The Best Places to Drink in London, by the Record

Factory tiles, gunmetal grey walls, and mismatched furniture mark this Kennington gastropub as a thoroughly gastrofied old boozer, and it wears the look without apology. The open kitchen and chalkboard menus do their duty, the local young professionals fill it on the way home most evenings, and the whole thing hums along exactly as a neighborhood pub should without making a fuss about it.

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

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

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

A 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 4 stars · Difford's Guide

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

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

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

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 3.5 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

Antlers and tartan meet a corporate-hotel aesthetic upstairs, but the real draw at this Scottish-themed bar is the basement. Renamed Doon, as in doon the stairs, the lower level is moody and low-ceilinged, with five booths tunnelled into the back wall that seat around six and feel genuinely tucked away. The contrast between the polished double-height main room and the catacomb below is about as Scottish as the concept gets.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 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

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.

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

Cockney rhyming slang gives this Brick Lane-area bar its name, which means "stairs" for anyone not raised within earshot of Bow Bells. Inside, green pendant lights hang against exposed London brick, the armchairs are comfortably battered, and the terrace out back is about as no-frills as it gets. A second bar downstairs opens when the weekend crowd warrants it. The whole place wears its East End scruffiness without apology.

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

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

A tequila and mezcal bar tucked into the King's Road with over 70 varieties on the shelf, Azteca sits in deliberate contrast to the boutiques outside. Day of the Dead decor, a Mexican staff, and a lineup of DJs keep the mood far from Chelsea-polished. Live bands squeeze in occasionally. It's the kind of bar where you order another round because the conversation is good, not because you've run out of options.

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

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

Byzantine tilework, Baroque flourishes, and what appears to be a Gaudí fever dream somehow cohabiting in a Georgian townhouse on Ledbury Road. BBB, as the Notting Hill regulars call it, is a bar and restaurant with one of the more committed interiors in the neighborhood, where the back rooms veer into something almost monastic. The cocktail program has had its critics, so the Mediterranean food may be the safer bet.

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

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

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

A lounge bar steps from the old meat market, spread across several floors of a Georgian townhouse, with a bijou roof terrace that earns its adjective. Ground level feels like someone's well-read living room, shelves of coffee table books and cushioned benches around small tables, a compact bar tucked at the back. The upper floors shift the register toward cocktails and candlelight, which gives you options depending on how the evening is going.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 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

Luchador posters and Mayan-drilled polystyrene ceiling tiles set the tone at this Mexican bar and taqueria tucked off Soho's Old Compton Street. The taqueria side enters from Moor Street and buzzes around an island bar, while the restaurant entrance is a block away. Eight tequila brands, no mixtos, across 22 pours, with Tapatio in the speed rail and a top-shelf option that'll run you past twenty-five quid.

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

Tucked down Swedeland Court, a passageway beside Dirty Dick's, this whisky and cocktail bar carries a Scottish theme that stops well short of tartan overkill. It's the City outpost of the Belgravia original, which means suits from Liverpool Street fill the room early and stay late. The kind of place where the whisky list does most of the talking and you find yourself ordering a second dram before you've finished deciding on a first.

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

A metal fire-escape staircase is your only clue that a bar exists below Rathbone Place at all. Once you're down, the basement reveals itself as a cocktail bar styled like a parlour your grandmother would have thrown a very good party in: floral wallpaper, parquet floors, white-clothed tables. The whole thing sits ten tables deep, which keeps it intimate enough that nobody is performing for strangers.

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

Three railway arches behind Borough Market, and each one earns its keep: the first holds a bar counter lined with gleaming pumps, the middle an open kitchen and glass-fronted beer cellar, the last a view of the actual brewing vessels. It's a beer hall and microbrewery with a walled yard out front, simple wooden tables throughout, and bare brick rising to arched ceilings. The kind of place where the pint comes from the building you're sitting in.

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

A zinc-topped bar on the ground floor and an absinthe lounge downstairs, which tells you roughly what kind of evening you're in for. This Brompton Road bar sits between Knightsbridge's shops and South Kensington's museums, drawing the kind of clientele who know both well. White tablecloths and hovering staff give it a bistro formality, and the French-led wine list is the main event, though cocktails are available for the uncommitted.

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

A giant gilded Buddha presides over two atmospheric floors in Knightsbridge, setting the tone for this international chain's London comeback. The bar leans hard into moody Asian-inflected décor, low light, and the brand's signature chill-out soundtrack, which you've possibly heard in an airport lounge. The crowd arrives dressed for the neighborhood, which is to say dressed.

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

The top two floors of this sprawling Notting Hill townhouse are given over to a pair of whiskey rooms, each fitted with poker tables, a sound system, and seating for around fifteen. It's the kind of setup that makes you feel like you've stumbled into someone's very well-stocked country house, which is more or less the point. The floors below do all-day British dining; up here, it's about the pour.

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

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

The dedicated bar tucked inside this Square Mile outpost of the lobster-and-burger chain seats about a dozen people, which means competition is real but not Soho-level brutal. Cocktails are taken seriously enough that the room earns its keep as a bar, not just a waiting area with drinks. Weeknights are your best shot at sliding in without a queue. The crowd runs to City workers who've decided Thursday counts as Friday.

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

The cocktail bar attached to the Mayfair lobster-and-burger institution, with a list put together by the Soulshakers consultancy, who know their way around a shaker. The room insists you're here to eat, so arriving with plausible hunger and a quiet intention to just drink is the practical approach. The drinks themselves are the draw, familiar classics done with care, and the bar stools fill up fast with people who've made the same calculation.

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

The twelve-metre bar has apparently served over three million Margaritas, which is either a boast or a warning. This Mexican bar in Covent Garden has been around forever, the worn decor doing more for atmosphere than any recent renovation could. The tequila selection is vast, the Mexican beer list rivals anywhere in the city, and the Daiquiris get a quiet mention that probably deserves to be louder.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 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

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

Lipstick-red banquettes and bar stools pack the tiny ground floor so tightly it feels like the inside of a sweet jar, and the basement bar, with its low ceiling, is the better room by most measures. This is a Mexican bar in Notting Hill with a history that includes Christine Keeler and the Profumo Affair, which is quite a footnote. Tacos and tostadas arrive on plastic trays, the way they should.

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

Two fat cherubs clutching the keys of heaven flank the entrance to this traditional pub on Endell Street, marble columns, decorated arches, and hanging baskets completing an exterior that takes itself pleasantly seriously. Inside, enough brass instruments hang from the ceiling to outfit a full orchestra section, which sets the tone: eccentric, old-school, and entirely unbothered by trends. A proper pub in the middle of Covent Garden tourist country.

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

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

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

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

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

1. Difford's Guide 3 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

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

The ground-floor bar is the whole point here, which sets this Shoreditch site apart from its Covent Garden sibling where drinking happens in a basement. Dishoom channels the old Irani cafes of Bombay through two floors of quirky furniture and house rules that prohibit spitting, mischief-making, and flirting with the cashier. Order something with a cardamom edge and settle in among a crowd that queued patiently outside and feels it deserved this.

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

Ibérico hams hang from the ceiling at the back, but this is a sherry bar first, a snack stop second. The front room is all wrought-iron lamps, thin wooden benches, and sherry butts doing double duty as furniture, which gives it the feel of a Jerez side-street dive, almost certainly because the budget demanded nothing grander. Standing is the default, which suits the pours. It's in Fitzrovia, though nothing about it remembers that.

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

Perrier-Jouët's Belle Epoque anemones climb every surface of this lower-ground-floor champagne bar inside the grand St James's hotel, giving it the look of a drawing room that took a wrong turn somewhere floral. The fizz is the focus, poured in a room that leans heavily into the brand's art nouveau palette. Dukes is famous for its Martinis next door, so the champagne lounge feels like a deliberate counterpoint, softer and more decorative, but no less serious about what's in the glass.

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

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

Casks of sherry sit among wine-laden shelves behind a mahogany bar that looks unchanged since Fleet Street still ran on ink and gossip. This old-school wine bar opposite Fetter Lane draws barristers and whatever journalists are left in the neighbourhood, who seem to regard the place as a private club they happen to share with the public. Grab a bottle from the off-licence at the front or settle in the back for table service.

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 stars · Difford's Guide

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

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

1. Difford's Guide 3 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

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 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The wood carvings don't stop at the bar, or the walls, or the ceiling; they continue, the source confirms, all the way to the urinals. This sprawling Camden bar sits above the Stables Market and leans hard into its ancient Babylonian namesake, the result being somewhere between an Indiana Jones set and a Vegas hotel lobby. Dramatic doesn't cover it, but the drama is the whole point.

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

On a quiet side street off Borough High Street, this tiny pub fits a six-piece band and their gear into what is essentially a large sitting room, which tells you most of what you need to know. The 70s kitsch ground floor hosts live gigs on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, drawing a friendly mix of locals and music obsessives. Cosy is an understatement, but the intimacy is the point.

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 candlelit basement has been pouring wine since the Victorian era, and the atmosphere has barely moved since, which is either the charm or the problem depending on your relationship with cobwebs. Gordon's is an old-school wine bar tucked under Villiers Street, all low ceilings, wobbly wooden tables, and bottles lining walls that once housed Samuel Pepys. It draws tourists and City regulars alike, and the outdoor terrace fills fast in summer.

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

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.

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

The Georgian townhouse at the top of Greek Street has been a lot of things over the centuries, and its current life as a private members' bar might be its most unexpected. The interior has been polished back to its original grandeur, all ornate plasterwork and period detail, while the staff include people learning a trade through the club's social mission. Drinking here comes with a cause attached, which is either reassuring or a lot to hold with a cocktail.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A long bar stretches the full length of a candlelit underground room near Trafalgar Square, separated from the restaurant behind it by dark slatted wooden screens. The cocktail bar leans hard into modern Indian flavors, which means the drinks are a genuine departure from the lager-and-vindaloo script. It pulls a dressed-up crowd who've figured out that nobody needs to see natural light to have a good evening.

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