The Best Places to Drink in London

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

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

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

The arched room beneath Tower Bridge was a coal store before it was anything else, which makes it an odd candidate for a cocktail bar, but here we are. The back window, once the hatch where barges offloaded coal, now looks straight up at the bridge's underside with the Thames right below. Most is the Russian word for bridge, which earns its keep as a name. A solid spot for a drink when you want the view without the tourist-trap markup.

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

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

A sleek, almost spaceship-adjacent cocktail bar on the ground floor of the Nobu restaurant in Mayfair. Part of the operation draws its crowd from diners waiting on a table upstairs, but plenty come straight here with no dining ambitions at all. The room is sharp and minimal, the drinks leaning Japanese, and the general atmosphere suggests everyone is dressed a little better than they needed to be. Which, in Mayfair, is saying something.

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

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

The bar at this Primrose Hill restaurant sits one floor below street level, down a staircase just inside the front door. It's a neighbourhood drinking spot in the kind of postcode where the shops sell things you'd never actually buy, and the locals include enough familiar faces to make staring impolite. A calm, low-key place to have a drink away from the room above.

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

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 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

1. Difford's Guide 3 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 hangman's noose still hangs over the Thames foreshore out back, which tells you most of what you need to know about this pub's social history. Been around forever under various names, the most diplomatic of which replaced one that nodded to the smugglers and thieves who drank here. Samuel Pepys was a regular; so was the judge who sent men to Execution Dock just up the river. One of the oldest riverside pubs in London.

1. Difford's Guide 3 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 bar that leans hard into the industrial-chic aesthetic, with a long white-tiled counter fronted by distressed leather stools and a top made from salvaged planks. Old theatre seats pull up to a scaffold-framed bench table, and wood-panelled nooks offer something softer. The whole thing reads as very New York, which in Fitzrovia lands somewhere between a compliment and a lifestyle statement. Book ahead if you want a proper table for food.

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

Half-height net curtains are doing a lot of heavy lifting here, softening what is otherwise an unvarnished backstreet pub with bare boards, worn rugs, and old wooden furniture. The lounge and saloon are still split by an island bar, and regulars skip the vestibule by cutting behind it, which nobody bothers to object to. A proper ale-and-grievances sort of place, and all the better for it.

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

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

The cocktail bar tucked beneath Sake No Hana is easy to miss: you push through two Japanese curtains that only reach your waist, which does make an entrance. It sits in the basement of the old Economist building in St James's, a listed piece of sixties architecture that drinks people still mourn as the former home of Che. Small, composed, and Japanese in spirit, it draws a pre-dinner crowd that the menu occasionally persuades to stay put.

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

Spanish movie posters and dark wood booths line this subterranean tapas bar and late-night spot a stumble from Leicester Square tube. The steep descent into a dimly lit, Gothic-ish basement sets the tone before you've ordered anything, and a 3am licence keeps the night going long after the tourists have called it. There's a cover charge some nights, which is the clearest possible sign of what the room becomes after midnight.

1. Difford's Guide 3 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

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

The pub sign pictures a man who turns out to be a Coptic Orthodox saint credited with moving a mountain in Cairo, not a local drunk with leather-stained hands, which sets the tone nicely. This is a small, unpretentious neighborhood boozer in Bermondsey, mismatched dark wood furniture and all, the kind of place that quietly resisted any pressure to become somewhere clever.

1. Difford's Guide 3 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

The Victorian tilework outside promises a sedate local; the oak-panelled 1930s interior delivers exactly that, and then the beer list quietly contradicts both. This is a proper pub on the corner where Stoney Street meets Borough Market, which means on Fridays and Saturdays it fills up fast with market-goers and young professionals who end up drinking on the pavement whether they planned to or 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 2.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The DJ booth is the tell: this is a cocktail bar pitched somewhere between a steakhouse and a nightclub, with indoor cherry blossom trees and a pink-purple palette that makes the whole thing feel like a mood board escaped into real life. It lives inside the ME London hotel on the Strand. The crowd dresses accordingly, and the drinks lean bold and photogenic, which here is less a criticism than a description.

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

A Broadway Market bar that moonlights as a community arts project, Stories runs talks, installations, and events alongside the drinks, all sourced from the local Hackney creative pool. It's the kind of all-day spot where someone at the next table is either pitching a zine or launching one. The sister bar to The Book Club in Shoreditch, it shares that same formula of cold beer and intellectual ambition, which sounds exhausting but usually isn't.

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

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

Forty floors above Liverpool Street, the lift opens onto a lounge bar where plastic chandeliers and fairy lights share wall space with Asian-style graffiti, and the view does most of the work. The cocktail list is short and built around house infusions, though the City crowd at the island bar skews heavily toward bottled beer, which tells you something about the room's priorities. Come for the altitude; the drinks are secondary.

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

A 6.8-metre Chesterfield sofa is a bold statement for any bar, but Tanner and Co. earns it, given the building's past life outfitting Victorian tanneries in Bermondsey. The cavernous space splits the difference between school gym and leather showroom, with climbing frames, pine floors, and ropes from the ceiling alongside staff in bespoke leather aprons. It's a lot, in the best pub-as-performance-art tradition.

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

Two former shops knocked together give The Abbeville its warren of small, interconnecting rooms, which somehow feels very right for a neighbourhood pub this resolutely local. It sits on a residential stretch that feels nothing like nearby Clapham High Street, and the regulars would probably prefer to keep it that way. Two bars, an open kitchen at the back, and a skylight doing its best against the gloom.

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

A monumental island bar runs through the center of the ground-floor saloon, and everything else follows from that fact. This is a Young's pub, so the draught list leans on the brewery's own lineup plus guest ales from Sambrook's and Twickenham, ten or so taps in total, nothing wildly adventurous but nothing to complain about either. It's a proper Victorian pub on Old York Road, the kind of place Wandsworth locals have been using as an excuse not to go home for generations.

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

The Anchor sits right on the Thames at Bankside, and the building itself is genuinely old, with five bars, a minstrels' gallery, and a riverside terrace that tourists photograph from every angle. This is a pub running almost entirely on heritage and a view, which is a perfectly honest business model. Order something simple, settle onto the terrace, and let the setting do what it does.

1. Difford's Guide 2 stars · Difford's Guide

A pub on the Thames Path where Bermondsey slides into Rotherhithe, sitting opposite the ruins of a manor house built for Edward III. Monks originally ran a guesthouse on this spot, and the place has been pulling people off the river ever since, Samuel Pepys and Captain Cook among them if the stories hold. A good old-school pub with the history to back up the worn-in feel.

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

The Antelope has two front doors, a relic of the days when Belgravia's butlers and their employers each needed their own entrance. The partitions are long gone, but the old-school pub atmosphere survives in this quietly gentlemanly corner local just off Sloane Square. Regulars treat it like a sitting room they don't have to dust. Stone's throw from the King's Road, it reads as a place where nobody is trying very hard, which in this postcode takes considerable effort.

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

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

The original chandeliers and carved dark wood at this grand Victorian pub on Mount Street have outlasted every trend that's swept through Mayfair around them. Red leather banquettes, a floral carpet, and a long bar counter split between two distinct rooms make it feel less like a gastropub makeover and more like somewhere the Duke of Westminster himself might have nursed a pint. The red-brick and terracotta frontage alone stops people on the pavement.

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

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

A brass plaque on the bar marks the waterline from the 1928 flood, which tells you something about how long this Fuller's pub has been absorbing local history. It's an old-school neighborhood boozer on the Rotherhithe waterfront, the kind where regulars nurse pints of Fuller's ale without checking the ferry schedule. Nelson is said to have stopped in while his ship was fitted out nearby, though the pub isn't the sort to make a fuss about it.

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

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