gives you somewhere to stand with your drink while pretending you weren't just gawking at Tower Bridge.

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

A cocktail bar inside the Grosvenor hotel near Victoria, Réunion has a mirrored ceiling, a glossy flagstone floor, and a long island bar that reads more nightclub than railway-adjacent hotel lounge. The entrance from the lobby leans into that contrast, dark enough to make you pause. The concourse windows remind you where you are, though the room itself seems determined to make you forget.

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

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

A velvet-rope cocktail den in Kensington built around Russian vodka and caviar, where the golden rope at the door stays clipped unless your name is on the list. Arrive before eleven and it behaves more like a serious cocktail bar with canapés than a bottle-service showcase. The drinks are the point here, carefully made and worth the effort of booking, which you will need to do.

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

Tables made from metal prison doors set the tone at this Shoreditch cocktail bar and nightclub, which took over the old XOYO space with corrugated iron walls, urban sculpture, and a voodoo flourish or two. The same crew runs Paradise and Blues Kitchen, so they know their way around a room built for dancing. A subwoofer the size of a small car sits in the middle of the floor, and the DJs, live acts, and dance parties are the real point of the evening.

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

The spy-themed cocktail list, with drinks named The Spy Who Loved Me and Enigma Code, sets the tone at this hotel lobby bar in the City. Floor-to-ceiling windows keep things light, and you can settle at the long bar, scattered lounge chairs, or a central sharing table. The cocktails run grown-up and simply constructed, though they lean sweet, with caramel popcorn arriving alongside to lean into it further.

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

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

A rooftop cocktail bar at the May Fair Hotel where the menu opens with four pages of cigars before getting around to drinks. Glittering drapes and awnings do the work of making you forget the surrounding buildings entirely, and the high-end furnishings split the difference between indoors and out. The kind of place where ordering a Cohiba alongside your Negroni feels less like an affectation and more like the obvious move.

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

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

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

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

Dealers in sharp uniforms working the blackjack tables are visible from the bar, which sets the tone for an evening here. The Hippodrome is a casino complex near Leicester Square with a handful of bars scattered across its floors, two of which serve proper cocktails. No membership required, just the doormen's approval, which keeps things feeling a little cinematic. The gaming floor isn't the point if cards bore you, but it does make for a good backdrop.

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

The entrance is underneath a kebab shop, and yes, a wrong turn puts you in the kitchen. Make the right one and you're in a dimly lit basement cocktail bar where stacked crates form the booths and rough wooden planks pass for seating. It reads less shabby-chic and more genuinely cobbled-together, which suits the bottled cocktails and serious spirits on offer. Hackney locals who know where the door is fill the place without much fuss.

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

A top-hatted doorman on Clipstone Street marks the stairs down to this Fitzrovia basement bar, where the name blends Lucky Luciano with Prohibition-era "blind pig" speakeasies. The distressed interior mixes shabby chic with Chinoiserie, curtained banquettes tucked into a mini-cellar below. Menus arrive dressed as a 1957 jazz magazine, which sets a mood the drinks list is better at sustaining than the inside pages are.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 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

Old enamel advertising signs cover the walls, and the whole room reads like a neighborhood pub that's been in the same family forever. It isn't one, though: The Star at Night is a cocktail bar, now gin-focused, with its own gin club for the committed. Tucked into the backstreets of Soho, it has the ease of a well-worn local and the drinks list of somewhere that takes the glass in your hand seriously.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 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

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 stars · Difford's Guide