The Best Bars In London

Gothic Bar is made for the evening, when the heavy, red curtains are pulled to and the dim, yellow light from lamps throw shadows against the walls. Drinking at the King’s Cross bar, inside the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel, will make you feel your most bewitching, monied self. It’s part Venetian mansion, with ornate columns and tapestry-like carpets, and part smoking room of the world’s richest person. Also, the cocktails are inventive—infused with chipotle, sage leaf, and hawthorn—and excellent, particularly their crisp, clean signature martini.

If you’re sick of speakeasies that look like they’re owned by that bloke from Peaky Blinders, Doña is for you. The walls at this underground Dalston drinking den are carmine red, the bar is covered in pink feathers like Big Bird is living his best Barbie fantasy, and the spicy margaritas are our personal benchmark for sexy mezcal consumption. Even if you plan on coming here for one little bottle of Modelo, this is a bar you’ll struggle to leave before midnight. You’re in the presence of a velvet chaise longue, it would be rude not to stay. 

A sultry basement bar in Soho is never not a good thing, but Soma always exceeds expectations. It has an inauspicious exterior—an unmarked door and a bouncer—that descends into a cool metallic bunker of 007 nature. The impressive oval bar acts as a giant sharing table for guests to choose from Soma’s short but excellent list of remixed, and sometimes even improved, takes on classic cocktails. It’s open until the early hours from Monday to Saturday and, if you’re in a group, there are a couple of very elite-feeling rooms that look out onto the bar.

Three Sheets’ intimate space is one of east London’s best spots for a cocktail. The Dalston bar is a must-book location given its size—unless, like us, you have a penchant for 5pm cocktails—but it’s very much worth the little bit of pre-planning. The changing seasonal drinks, like an oak and orange flower French 75, all guarantee a delicious twist. But off-menu classics are done excellently too—and include one of our favourite martinis in London. There are a whole load of non-alcoholic drinks available if you ask as well. The Soho location is just as excellent.

By day, this spot on Hackney’s Mare Street serves great coffee to people who are in codependent relationships with MacBooks, but come evening, the mood at Diddy’s is strictly fun. The cocktail menu is long but delightfully riddle-free and helpfully divided into sections—‘spritz’, ‘negroni’, ‘margarita’, ‘the rest’—that you’ll still understand after your second boulevardier. On winter nights it’s like a house party, on summer nights it’s like a block party, but whenever you visit, check out the basement-level pink room which is covered in sateen and filled with giggling friends.

The Painter’s Room is where we plan on spending all of our time once our third divorce is finalised and we get custody of the Birkins. It’s an intimate, gallery-esque, pink hideaway inside London’s bed and breakfast for billionaires—Claridge’s. Alongside bottles of Dom, they serve expert cocktails involving things like hibiscus and crème de violette. Much like the hotel’s original drinking den, Claridge’s Bar, it isn’t knees-up, party territory but it’s the perfect place to be served by someone in a suit on your birthday, or to take an out-of-towner who will be charmed that they’re sipping something fabulous in a hotel where both the Hepburns—Katharine and Audrey—have stayed. 

If you look through the window of this Hackney Road bar, the candlelit scene inside will draw you in like a moth to a cocktail-fuelled flame. There’s vinyl playing, glasses clinking, and incredibly flattering lighting that we’re dubbing ‘flickering golden hour filter’. We’d want to sit in this room even if they only served Smirnoff Ice, but the cocktails are simple yet stunning. It’s home to one of the best Negronis in London and a refreshing olive oil vodka, fino sherry, and distilled tomato situation that we can knock back with, frankly, worrying ease.  

Trisha’s is a faintly dingy public members’ club that looks like the kind of place the Soprano crew would meet, and come weekends there’s a sticky atmosphere in this Soho institution that attracts characters and voyeurs alike. A line forms from the blue door outside, the bouncer decides your fate, and from there, thirsty sardines pack the room to slosh gin and tonics and trade tales true and false. The basement bar on Greek Street is infamous, not just for being a favourite haunt of the late, great Anthony Bourdain, but for its guarantee of a memorable night. 

Satan’s Whiskers is where you go to lean across a table to get closer to your date, under the guise of talking over loud hip hop but really so they engage with your pheromones. At this fun, busy Bethnal Green bar, people order another round of excellent and potent Old Fashioneds just because. Soft, sexy lighting makes everyone (and the high volume of taxidermy) look great, and the bartenders take their cocktails seriously without any pretension. While most nice east London bars have ‘foraged this’ and ‘infused that’ in their drinks, the menu here sticks to the classics—all executed perfectly.

The cocktail menu at Bar Termini is short, sharp, sweet, and sometimes pleasantly bitter. Home to one of London’s best Negronis, this undeniably classy espresso and cocktail bar knows how to do the classics with an Italian swagger. In case you’re currently picturing a bellini in a Ferrari, let us just confirm that by ‘Italian swagger’ we mean the classics done with confidence. Eye-watering bloody marys, your quintessential summer spritz with a hearty dose of prosecco, all served in a simple, charming bar on Old Compton Street. 

If the words ‘comes with passion fruit caviar’ make you want to start saying some very mean things about the last mixologist you met, take a deep breath and trust in the inventive, grown-up cocktails at the Corinthia’s hotel bar, Velvet. They’re worth abandoning any fussy booze bias for. This dimly lit, glamorous bar looks like it’s from a fictitious era called The Golden Age Of Red Draping and the must-order Negroni svegliato is a Campari and coffee creation that has no right to work, but absolutely does. Also, there’s live jazz.

Lovers of modernism and admirers of obsessively chilled martinis will appreciate A Bar With Shapes For A Name. The Bauhaus-themed bar in Dalston is somewhere between a novelty experience and a rejected Zoolander idea, but it still manages to be a fine place to go for a good drink. Especially if you’re looking for somewhere after 2am. Ignore the pre-bottled cocktails and opt for something fresh from the shaker and, if possible, sit upstairs near the bar or downstairs on the big shared table. This is where you’ll find the shapes of people having a good time.

Walk five minutes away from purgatory—or Old Street roundabout, as it’s more commonly known—and you’ll find Tayēr + Elementary, a sceney cocktail bar. The front bar is walk-in-only and has the look of an izakaya built from Apollo 11’s scrap parts, including a pretty nifty Negroni tap and sound system playing European hip hop to bop. It’s perfect for spontaneous midweek things, especially if you like people-watching out the glassy windows and mini martinis. The back bar, open from Thursday to Saturday, is a moodily lit date den with its own separate cocktail list and vaguely illicit, Blade Runner vibe. It’s a very easy place to hole up in until 1am.

The Coral Room’s sole purpose is for looking fabulous while drinking fabulous things with fabulous people in a truly fabulous setting. Also, importantly, in case you were wondering whether this bar’s success simply hinges on 200 litres of coral paint, it doesn’t. They are experts with the classics. The bartenders at this spot inside The Bloomsbury Hotel on Great Russell Street will make you absolutely anything you ask for with confidence and finesse. Although it’ll set you back at least £16 per cocktail, it’s entirely worth it for a drink that feels less like a beverage and more like a totally unforgettable experience.

Happiness Forgets is an intimate basement bar in Hoxton Square where cocktails take priority. This shouldn’t come as a surprise considering their slogan is ‘great cocktails, no wallies’ but it never ceases to surprise us just how great a simple Sazerac here can be. Straightforward, high-quality drinks mixed with low lighting is a definite recipe for success. Outside of winning gimlets and a world-class Old Fashioned, this place gets bonus points for being open every single night of the week. Just be sure to book ahead.