The Best Places to Eat and Drink in London

The garden opens up in summer, but Pippin's earns its keep year-round as a Modern British restaurant with a genuine neighbourhood feel despite sitting inside the Hotel Templeton Garden. Muted greens and beige keep the room calm, and the menu leans on British produce in dishes that have clearly been cooked and corrected over time. The Sprout Bar next door handles cocktails before or after.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The blonde-wood panelling gives this French bistro in Battersea an almost art deco warmth, which suits it: Ploussard has the feel of a neighborhood place that takes itself seriously without making you feel like a tourist in your own dinner. The menu runs classic Francophile territory, seasonal and carefully sourced, and the wine list is short but chosen with enough conviction that you'll probably just ask the staff what to drink.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The Poon name has meant Chinese cooking in London for generations, and Amy Poon has brought it back in an elegant, warmly hued room beside Somerset House. The menu runs from wind-dried meats and wontons to claypot rice and roast duck salad, with a late-night snack selection for anyone who shows up after nine. The open kitchen keeps things lively in what could otherwise feel like a rather grand dining room.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Counter seats wrapping an open kitchen on the ground floor, tables tucked into a cosy room above, and a menu of Italian small plates built for sharing: Popolo has a clear idea of what it is. Pasta anchors the card, and the low-intervention wine list keeps things honest. Shoreditch can run cold and sceney, but the room here has a warmth that feels unplanned, which is the harder thing to pull off.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The lamb galouti kebab and the Mangalorean chicken are the nudge to skip the familiar and follow the chef's lead. Pravaas is a contemporary Indian restaurant where Shilpa Dandekar draws on regional cooking from across the subcontinent and adds her own angle to each dish. The room is clean and understated, deliberately so, keeping attention where the kitchen wants it. Butter chicken is on the menu, but the more interesting moves are elsewhere.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The fish counter hits you before you've found a seat, and the wood-fired grill does the rest. This Victorian corner pub in Belgravia has been converted into a Basque-leaning restaurant where the cooking follows the chef's family heritage: good fish, good meat, live fire. The torrija with Guinness ice cream is one of those desserts that makes you wish you'd skipped the bread. Pimlico Road money fills the room, but the food has a rougher, more satisfying edge.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A north London pub that gives its kitchen over to rotating residencies, the Compton Arms has lately landed on retro-British cooking with a relaxed, confident hand. The menu runs to things like ray wing on a crumpet with hot golden syrup, which sounds like a dare and eats like a revelation. The room stays properly pub-like, not gastropub-precious, and the service matches it. The Michelin Guide has taken notice.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A wrap-around terrace overlooking South Dock is reason enough to find your table, but this sprawling Modern British restaurant in Canary Wharf seats 500 people across several dining rooms and somehow doesn't feel like a canteen. From the team behind Fallow, the menu leans into playful riffs on British classics, the kind of place where parsley liquor shows up next to market fish and nobody thinks that's odd.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Bright prints against exposed concrete, mix-and-match wooden tables, and a menu that changes daily: this informal Modern British restaurant on Hackney Road is what happens when two friends graduate from pop-ups with their instincts intact. The cooking is overtly seasonal and full of considered combinations, the kind of food that makes you notice what's on the plate. Service is relaxed and genuinely warm without being performative about it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Inside The Beaumont's art deco bones, Rosi is a calm, pastel-toned dining room whose friezes by Luke Edward Hall give it more personality than most hotel restaurants dare. The menu reads like a love letter to British classics, calf's liver, cottage pie, a proper steak, finished with a build-your-own sundae that keeps things from getting too reverent. Sunday roasts take over on weekends, as nature intended.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A riverside brasserie beside Hammersmith Bridge, with a menu that leans British but doesn't make a religion of it. The kitchen works quality produce from land and sea with real care, and a dedicated section for oysters and shellfish gives the whole thing a slightly coastal lean. On your way out, Sam's Larder sells provisions, which is either very convenient or dangerous depending on your level of self-control.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Bright paint, papel picado, and a room loud enough that you'll lean in closer than you planned: this is a Mexican restaurant drawing on time the team spent in Mexico City, Yucatán, and Oaxaca. Tacos, tostadas, and flautas anchor the menu, with regional detours like Oaxacan barbacoa lamb shank earning their keep. The cocktail list is long, the bottomless weekend brunch is the kind of thing people book twice, and nobody here is eating quietly.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The chandeliers alone make a statement, and the rest of the room follows through without apology. This is a grand hotel dining room in the classic sense, French and British cooking served alongside Dover sole, beef Wellington, and caviar for those in the mood. Celebratory couples fill most of the tables, which suits the tone perfectly. Wear something you'd feel odd spilling on.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Shelves lined with house-made pickles, spice jars, and infused oils run along the room, telegraphing exactly what Ramael Scully is doing here. The chef's own globe-spanning biography, Malaysia, India, China, Australia, lands on the plate in a way that reads coherent rather than restless. A tasting menu or a sharing-style à la carte, both built around punchy, layered flavours you'd struggle to place on any one map.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A former mews house in Mayfair, Silva takes its name from the Latin for forest and leans into that with a décor that feels genuinely leafy and calm. It runs breakfast through late night, which is rare for the neighborhood, so you might pull up to the window counter with shakshuka in the morning or settle into the bar with a margarita after dark. The menu has no fixed allegiance, just a quiet insistence on letting ingredients carry the argument.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Rye and sourdough arrive in a basket before anything else, which tells you something about the priorities here. This cosy Notting Hill restaurant channels Ukraine through its menu, from black pudding croquettes to beef dumplings bobbing in spicy broth. The chef's story is extraordinary, but the food doesn't lean on it, it just quietly makes the case. Warm, personal, and a little unexpected for All Saints Road.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The open kitchen drives the energy in this compact Tooting corner restaurant, where the team runs tasting menus built around seasonal British produce with a thread of pickled and preserved things running through. It started as a pop-up and never quite lost that scrappy enthusiasm. Two menu lengths, all available in pescatarian, vegetarian, or vegan form. Keep an eye out for the occasional Burger Nights, which feel like a reward for regulars.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The dining room alone earns its keep: a soaring, light-flooded space in Somerset House's New Wing, once home to the Inland Revenue, which gives the whole enterprise a pleasingly unlikely air. Spring is an Italian-leaning restaurant where the kitchen leans hard on ingredients rather than fuss. The "Scratch" menu, built from what would otherwise be thrown out, is a smart reason to come on a weekday.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Part restaurant, part flower shop, because the couple who run it are a chef and a florist and that's just what made sense. Tucked into the City of London, Stem + Stem serves Modern British cooking built around sharp seasonal produce, with bright, colourful plates that occasionally feature an edible bloom or two. The flowers on the tables aren't decor borrowed from somewhere nearby; they're literally grown next door to the menu.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The counter seats overlooking the open grill are the ones to fight for at this bistro in Neal's Yard, a more relaxed offshoot of Restaurant Story. The menu runs to snail bolognese on toast and rotisserie chicken brined in bacon stock, which tells you this is serious cooking dressed down in casual clothes. Bold portions, a lively room, and enough technical confidence to make the whole thing feel effortless.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The chandeliers are made from repurposed wine and cocktail glasses, which tells you something about the room before you've even sat down. Sucre is a Latin American and Mediterranean restaurant set in a former concert hall in Soho, all high ceilings and ornate bones, with an open parrilla doing the heavy lifting on the menu. The team is genuinely charming, the flavors run bold, and the pre-theatre menu makes an evening in the West End feel almost affordable.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Sune (rhymes with "sooner," which is worth knowing before you ask) feels like a wine bar that quietly decided it wanted to be a neighborhood restaurant when it grew up. Around 14 sharing plates rotate on a fluid menu, built on simple pairings that don't crowd each other out. The room is small, the service is warm, and the kitchen in Hackney is the kind that makes restraint look like a gift.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The chef grew up in Phuket, and the menu reads accordingly: southern Thai cooking, the kind that leans harder on heat and fermented shrimp paste than the tourist-trail dishes most London Thai spots default to. It's a cheerful, colourful room on Caledonian Road that somehow skips the usual temple-screen décor, the staff are genuinely warm, and the house-infused gins keep the atmosphere tilted pleasantly toward festive.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Nigiri arrives one piece at a time, and the room stays quiet enough that you notice. This is an intimate omakase counter in Merton run by a husband-and-wife team, moving through small otsumami bites before the sushi becomes the whole point. Chutoro, otoro, hamachi, scallop, each one handled with a precision that makes the format feel less like a trend and more like an argument. Sake pairings are on offer if you need convincing.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A heated terrace with a retractable roof in Mayfair is either genius or a confession about English weather, and either way it works. This is a polished Indian restaurant spread over two floors, where the basement seats you close enough to the tandoor counter to feel useful. The à la carte leans generous and shareable, running from chaat and small plates through curries and biryanis, with tasting menus available for the more committed table.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The tacos here do the talking, which is good because the décor has very little to add. TAQ is a casual Notting Hill cantina where the menu is short and focused: fish tacos, carnitas, tostadas, quesadillas, and churros to close. The cooking is more careful than the stripped-back room lets on, which is either a pleasant surprise or the whole point, depending on how cynical you arrived.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The room looks like a gallery dedicated to Ukrainian ceramics, which is either a bold move or the most accurate possible preview of the food to come. This Shoreditch restaurant serves generous, share-friendly plates rooted in Ukrainian cooking, with a long open kitchen and a covered terrace out back. The pickled cherry tomatoes with lemon yoghurt have become the dish regulars argue over last rights to. A welcome addition to Curtain Road.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Chelsea bun on the dessert menu, reworked rather than retired, tells you what kind of pub this is: neighbourhood-proud but not lazy about it. The Chalk Freehouse is a dining pub from the Tom Kerridge stable, with the boldly flavoured Modern British food to prove it. The room is elegant without advertising the fact, and the kitchen leans hard on prime British produce without turning the menu into a geography lesson.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The entrance corridor does most of the work, with rosewood panelling and glass-fronted wine cabinets that signal exactly what kind of evening you're in for. Inside, a discreet dining room furnished by Mira Nakashima keeps the old-school Mayfair glamour intact without feeling musty. This is a classic grill room, built around serious cuts from Aberdeen Angus to Kobe beef, for people who have strong opinions about how a steak should be cooked.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Japanese restaurant tucked inside a townhouse hotel on Sloane Street, where lacquered furniture and framed prints do a quiet job of setting the scene. The menu runs wider than you might expect, from nigiri à la carte to a full omakase at the counter, and the sake list is taken seriously. It is a calmer room than most of Belgravia's dining options, which is either a selling point or a warning, depending on your mood.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The ornate ceiling is the one piece of Dorchester grandeur the room kept when everything else went bright and contemporary. It's a formal dining room inside the hotel, the kind where a suited team makes you feel looked after rather than watched. The menu leans British, with sharing centrepieces like beef Wellington doing the heavy lifting. The set lunch brings the price down to somewhere merely steep.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Wood panelling, fireplaces, and narrow staircases spread across four floors of a Marylebone townhouse: The Hart wears its pub credentials without apology. The team behind The Pelican runs this one on the same ethos, sourcing closely with British farmers and putting banoffee pie on a menu that seems to have won the room over fast. Order pork scratchings while you find your footing; the lamb chops tend to follow.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tucked into the first floor of a South Kensington gallery complex, this Mediterranean restaurant sits close enough to the V&A that you could practically sprint from a Raphael cartoon to your table. The kitchen pairs Med technique with British ingredients, resulting in dishes with a quiet, unfussy confidence. Museum crowds and locals who know the neighbourhood fill the room on any given afternoon.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The Park Monkey Bread, a tear-and-share loaf that arrives before you've decided anything else, tells you what kind of place this is: the big, buzzy, Italian-American restaurant that Jeremy King does better than almost anyone. The room is plush without being fussy, the menu swings from lobster rolls to chicken Milanese, and the bar is worth lingering in before you sit down.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tucked at the back of The Savoy, this seafood restaurant earns its best seats with a view over Victoria Embankment Gardens and the Thames. Getting there means a walk through the hotel's gilded Thames Foyer, which sets the tone: this is Gordon Ramsay doing grand occasion dining, with caviar at the Raw Bar, sole meunière, and a smoked haddock chowder for anyone who needs ballast after the room's chandeliers start feeling like a lot.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A proper neighbourhood pub in one of London's smugger postcodes, which keeps it grounded with quiz nights, Sunday lunches, and prices that don't require a moment's pause. The conservatory looks out onto a terrace and doubles as the dining room, where the menu runs from fish and chips to grilled sardines with caponata. The apple cake is the chef's version of his mother's Polish recipe, which is the kind of detail that earns a dessert its place.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The soaring ceiling gives away the building's past life as a bank, and The Langham hotel's attached pub leans into the grandeur without taking itself too seriously. The menu is quietly clever: snacks and a stovetop toastie sit alongside roast cod with mussel chowder, so you can drop in for a pint and bar bites or settle in for something more considered. Ask for the Green Room if you'd rather not eat under a vaulted ceiling with half of Marylebone.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Named for Jason Atherton's three daughters, this all-day modern bistro on Pavilion Road runs from house-baked viennoiserie at breakfast through to late-night cocktails, covering a lot of ground without breaking a sweat. The cooking pulls from wherever it likes, Cornish sea bass sitting comfortably near char siu beef ribs, and the room has the kind of low-key polish that Chelsea does when it's not trying too hard.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A logo instead of a sign marks the door of this tiny Modern British dinner spot in Crouch End, where 18 seats fill up fast and everyone eats at eight. The set four-course menu changes weekly, offers no choices, and you settle the bill when you book, which concentrates the mind. From a kitchen you can practically touch, the food runs to the nourishing and unfussy end of things.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Eero Saarinen's old US Embassy building is now a Rosewood hotel, and the bones of that mid-century modernist space give this sushi restaurant an unlikely grandeur. Masayoshi Takayama, the name behind New York's Masa, runs the show. Sit at the seven-seat counter for omakase or order from the broader Japanese menu at a table. The ingredients lean toward the luxurious end of the spectrum, which the room quietly prepares you for.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Owned by the people behind Frieze art magazine, this Mediterranean restaurant in a brutalist building near the Strand hangs Wolfgang Tillmans prints between art posters spanning four decades, so the room does most of the heavy lifting before the food arrives. The menu runs fresh and unfussy, the kind of cooking that pairs well with a terrace table and a glimpse of the Thames. Bookable by people who own tote bags, mostly.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Fried sage leaves with heather honey and chilli land on the table as snacks, and that tells you roughly where you are: a modern British restaurant in Covent Garden that takes seasonal produce seriously without taking itself too seriously. The room is designed to be noticed, the open kitchen keeps things lively, and a cocktail before dinner feels entirely encouraged. The quick lunch menu moves fast and costs little, which Drury Lane regulars have clearly figured out.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A former power station and coal store in Eccleston Yards, now a light-filled brasserie under a lofty glass roof with an open kitchen keeping things lively. The menu runs Mediterranean, with wood-fired cooking doing most of the talking. Flatbreads come out flame-licked and loaded, and the heartier mains lean rustic and unfussy. A small shop tucked inside sells provisions for anyone who wants to recreate the vibe at home, which is optimistic but charming.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Waxed wooden floors and terracotta walls overlook Chelsea Green in a way that makes you feel you've stumbled into a Tuscan trattoria without the flight. This Italian neighbourhood restaurant keeps things ingredient-led: a raw bar of oysters and tartares, prime cuts off the grill, and homemade pastas that quietly steal the show. The Wagyu oxtail tortelli has a way of making every other plan for the evening feel less urgent.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Crumpet snacks set the tone at this clubby restaurant and bar inside the Cadogan Hotel on Sloane Street, where the menu reads like a love letter to British cooking, right down to the wines. The two salon dining rooms lean comfortable and Chelsea-smart, and the kitchen follows through with lamb faggots, day-boat fish, and puddings that veer into deliberate nostalgia, a sherry trifle apparently traced back to the chef's grandmother.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Grade II-listed Victorian fire station makes for a warmer dining room than the building's original tenants probably intended. This is a sit-down Indian restaurant in Westminster with a menu that ranges across the subcontinent and into neighboring countries. The team runs it with the kind of attentiveness that doesn't feel rehearsed, and the butter chicken is reportedly the one to order.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Southeast Asian restaurant on Lisle Street that pulls from Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore rather than committing to any one of them. The menu is extensive enough to need advice, and the staff will actually give it. Portions are built for sharing, so this is the kind of place you want a crowd for: order widely, divide everything, and let the table sort itself out.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The room was a banking hall once, and it still has the bones to prove it: high ceilings, wood panelling, and neo-Gothic stonework that makes ordering a curry feel pleasantly theatrical. This is a proper sit-down Indian restaurant with a broad regional menu that leans north, where the spicing works to pull out flavour rather than announce itself. Cocktails at the central bar, and the window seats look out over Hyde Park.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The bar bills still come printed from "The Bar With No Name Ltd," even though there's now a branded canopy outside giving the whole speakeasy game away. This tiny cocktail bar on a quiet Islington corner seats fewer than forty, so ring ahead. Inside, eight green industrial lamps hang spider-like over a two-tone room that lands somewhere between 1950s Italian café and serious molecular mixology den, which is a combination nobody else is attempting.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

The Savoy Cocktail Book was written here, which tells you everything about where this cocktail bar sits in the pecking order. Black-and-white photos of Sinatra and a roll call of legendary bartenders line the walls, and the room carries that weight without trying too hard. It's all dark wood, white-jacketed staff, and a sense that the person mixing your drink could answer almost any question about the Martini.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Restaurant Bar – Europe

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

A cocktail bar born from misfortune, Casual by Tayēr started as the team's answer to a fire that shuttered their original spot. Tucked inside Cato on Mercer Street, it runs as a pop-up series, each chapter riffing on a new theme through the Tayēr lens. The drinks pull from both sides of the original pairing, Tayēr's creativity meeting Elementary's precision, and the tight space puts you closer to the bartenders than almost any bar stool could.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

Flute is the rooftop cocktail bar at Broadwick Soho, where someone clearly signed off on an unlimited budget for pink cushions. Expect velvet everywhere, fruity cocktails that can climb to £40, and a wraparound terrace built for staring wistfully at the London skyline while a friend takes the photo. It's a dress-up, spend-a-bit kind of place, and The Infatuation has ranked it among the city's best bars.

1. The Infatuation The 22 Best Bars In London
2. The Infatuation The 14 Best Hotel Bars In London, Ranked By Most Expensive Cocktail

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

Neapolitan pizza in Hampstead, which tells you something about both the pizza and the neighborhood. L'Antica Pizzeria takes the tradition seriously without treating it like a sacred text, turning out light, airy dough with a fermentation that does the work quietly in the background. The room is cozy and informal, the pace unhurried, and the whole thing suits the leafy, unhurried village-that-forgot-it's-in-London energy of Heath Street.

1. 50 Top Pizza #28 · 50 Top Pizza Europe

The paparazzi camped on the mews out back are, in their own way, part of the ambience. The Ladder Shed is the bar tucked into Chiltern Firehouse, the gothic Victorian fire station turned celebrity hotel on a quiet Marylebone backstreet. It draws the kind of crowd that arrives by arrangement and leaves by the side door, which makes ordering a drink feel faintly conspiratorial and, depending on your outlook, either tedious or a good story.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

There's no sign outside, just a bell to push and a lobby that makes you feel like you're about to do something mildly illicit. Milk and Honey is a members-style cocktail bar on Poland Street with a downtown New York pedigree, the sibling of Sasha Petraske's Manhattan original that helped reshape what a serious bar could be. The hush inside is very much the point.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

The bar top is cast from old pavement lights, and the water carafes are repurposed gin bottles, which tells you everything about the aesthetic before you've ordered. Sager and Wilde is a candlelit wine bar on Hackney Road, bare brick and unpretentious, where the list is the whole point. Early evenings, light cuts through the Venetian blinds at a mood-appropriate angle; after that, candles take over and the room does the rest.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

Monkey nuts spill out of tankards and the wall behind the bar is stacked floor-to-ceiling with bottles in every color imaginable. This cocktail bar on the edge of Brick Lane dresses like an old British pub but drinks nothing like one: bartenders in braces produce whimsical concoctions that arrive in flasks tucked inside envelopes, garnished with edible golf balls and general nonsense. The rock-and-roll soundtrack keeps the whole thing from tipping into gimmick.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The Coral Room is a hotel bar in Bloomsbury that appears to have been painted by someone who was told pink was a personality. Afternoon tea with finger sandwiches gives way by evening to a crowd drinking champagne under a Murano chandelier, so a French 75 is the obvious order. The cocktail menu rotates, and prices sit around the high teens, which is London hotel bar for fair.

1. The Infatuation The 14 Best Hotel Bars In London, Ranked By Most Expensive Cocktail
2. The Infatuation The 22 Best Bars In London
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

The Painter's Room is a small cocktail bar tucked inside Claridge's, done up in the sort of pink shell and stained glass that makes your own flat feel like a storage unit. Expect champagne-forward drinks at Mayfair prices, around £22 for the priciest, ordered by people dressed for a premiere they may or may not be attending. It's the kind of room where a first date either gets engaged or gets the bill.

1. The Infatuation The 22 Best Bars In London
2. The Infatuation The 14 Best Hotel Bars In London, Ranked By Most Expensive Cocktail

Glass demijohns of infused pisco line the bar at this subterranean Peruvian cocktail bar tucked beneath Coya on Piccadilly. The basement does a convincing job of making Mayfair disappear: carved woodwork and ornate South American details swallow the room whole. The crowd leans well-dressed, which tracks for the postcode. Pisco anchors the menu, flanked by tequila and mezcal for anyone who needs convincing.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. The Infatuation #7 · The 25 Best Restaurants In London
2. The Infatuation The 17 Best Italian Restaurants In London

The Palladium leaf ceiling alone earns the room its swagger. Vesper Bar is a cocktail bar tucked inside The Dorchester with its own entrance on Park Lane, which tells you everything about the clientele's expectations. Martin Brudnizki designed it, all Sienna marble and intricate timber marquetry, and the twenties glamour reference lands without feeling costumy. Order the bar's namesake drink and pretend you're waiting for someone important.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

The dining room is polished enough that you'd almost forget you're here for pizza, which is precisely the point. This Southwark pizzeria brings Neapolitan tradition to London with a tidier, more considered setting than the usual slice-and-go, the kind of room where the dough is still the star but it arrives in surroundings that take themselves slightly more seriously. A second London location shares the same formula.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias