The Best Places to Eat and Drink in De Beauvoir Town & around

One cocktail bar split into two very different moods. Elementary faces the street with draft Old Fashioneds and Aquavit on tap, a One Sip Martini menu, and prices that won't require a sit-down afterward. Pass through the partition and Tayēr goes darker and quieter, with seasonal menus that change fast and ingredients that lean toward the unusual. The brutalist concrete and exposed steel read warmer than they should. Ranked fifth on the World's 50 Best Bars.

1. The 50 #5 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. The 50 #12 · Europe's 50 Best Bars

The house martini arrives before you've settled in, which tells you everything about the bar at this Shoreditch Town Hall restaurant. It's a place to drink while the open kitchen fires on all cylinders around you, the kind of pre-dinner perch that makes waiting feel like the point. The room carries the weight of the old civic building without taking itself too seriously, and the team moves like they've done this a few thousand times.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
2. The 50 #86 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants
3. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Named after the Old English word for turbot, this Shoreditch restaurant from Tomos Parry takes its cues from the fire-powered port restaurants of the Basque coast. The whole turbot, grilled in a handmade basket over lumpwood charcoal, is what the room is built around, though the beef cuts and mutton chop make a strong case for their share of the table. It holds a Michelin star and a spot on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, which is a range most places don't attempt.

1. World's 101 Best #17 · World's Best Steak Restaurants
2. Michelin Guide 1 Star
3. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #50 · The National Restaurant Awards

Nieves Barragán Mohacho's Michelin-starred Spanish restaurant in Shoreditch is built around whole-animal butchery done in-house, with a menu of fifty-odd dishes that skips the paella-and-patatas greatest hits in favor of lesser-known regional cooking. The double-height room pairs exposed brick with terracotta and plaster pink, and the open kitchen is theatrical enough that counter seats are their own entertainment. The all-Spanish wine list keeps the theme honest.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · Chef of the Year · The National Restaurant Awards · Nieves Barragán Mohacho
2. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · Opening of the Year · The National Restaurant Awards
3. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The elm counter runs eight metres and seats a dozen, which matters because where you sit shapes what you drink at this Japanese cocktail bar in Shoreditch. Counter seats unlock the full menu, split between seasonal pours and "Evergreen" cocktails built on fermentation, carbonation, and centrifugal clarification. The seasonal side nods to Japan's 72 micro-seasons. Ranked fifth on Top 50 Cocktail Bars, it pulls a crowd that knows the difference.

1. The 50 #23 · Europe's 50 Best Bars
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #5 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · Best New International Cocktail Bar

The bar's name is, literally, a triangle, a square, and a circle. Everything else follows that logic: the space is built on Bauhaus principles, stripped to almost nothing, with no branded bottles on display and no concession to the usual cocktail bar theater. It lands somewhere on the World's 50 Best Bars list, which feels right for somewhere this committed to a concept. Come for serious, minimal drinks in a room that looks like a design school thesis, executed well.

1. The 50 #73 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The Infatuation The 22 Best Bars In London
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A rotating menu, a backbar built around agave spirits, and a crate of rare records that actually gets played: this Hackney Road cocktail bar has a lot going on without feeling like it's trying. The whole team develops the drinks together, which gives the staff something to say about every bottle on the shelf. It landed at number 26 on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list, if that helps calibrate expectations. Open seven days.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #26 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars
3. The Infatuation The 22 Best Bars In London

The entrance is a graffiti-covered door behind a Shoreditch pub, which tells you almost nothing about the bright, panelled dining room upstairs. Paris brasserie meets New York tavern is the pitch, and it mostly checks out: big flavours, generous portions, martinis leaning hard into the pour. Counter seats put you closest to a team that seems to be having the best night in the room. A National Restaurant Awards listing in 2026 confirms what the regulars already knew.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #41 · The National Restaurant Awards
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. The Infatuation #9 · The 25 Best Restaurants In London

Two former railway arches in Haggerston have been turned into a wine-focused restaurant with cobalt blue walls, a communal table at its center, and a surprising amount of natural light for a space that technically lives underground. Membership gets you wine storage and priority reservations, but the 60-cover room is open to everyone. The modern British menu is short and deceptively simple, with small-producer, low-intervention bottles doing a lot of the talking.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #11 · The National Restaurant Awards
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

A Michelin-starred seafood restaurant on the top floor of the South Place Hotel, with a terrace that earns its keep on a clear London afternoon. The kitchen keeps the focus squarely on whatever's just come off the boat, and the fish never has to compete with its own garnishes. The wine list travels widely, which helps when you're working through the tasting menu and need something to think about between courses.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The flower market on Columbia Road draws the weekend crowds, but Brawn has been the reason to stay for lunch long after the stalls pack up. It's a snug, light-filled neighborhood restaurant with a Mediterranean-British menu that reads like it was written by someone who actually wanted to eat all of it. The room has that worn-in, comfortable feel, and the cooking is understated in the way that takes real confidence to pull off.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #63 · The National Restaurant Awards
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

You ring a bell to get in, which tells you this isn't a casual Tuesday spot. Cycene, tucked inside Blue Mountain School in Shoreditch, is a Michelin-starred tasting menu restaurant that moves you through the building as the meal unfolds: drinks in the bar, snacks in the kitchen, then the dining room with its handmade pottery. The cooking leans on precise, layered accompaniments that let the main ingredient do the talking.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A vaulted, red-brick Victorian chapel tucked among Shoreditch glass towers turns out to be one of the more quietly dramatic rooms in London. The Galvin brothers' French brasserie holds a Michelin star, though the cooking doesn't make a show of it: the menu runs classically, with bold sauces and combinations that feel inevitable rather than invented. Loud enough to feel alive, quiet enough to hold a conversation.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Slate floors, warm plaster walls, and a counter facing the kitchen set the mood at this Michelin-starred vegan restaurant on Old Street. Kirk Haworth trained in classical kitchens and it shows: the cooking treats vegetables with the same seriousness most chefs reserve for a Sunday roast. The maitake mushroom with black bean mole is the kind of dish that stops a conversation mid-sentence.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Sixty floors up in the City, the twelve counter seats face the window rather than the kitchen, which tells you exactly what Gordon Ramsay is going for here. A Michelin-starred tasting menu experience, surprise courses only, with everyone seated at once, so punctuality matters. The food runs to serious ingredients prepared with care. Factor in extra time for ground-floor security, which is its own kind of amuse-bouche.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Painted concrete steps and a metal railing are the only entrance to this basement cocktail bar under Hoxton Square, which has been called the bartender's bar in London without anyone arguing too hard. The room is small and rough around the edges, guests are seated and served at the table rather than propped at the bar, and the drinks are precisely the kind that make you forget you walked down stairs to get them.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #44 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars
3. The Infatuation The 22 Best Bars In London

The menu is split into One Sheet, Two Sheets, and Three Sheets, which tells you exactly the kind of cocktail bar this Dalston spot is: knowing, a little cheeky, and very good at drinks. The Venning brothers have built something deliberately unfussy, with a tight seasonal list that changes often enough to reward repeat visits. Ranked 32nd on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list, it draws a crowd that actually reads the menu rather than defaulting to a gin and tonic.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #32 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars
3. The Infatuation The 22 Best Bars In London

The brown-tiled facade on Hackney Road hides a gastropub that genuinely runs on two speeds: a wood-panelled bar downstairs that feels like it hasn't shifted since the 1970s, and a calmer dining room upstairs where the kitchen, staffed by alumni of St. JOHN, turns out proudly seasonal British cooking. The philosophy is that eating should never feel like a hushed ordeal, and the menu, built around dressed crab and proper Sunday roasts, argues the point quietly but well.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #23 · Top 50 Gastropubs
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A wine shop and charcuterie bar run by wine importers and an actual charcutier, which means the snacks are not an afterthought. Midweek it's natural wines and something small to eat; Thursday through Sunday a blackboard appears with proper plates, the kind of rillettes that make you reconsider everything you thought about bar food. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, and the team will happily talk you through every bottle on the shelf.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

The basement cocktail bar beneath the original Hawksmoor steakhouse, tucked under Spitalfields on Commercial Street. The drinks are complex but the staff wear it lightly, which is either the charm or the whole point. Named for the architect whose Christ Church looms just down the road, though the vibe runs more candlelit den than baroque monument. A five-star rating from Difford's Guide gives you a sense of how seriously the team takes a good cocktail.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Natural light pours into this Newington Green restaurant where pendant lamps hang over a mix of marble and wood tables, and a bare brick wall behind the bar does most of the decorating. The kitchen has a fine-dining pedigree but the room doesn't perform that way. Modern European cooking, menus that change daily, seasonal ingredients taken seriously. The kind of neighbourhood spot that pulls people from further away than they'd usually admit.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #43 · The National Restaurant Awards
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Roasted bone marrow on toast put Fergus Henderson on the map, and this Spitalfields sibling of the original St. John still serves it without ceremony. It's a canteen-style British dining room where nose-to-tail cooking is the whole point, not a novelty, and the menu runs from devilled kidneys to soused pig's ear. Finish with Eccles cakes and Lancashire cheese, which sounds wrong until it doesn't. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A Grade II listed corner pub on Bethnal Green Road that spent decades as a restaurant before someone had the sense to bring back the Guinness. Downstairs is a proper East End boozer built around a rotisserie grill; upstairs, One Club Row takes the room somewhere closer to a New York tavern by way of a French brasserie. Pre-batched negronis and a short wine list round things out for the Shoreditch crowd who like their gastropubs with a little ambition.

1. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #43 · Top 50 Gastropubs

The jet-black exterior marks this Newington Green gastropub from a distance, and the no-reservations policy means you either luck into a cosy booth or end up at a communal table getting absorbed into someone else's evening. Seasonal cocktails, natural wines, and well-kept ales cover the drinks side thoroughly, while the kitchen leans into the kind of confident, unfussy cooking that makes you order another round just to keep eating.

1. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #83 · Top 50 Gastropubs

A former Victorian pub on Columbia Road, now a snug regional Italian trattoria where the cooking draws on Pugliese heritage and time spent in Emilia-Romagna. The portions are generous, the vibe is unpretentious, and the wine list was built with the chef's father at Artigiano Imports. Thirty covers go fast, so most people discover the bar seats or the front terrace by necessity rather than preference.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #100 · The National Restaurant Awards

The name comes from the axe used to split an agave piña, which tells you everything about how seriously this Kingsland Road bar takes its subject. Around two dozen tequilas, mezcals, and lesser-known agave spirits rotate through the back bar, and the Mirror Margarita, served in tequila or mezcal form, has become the thing regulars order without looking up. A proper agave bar in a neighborhood that didn't need another generic cocktail spot.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Floor-to-ceiling glass on the 24th floor of Tower 42 catches the sunset over southwest London, which is a reliable trick. This cocktail bar is done up like a gentleman's club, all dark wood paneling, leather chairs, and golden library lamps, and the suited City crowd fills it as if central casting sent them over. It's part of Jason Atherton's group, so the drinks are competent and taken seriously.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The pasta lab is visible from the dining room, which tells you everything about where the priorities are at this Italian-Japanese osteria in a converted East London yard. It's the looser, à la carte sibling of the kaiseki-leaning Angelina in Dalston, with grilling over binchotan doing as much heavy lifting as the handmade pasta. Order the house fries before someone at the next table does and spends the rest of dinner resenting you.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The Infatuation The 17 Best Italian Restaurants In London

The name comes from the chef's own daily-ground spice mix, which sets the tone for this small, loud Indian small-plates restaurant in Spitalfields. Ten tightly packed tables fill fast with people who look like they've been coming for years. The menu pulls from family recipes across India's regions, and the Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks. It spawned other London locations, but this is the one that started it.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The in-house pasta workshop and salumeria behind the counter tell you what kind of Italian restaurant this is before you've sat down. Shoreditch, so it's loud and packed, but the floor runs with the sort of calm that makes the room feel easy rather than frantic. Sharing plates, wood-roasted fish, house-cured everything, and pasta made a few feet away. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The handwritten blackboard menu changes with whatever looked good at the market, and the room is stripped back enough that the food has nowhere to hide. Primeur is a neighbourhood restaurant in the best Canonbury tradition: communal tables, counter seats, and cooking that puts ingredients first without making a show of it. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks. Order the custard tart if it's on.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A cult Thai restaurant that outgrew its Leytonstone roots and landed in Shoreditch with a Michelin Bib Gourmand in tow. Sharing plates of sharply spiced, big-flavoured food come out of an open kitchen, and there's a counter seat if you want to watch the chaos up close, or see how the cocktails are built. The menu is short, the flavours are not, and the room has the kind of energy that makes it hard to leave after one round.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The brisket goes into the smoker overnight and comes out glazed, melting, and almost insultingly good for the price. This Shoreditch barbecue joint keeps things straightforward: expertly handled smoke, wallet-friendly plates, and a room that's genuinely lively without trying too hard. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks. Service moves fast and knows the menu cold.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Rosemary and nori focaccia is as good an opening argument as any for the Italian-Japanese tasting menu at this Dalston neighbourhood spot. It's a kondate-style parade of courses that shouldn't cohere but keeps doing so, plate after plate. Sit at the marble counter if you can, where the open kitchen makes the whole thing feel like watching a friendly wager play out in real time.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Fried squid with chorizo sits alongside brill meunière on a menu that wanders happily between Spain and France without much guilt about it. Bar Valette is a bistro-ish spot on Kingsland Road where the room has proper bistro energy and the young team run it with the kind of unhurried calm that's harder to pull off than it looks. Start with the crispy snacks and something from the sherry list before committing to the rest.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Every table has a "Press for Champagne" button, which tells you more or less everything about Bob Bob Ricard City. This is a brasserie built for excess, perched on the third floor of the Cheesegrater in the City, and dressed accordingly: gold, gleam, and a menu that leans into caviar, oysters, and Josper-grilled steaks. The financial district crowd doesn't need a second invitation. Come with an expense account or a very good excuse.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The green-tiled bar is a nod to East London's pub tradition, which feels about right for a vegetarian Middle Eastern spot that treats a plate of oyster mushroom skewers with the same seriousness your local gives a pint. Sharing plates fill the table: dips, flatbreads, falafel, latkes, all of it lifted by careful spicing. The Spitalfields original is compact and rustic, and dinner hands the menu decisions to the kitchen entirely.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The vinyl collection by the front door survived the handover intact, which tells you something about the priorities here. Duchy is a relaxed Shoreditch restaurant where two Leroy alumni cook around the old Savoy duchy, that sprawling medieval territory straddling southwest France and northwest Italy. British ingredients do most of the work, plates are meant to be shared, and the menu moves at a pace that rewards ordering slowly.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The bread here comes from flour the team mills themselves, which explains the counter regulars who arrive before the pastries run out. Jolene is a neighborhood bakery and all-day cafe on Newington Green that moonlights as a proper restaurant, with a blackboard of sharing plates and house-made pasta that changes daily. The wine list leans natural and small-producer, so you can feel appropriately virtuous about the whole afternoon.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A bright yellow door in Shoreditch leads to a lift, which leads to a seventh-floor Peruvian restaurant with a long, sunlit room, an open kitchen, and a terrace that earns its keep. The menu comes with a glossary on the back, which is either charming or a sign you should order the pisco sour first and ask questions later. Sister to a Manhattan original, it serves fresh, citrus-forward food in a room that feels genuinely cheerful without trying too hard.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

You book online and put a card down just to get through the door, which tells you something about how seriously Nightjar takes itself as a cocktail bar. The pre-war speakeasy atmosphere on City Road runs to live jazz, blues, ragtime, and the occasional cabaret set, so you're choosing between a quiet corner for the drinks or a front-row seat to the whole production. Either way, the program is the point.

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

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 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. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

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

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

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The Hit List: New London Restaurants To Try Right Now

Nagare is a Spitalfields coffee shop that treats a flat white like a small ceremony. The dark wood chairs look antique in a way that took some planning, and the milky white La Marzocco sits behind the counter like a piece of kitchen design you'll be quietly coveting by the second sip. Beans can come from a small-batch roaster in Hong Kong, and the menu covers iced, milky, filter, and drip. Expect a quick coffee and a very photogenic pause.

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

A laid-back Thai restaurant and bar on Shoreditch High Street where the wok does most of the talking. Homemade sausages, grilled skewers, fragrant curries, and a short menu that changes just enough to keep regulars guessing. The chef's focus on wok cookery gives it an edge beyond the usual comfort hits. Busy in the way Shoreditch always is, though here the playlist and the friendly service make the noise feel earned rather than accidental.

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

1. The Infatuation The Hit List: New London Restaurants To Try Right Now

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

New York-style slices on Bethnal Green Road, from a spot that built a cult following out in Watford before anyone in E2 noticed. The classics, cheese, tomato, pepperoni, lean on low-moisture mozzarella and a properly crisp base. Then there's a spanakopita slice with Scotch bonnet honey, and a thicker grandma pie that rotates between vodka sauce and hot honey pepperoni. Eater named it among London's 38 best restaurants.

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

A cocktail bar on Rivington Street that takes its name from the Jabberwocky poem, which sets expectations correctly: the room is smaller than it looks, then larger than it should be, with a wardrobe somewhere in the middle that leads somewhere else. The Mad Hatter aesthetic could easily tip into theme-park territory, but the drinks keep it honest. Shoreditch has no shortage of bars pretending to have personality; this one at least has a family portrait on the wall.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A basement cocktail bar beneath a City pub, with a name that sounds like it handles mergers but actually refers to the house's two signature batched cocktails: the Demon, something stiff and stirred, and the Wise, a lighter sour. Each batch is different, and a snooker scoreboard above the back bar counts down however many pours remain. The suits filing in after close of trade probably don't mind the urgency.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The Sunday flower market on Columbia Road starts right at The Birdcage's corner, which means this old East End pub spent years famous almost entirely for its postcode. Gentrification caught up with the street eventually, and the surrounding restaurants and bars have turned it into a nightly destination rather than a once-a-week pitstop. A proper neighbourhood pub, worn in the right ways, with a crowd that arrived before the area did.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

You get into this basement cocktail bar by walking through a Smeg fridge in the back of The Breakfast Club. Ask quietly at the door whether there's room downstairs, because the whole point is that it's a secret, and they'll let you hold that fiction together. Below, rough wood, vintage posters, and unsettling dolls set the mood, while the bathroom wallpaper is an education in one-hit wonders and deeply regrettable 1980s haircuts.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The txuleton, a thick bone-in steak from older Basque cattle, is cooked over a wood-fired grill with nothing but salt and a lot of patience. This Shoreditch asador brings Basque grilling culture to London without softening it for the audience, and the room, all wooden tables and open flames, smells accordingly. It landed on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, which tells you what to order. Service runs on warmth rather than ceremony, the way it would back in San Sebastián.

1. World's 101 Best #90 · World's Best Steak Restaurants

1. The Infatuation The 17 Best Italian Restaurants In London

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

The name isn't a joke: the space was a dance school once, and you can still feel the bones of it, a big open floor with an island bar dropped in the middle like someone had to make a decision. Theatre flip-seats, barstools, and worn couches fill the edges in a pleasingly haphazard way. The stripped, slightly faded surfaces fit Dalston perfectly. A neighbourhood bar that doesn't try too hard, which in this part of east London counts for something.

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

The name is borrowed from the Greek for "the common people," which makes the irony of its Ace Hotel address fairly rich. This ground-floor bar in Shoreditch pulls the expected east London crowd, laptops and carefully considered facial hair very much in evidence, but the room reads warmer than that demographic tends to promise. Order a drink and settle in; the self-consciousness is mostly on the outside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Factory-style skylights flood the room by day; after dark the same space goes low-lit and conspiratorially dim. This bar and brasserie in Shoreditch is Angela Hartnett's place, and her presence here is itself a small sign of how far the neighborhood has drifted from its rough-edged origins. The room has the look of somewhere that's been around forever, which it hasn't, but the trick works. Come for a drink and stay longer than you planned.

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

A split-level neighbourhood bar on Hackney Road, named for the man who burned the previous building down in 1883 after being refused entry. Arson as branding is an interesting choice, but it works. What was most recently a curry house is now a late-night drinking spot filling a gap in an area that wasn't exactly drowning in options, a short walk from Columbia Road.

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

The bar inside this modern Asian restaurant near Liverpool Street looks a little sparse in daylight, which is the kindest framing available. Come evening, the low lighting does the heavy lifting, and the cocktail list earns its keep regardless. The drinks lean into bold, unexpected pairings, the kind that make you wonder why nobody combined those two things before. Service keeps pace without fuss.

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

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

The centerpiece is an island bar with a tiled mosaic that anchors a huge open room somewhere between American diner and grungy music venue. It's a cocktail bar leaning hard into bourbon, with a short list of well-made classics and one of the more serious American whiskey collections in the neighborhood. Come early enough and you can actually perch at the bar before the live music takes over and the volume becomes non-negotiable.

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

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

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

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

The worn linoleum and unchanged fittings place this old pub firmly in the era before anyone thought pubs needed a rebrand. Sitting at the heart of Columbia Road, it gets absolutely heaved on Sunday mornings when the flower market fills the street outside, but weekday evenings are quieter and the beer flows steadily. Apparently the interior is convincing enough to double as wartime London on screen, which tells you something about how little has changed.

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

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

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

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

Hand-drawn murals cover every surface, curtains and cats and plates of food rendered in ink across the walls of this candlelit Kingsland Road cocktail bar. What started as a pop-up settled in for good, and the room has the low-key Brooklyn energy to prove it. Stainless steel sharing tables up front, a few bar stools tucked in the back, floor-to-ceiling windows letting the street watch you drink.

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

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

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

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 stars · Difford's Guide

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

1. Difford's Guide 3 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