The Best Bars in Shoreditch & 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

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

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 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

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

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

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

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

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 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

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

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 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 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

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 3.5 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

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

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 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

Red leather booths and floor-to-ceiling windows onto the old market square set the scene at this American diner-style bar tucked into Spitalfields. Boozy milkshakes and alcoholic slushies handle the drinks, which pair with the kind of food, burgers and ribs, that exists primarily to justify the shakes. The neon and the street theatre outside do most of the decorating, and neither asks anything of you.

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 Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

Four floors of whisky obsession in the shadow of Spitalfields Market, with a thousand drams on the ground floor and a basement cocktail bar, The Proofing Room, named for the bakery that occupied the space before the war. The cocktails lean on the original Soho location's Vault recipes, so the Coconut Butter Old Fashioned travels well. Above it all, a private members club with a cigar terrace, for those who like their evenings to escalate.

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A three-floor East London cocktail bar with a liquor store stocking over a thousand bottles, many of them rare, which already tells you something about the clientele. The cellar bar is the heart of it, candlelit and genuinely subterranean, while upstairs fills with masterclasses and tasting sessions most weekends. It sits on Kingsland Road, where the bar scene runs deep, and holds its own among stiff competition.

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

The menu arrives as a passport, which tells you more or less everything about this Kingsland Road bar. Three Italian founders turned a loaded piece of American slang into a name for the place they built after moving to London, and the concept holds together better than it has any right to. Expect an Italian-leaning wine list, draught beer, and food to go with it, all in a Shoreditch room that takes its own backstory seriously without losing the plot.

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide