The Best Bars in Holborn & around

Gerald Scarfe's caricatures cover the walls of this cocktail bar inside the Rosewood London, turning a room full of leather-bound books and low couches into something between a drawing room and a satirist's fever dream. The fire is real, the wood panelling is deep, and live jazz runs nightly. It holds a spot on The World's 50 Best Bars, and the crowd around the fireplace rarely whispers.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 #31 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. The 50 #47 · Europe's 50 Best Bars

The church pew seating has been here since the Victorian era, and it does not pretend otherwise. This Farringdon wine bar sits inside an old-school institution, all chequered floors and panelled walls, with a list leaning toward interesting New World bottles and esoteric finds. The room rewards people who take their wine seriously but don't need a sommelier to prove it.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #85 · The National Restaurant Awards
2. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The blackboard menu behind the bar changes so often that what you order at noon may be gone by dinner. The Eagle is an old-school Clerkenwell pub that helped invent the gastropub idea and still runs the same way: order at the bar, find your own table, no reservations. The kitchen is barely bigger than a wardrobe, which makes what comes out of it all the more surprising. The steak sandwich shows up most days, which gives regulars something to anchor to.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #77 · Top 50 Gastropubs

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

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

Space Talk is a hi-fi cocktail bar on St John Street in Farringdon, dressed in 1970s walnut and chrome like a record shop that went to finishing school. The panelling was designed by an actual acoustician, which is a job title that makes the rest of the interior feel unreasonably committed. Phones are banned, so couples on early dates have nothing to hide behind except a vermouth-forward drink and each other.

1. The Infatuation The 22 Best Bars In London

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

A blackboard on the street gives the game away, so it's not quite a speakeasy, but climbing past the packed pub downstairs still earns you the reveal: a dark, narrow cocktail bar of leather, wood, and slatted blinds that feels like a 1930s detective agency someone converted into a gentlemen's club. Copper tables catch the low light, the L-shaped room keeps things intimate, and the crowd upstairs tends to know exactly what they came for.

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

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

Corner site, large windows, maroon banquette seating, and not a whiff of charm in the surrounding streetscape. The Easton is a straightforwardly unfussy Clerkenwell pub that puts its energy into the plate rather than the room: Sunday roasts, scotch eggs, ham hock croquettes, and the kind of hearty gastro-pub cooking that makes the unattractive setting feel entirely beside the point.

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

A lounge bar steps from the old meat market, spread across several floors of a Georgian townhouse, with a bijou roof terrace that earns its adjective. Ground level feels like someone's well-read living room, shelves of coffee table books and cushioned benches around small tables, a compact bar tucked at the back. The upper floors shift the register toward cocktails and candlelight, which gives you options depending on how the evening is going.

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

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

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

The vaulted main bar here looks less like a pub and more like somewhere a medieval guild would settle a dispute, which is part of the appeal. This Sam Smith's house on High Holborn has been around forever in one form or another, and the Grade II listed mock Tudor exterior draws the eye before you're even inside. Order cheap, settle into one of the old wooden booths, and ignore how much work you brought with you.

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

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

Tucked up Jerusalem Passage, a narrow Clerkenwell alley that sounds like something from a Dan Brown paperback, the Dovetail is a bar with the kind of address that rewards people who actually look up from their phones. The surrounding squares carry centuries of Knights Hospitaller history, which lends the whole stretch an atmosphere that no amount of exposed brick could manufacture. A solid stop for a drink in one of London's older corners.

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

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide