The Best Places to Drink and Do in City of London & Greater London

A wine bar tucked under the railway arches in Bermondsey, where the menu is a chalkboard, reservations don't exist, and the wine comes from a natural-leaning importer operating out of the same warehouse. Around a dozen small plates change daily, running from terrines and seasonal salads to something more substantial, and the idea is to order the lot and share. First-come seating keeps it lively, and nobody here seems to mind waiting.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
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1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

Green tiles and a country-pub face on Bermondsey Street, then inside it's sage kitchen panelling, plush wallpaper, silk lamps, American diner booths, and space-age bucket seats all sharing a room without having discussed it first. The Garrison is a pub and neighbourhood bar with a devoted following on one of London's better eating-and-drinking streets, and booking ahead is less optional than it sounds.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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 all-Spanish wine list at this Bermondsey Street bar runs to some serious bottles, which gives you a decent excuse to linger over a glass of something from the Iberian peninsula's less-obvious corners. José Pizarro's bigger follow-up to his nearby tapas spot leans comfortable and stylish, the kind of room where a copa of Pedro Ximénez feels entirely reasonable at midday. Small plates circulate for those who can't just drink.

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

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

A corner pub on the south bank, one building shy of Tower Bridge, with a beer list that leans hard into cask and craft. The room has been freshened up from its former smoke-stained self, lime green seating and all, though the bones of an old London boozer are still there. Tourists coming off the bridge mix with local office workers who'd rather not admit they work next to the Mayor.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The Infatuation The 22 Best Bars In London

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

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

A marble bar counter, two chalkboards, and a corner shop footprint that gives the whole thing a slightly miraculous quality. This is a sherry and tapas bar on Bermondsey Street, small enough that standing room feels like a personality choice rather than an oversight. The team knows their palo cortado from their manzanilla and will tell you which glass to order with whatever the kitchen is turning out that day.

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

Down a cobbled passage off Bow Lane, past the church whose bells once defined who counted as a true Cockney, this subterranean lounge bar takes the British Empire as its organizing obsession. Gin and rum anchor the menu, with bottles running from rare old releases to new arrivals, and the cocktail list follows suit with imperial-themed drinks. The kind of dim, tucked-away room that feels like a find every time.

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

A corner pub in Bermondsey where the Victorian bones are still visible under a liberal coat of white paint, with crystal chandeliers doing their best to class the place up. The beer list leans heavily London-brewed, and the room fills fast with warehouse-flat residents and office workers who treat it like a local because it is one. Named for the satirist dean himself, which feels right for a pub that doesn't take itself too seriously.

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

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

Reclaimed oak panelling and copper-topped tables give The Rose the look of a Victorian tavern that was never actually Victorian. It's a gastropub near London Bridge, sitting in the shadow of the Shard, close to Bermondsey Street's more self-conscious end. The owners set out to build an old English pub from scratch, and the herringbone parquet and twin-seater benches suggest they took the brief seriously.

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

The oyster farm is owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, which is a sentence you don't get to say about many bars. This Borough Market oyster bar runs a chalkboard of a dozen-plus varieties on any given day, served at a narrow wooden counter or communal high tables under exposed brick and industrial light. It's a tight, warehouse-feeling room where the kitchen operates with no illusions of space, and the crowd leans into raw shellfish and porter with equal commitment.

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

The bar sits upstairs in Jamie Oliver's barbecue restaurant next to St Paul's, and the smell of smoking ribs hits you before you've even found a seat. Getting that seat is the sport: staff with headsets will try to park you in the basement holding area, so hold firm and wait for the bar proper. Once you're there, it's warm and easy, and the room does the rest.

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

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

The bar worth finding at Gordon Ramsay's Bread Street Kitchen is upstairs, not the low-key lounge you walk into on the ground floor. That front room handles daytime coffees and quiet drinks just fine, but the real reason to come is the upper bar, where you're above the dining floor action and the cocktails have clearly had some attention paid to them since the early days.

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

Three championship pool tables buried several flights below a City office block set the tone for this members' bar near Mansion House. The descent feels bunker-like, but the room that greets you is all brown sofas and warm lighting, somewhere between a private lounge and a well-funded man cave that's smart enough for everyone. A cinema and private rooms with self-service bars round it out for after-work groups.

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

Floor 32 of The Shard is a lot of real estate to dedicate to a view, but Oblix earns the altitude. This sleek cocktail bar from the group behind Roka and Zuma arrives via a dedicated lift and a dark, scented entrance with water features, which is either very impressive or slightly airport lounge depending on your mood. On a clear London day the panorama stretches forever, and even on a grey one you'll find plenty to look at in your glass.

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

The bar at Roast sits above the stall-holders' cages of Borough Market, inside a space built around the old Floral Hall portico salvaged from Covent Garden's Royal Opera House. It's a dedicated bar area within a larger restaurant, so you can drink without committing to a full meal. Bar snacks and cocktails are the move, with the Saturday morning market crowd browsing obliviously below.

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 old Packman table in the corner sets the tone for this deliberately scruffy pub near London Bridge. Garishly painted booths, mismatched furniture, and a live music stage draw trainee medics from Guy's Hospital and anyone else who'd rather not be somewhere with a dress code. Gourmet hotdogs made with Bermondsey sausages are the kitchen's one serious move. A proper boozer wearing its rough edges without apology.

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

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

The bar itself is carved from a solid slab of cork, its surface made from port-soaked chestnut reclaimed from old Sandeman vats, which sets the tone nicely. This cocktail bar sits in medieval vaults beneath the City, where the Sandeman family once rolled barrels up from the Thames through a tunnel that's now bricked over. Big punchy cocktails and a serious wine list, for when the square mile needs a drink, which is always.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tucked under London Bridge's railway arches behind a door dressed up as old shipping crates from the Orient, Cecil's is a candlelit basement speakeasy that takes its own mythology seriously. The unmarked entrance is genuinely tricky before six, when a doorman materialises to make life easier. Inside, a cavernous room fills with mismatched tables, a bar wedged into the corner, and a raised platform that suggests something is always about to happen.

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

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

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

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

The 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

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 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 2.5 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

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

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 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 cocktail bar spread across the ground and mezzanine of Heron Tower, The Drift seats over 400 people while somehow carving out corners that feel almost intimate, which is no small trick in a glass-and-steel skyscraper. Retro soft furnishings and tactile finishes do the heavy lifting against the corporate bones of the building. A few decorative shells are the only nod to the nautical name, which is probably for the best.

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

Floor-to-ceiling windows flood this split-level City cocktail bar with enough light to remind you it's actually a weekday. Part of the Drake & Morgan stable, The Folly is big enough to swallow a whole office outing, but rough wooden tables, church candelabras, and patterned wallpaper keep it from feeling like a chain. A reliable after-work refuge near Monument when you'd rather not explain yourself to anyone who knows you.

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

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

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

Candles stuck in wax-crusted bottles flicker under mismatched lampshades at this Tooley Street local, which has the look of a pub that never quite decided whether to go gastropub or stay a straightforward boozer. It landed somewhere in the middle, and mostly that's fine. The cask ales are the reason to come, with a rotating handful on tap and Green King IPA holding down a permanent stool at the bar.

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

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

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

Old school lockers with graffiti line the walls, a chopper bike leans against something, and a ghetto blaster sits where a till might otherwise be. This Bermondsey cocktail bar runs its menu by school subject, so the Cosmopolitan lives under History and the Hemingway Daiquiri files under English, which is the kind of logic that rewards a second drink. Tonka trucks and 80s nostalgia do the decorating; flair bartending does the rest.

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

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

A walled beer garden on Bermondsey Street is a rare thing, and The Woolpack has one, complete with picnic tables, bamboo fencing, and a parasol heroic enough to deny the British weather. Inside, the booths run along original tiled walls uncovered during a refurb, and the overall vibe is 70s utilitarian rather than anything a designer touched. A proper pub, unpretentious and unapologetic about it.

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

The lounge bar sits up a few steps to the right as you walk in, salvaged timber and exposed metal doing the heavy lifting on atmosphere. Village East was an early arrival on Bermondsey Street before the White Cube moved in and the expensive-small-thing shops followed, so there's a confident ease here that the newer neighbours are still working on. The restaurant fills the main floor; this is the bar, and it reads like one.

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

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

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

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1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide