The Best Places to Drink and Do in London

1. Difford's Guide 2.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Botanical diagrams cover the walls in tribute to Sir Hans Sloane, the square's namesake, giving this busy bar and brasserie on Sloane Square a reason for its name beyond clever branding. The Tube exit is practically next door, so it never really empties out, and during Chelsea Flower Show week the plant-curious arrive in force. Expect a polished, buzzy crowd and prices to match the postcode.

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

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

Betty Boop perches at the end of the bar like she owns the place, which more or less sets the tone. This unpretentious Bermondsey local hides over a hundred single malts behind an otherwise ordinary pub facade, drawing hospital staff and office workers who clearly need a drink more than a scene. Old church pews and beaten-up leather sofas ring the central bar, and the food is priced for people on an actual budget.

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

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.

1. Difford's Guide 3 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

The vaulted main bar here looks less like a pub and more like somewhere a medieval guild would settle a dispute, which is part of the appeal. This Sam Smith's house on High Holborn has been around forever in one form or another, and the Grade II listed mock Tudor exterior draws the eye before you're even inside. Order cheap, settle into one of the old wooden booths, and ignore how much work you brought with you.

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

A 60-foot bar stretches across the ground floor of a converted warehouse on Brompton Road, which has been a Porsche garage, a Conran furniture shop, and a Katherine Hamnett fashion space before settling into its current life. The Tom Dixon makeover gave it a sleek, mezzanine-and-steel look that the South Kensington crowd takes to with some enthusiasm. Come for a drink before or after dinner upstairs, or just to stand at what might be the longest bar in London.

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

The original baize-green Courage tiles wrapping the corner site are the first thing you notice, and they set the tone: this is a proper Victorian pub that hasn't been sanded into a lifestyle concept. A gastro pub on the edge of Chapel Market in Islington, it spans two floors, with the ground level knocked through into one bright, unfussy room. Solid modern British food, a relaxed pour, and a crowd that runs from market regulars to office escapees.

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

Red leather booths and floor-to-ceiling windows onto the old market square set the scene at this American diner-style bar tucked into Spitalfields. Boozy milkshakes and alcoholic slushies handle the drinks, which pair with the kind of food, burgers and ribs, that exists primarily to justify the shakes. The neon and the street theatre outside do most of the decorating, and neither asks anything of you.

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

Tucked up Jerusalem Passage, a narrow Clerkenwell alley that sounds like something from a Dan Brown paperback, the Dovetail is a bar with the kind of address that rewards people who actually look up from their phones. The surrounding squares carry centuries of Knights Hospitaller history, which lends the whole stretch an atmosphere that no amount of exposed brick could manufacture. A solid stop for a drink in one of London's older corners.

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

A cocktail bar spread across the ground and mezzanine of Heron Tower, The Drift seats over 400 people while somehow carving out corners that feel almost intimate, which is no small trick in a glass-and-steel skyscraper. Retro soft furnishings and tactile finishes do the heavy lifting against the corporate bones of the building. A few decorative shells are the only nod to the nautical name, which is probably for the best.

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

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

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

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

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

The last galleried coaching inn left in London sits in a cobbled courtyard off Borough High Street, which is already doing a lot of the work. The George is a pub owned by the National Trust and leased to Greene King, so the olde-world atmosphere comes with a corporate pour. The timber galleries and latticed windows pull in tourists by the coachload, but on a quiet afternoon the courtyard still feels like Dickens could wander through.

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

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.

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

A gastro pub spread across three floors of a Marylebone hotel, with light wood, white ceilings, and pastel shades that keep things bright if a little corporate. Part of the Cubitt House group, so the menu will look familiar if you've been to its siblings. The wine list runs to around sixty bottles, with a good twenty poured by the glass and a range that climbs well past the hundred-pound mark for those feeling ambitious.

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

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 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

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 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.

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

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.

1. Difford's Guide 2.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A proper old pub tucked up the alley off Garrick Street, the kind of passage you'd walk past a hundred times without noticing. On warm evenings the narrow lane fills with after-work drinkers spilling out from the bar. The back room was once called the Bucket of Blood, a nickname it earned honestly from the bare-knuckle bouts held there. John Dryden got badly beaten in the alley in 1679; the upstairs room carries his name now, which is a fairly distinguished memorial for a mugging.

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

Blackboards cover the walls at this stripped-back Primrose Hill pub, spelling out what's on draft and what's coming out of the kitchen. The large main room runs to wooden tables and a loose scatter of modern art, with a dining room upstairs doubling as a jazz venue on the right nights. The menu leans Modern European with a strong Italian pull, and the pizzas have a following among the locals who fill the place most evenings.

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

The menu opens with a Lincoln quote about beer and God, which sets the tone pretty well for this Islington bar on the corner of Pentonville Road. American craft bottles line up alongside a solid draught selection, but the real draw is the bourbon list, which runs to over fifty bottles and generates the kind of quiet, decisive ordering you see when regulars already know exactly what they want.

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

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

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

The license starts at 6am so Borough Market workers can get a pint in before most of London has had breakfast. This old-school pub on Stoney Street has been around forever and keeps a serious cask ale selection, pump clips covering the walls and rafters like wallpaper someone forgot to stop hanging. The burgundy paint and bare wooden floor make it feel lived-in without trying too hard, and it draws a crowd that actually uses the market, not just photographs it.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

A 200-year-old Irish clock rescued from a town hall anchors the center of this sprawling Covent Garden pub, which runs across several levels and roughly 13,500 square feet of copper pipes, rivet-covered steel, and brass fittings. The beer list runs to around 180 bottles from around the world, plus nine unpasteurised draught ales brewed by the Irish owners back in Dublin. It's the kind of place where choosing a round takes longer than drinking it.

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

A Young's pub beside Battersea Park, The Prince Albert draws the post-walk crowd, strollers, dogs, and all, who come for roughly 30 wines by the glass and a rotating lineup of locally sourced ales. The spirit list stays fairly simple, but the wine selection and a proper Sunday roast keep the well-heeled Battersea contingent coming back. It's the kind of place that rewards having a dog more than a cocktail shaker.

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

The curved etched-glass windows haven't changed since the Victorians were sorting themselves by class, and inside this Maida Vale pub the mahogany bar is still partitioned into five zones: the Public, the Gentlemen's, the Ladies', the Private, and the Snug. The half-height doors between them remain, which means you can drift from compartment to compartment, pint in hand, pretending the social order no longer applies.

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

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

The bar at Jumeirah Carlton Tower has been pulled from the edges of the room and planted center stage, which pretty much tells you everything about the ambition of the redesign. Martin Brudnizki swapped tired hotel fabrics for leather finishes and a surprisingly funky soundtrack, and the drinks menu orbits a loosely English countryside theme with a soft spot for London dandies. Knightsbridge prices, naturally.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The south-facing terrace is the whole game here, filling up even when the temperature argues otherwise with the kind of Notting Hill crowd that treats being seen as a leisure activity. Inside, this corner pub leans into shabby-cool: green leather banquettes, mismatched old wooden furniture, fairy lights overhead, and walls thick with artwork. It has the bones of an ordinary local and the atmosphere of somewhere that knows it no longer is.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

1. Difford's Guide 3 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

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.

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

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

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

The Wheatsheaf sits right at the edge of Borough Market, which means the Friday afternoon crowd has usually come straight from a cheese stall. It's a pub with reclaimed wood tables on flagstones, pastel panelling that nods to a Shaker kitchen, and a vintage frontage that somehow outlasted Thameslink construction work overhead. The vibe is designer rustic, the pints are cold, and the location does most of the heavy lifting.

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

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

A long black-and-grey bar faces the door of this cocktail bar tucked into the foyer of Gordon Ramsay's Camden townhouse hotel, high-backed armchairs pulled close to a fireplace nearby. The 22-drink menu runs classic martinis through fizzes and long drinks, which is a sensible range for a room that pulls in both hotel guests and locals who've discovered the armchairs are quite hard to leave.

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 Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A cocktail bar tucked inside Harrods, where every drink arrives in a crystal glass made by Baccarat, which you can then buy on your way out if the mood strikes. Velvet, chandeliers, and a tight menu of high-end cocktails set the register firmly at "what's another round." Small plates from the Harrods kitchen round things out. It is, in short, a bar that knows exactly what it's doing and charges accordingly.

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

From the outside it still reads as a pub, the kind that's been anchoring this Barbican-edge block forever, but step inside and you're somewhere considerably more considered. The Martin brothers have a habit of rescuing tired City boozers and returning them better dressed and better behaved than they found them. Difford's Guide has taken note. The crowd tends toward suits loosening their collars after six, which feels exactly right.

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide