London is the best cocktail city in the world right now. That is not a boast, it is roughly the consensus of every industry list for the past decade, and the city routinely places more bars in the global top fifty than anywhere else.
What that means in practice is that the standard at the top is extraordinary and the standard in the middle is very good. It also means a lot of places charge twenty pounds for something competent and unremarkable. This list is about the drink in the glass rather than the room around it. If the room is what you are after, our best bars guide is organised that way instead.
The serious ones
Connaught Bar, Mayfair
Repeatedly ranked the best bar in the world and still the benchmark for a martini. The trolley comes to the table, you choose the gin and the bitters, and the drink is built in front of you. It is a performance, it is expensive, and it is genuinely worth doing once. Book, and wear a jacket.
Tayēr + Elementary, Old Street
Two bars in one space and the most technically interesting drinking in the city. Elementary at the front is standing, quick, and turns out a complicated drink in ninety seconds. Tayēr at the back is seated, slower and more expensive, and is where the actual experimentation happens. Go to the back if the drinks are the evening.
Lyaness, South Bank
Ryan Chetiyawardana’s bar at Sea Containers, built around house-made ingredients you will not find anywhere else, with a menu that changes wholesale rather than by the drink. Divisive, ambitious, and never boring.
Artesian, Marylebone
The bar at the Langham, four times ranked best in the world, and still doing elaborate serves in a room that looks like a Chinoiserie fever dream. More theatrical than Tayēr, less austere than the Connaught.
The neighbourhood ones, which are often better value
Satan’s Whiskers, Bethnal Green
A menu that changes every day, taxidermy on the walls, hip hop loud enough that conversation takes effort, and classics made about as well as anywhere in London for roughly half the Mayfair price. It takes reservations, but only by telephone, and it takes walk-ins too.
Three Sheets, Dalston and Soho
Small, white-walled, run by the Venning brothers, and concerned almost entirely with making a short list of drinks exceptionally well. No theatre, no gimmicks, just a very short menu executed properly. The original opened in east London in 2016 and made the World’s 50 Best list; there is now a second site on Manette Street in Soho, which is the easier one to reach.
Happiness Forgets, Hoxton
A low-ceilinged basement on Hoxton Square that has been doing unfussy, excellent drinks for years without making any fuss about it. High-end cocktails in a deliberately low-rent room. It holds about fifty people and is largely standing, so go early or go on a weeknight.
Little Mercies, Crouch End
Proof that you do not need to be in Zone 1. A neighbourhood bar doing genuinely inventive drinks at prices that would be a third higher in Soho.
The ones with a hook that actually works
Nightjar, Old Street
Down an unmarked staircase, live music seven nights a week, and a menu organised by historical era that runs to a small book. It was doing the speakeasy thing before everyone else and it is still the one that does it properly. Book.
Oriole, Covent Garden
Nightjar’s sister bar, from the same people as Swift. It spent years hidden in Smithfield Market before the redevelopment closed that site, and reopened in Covent Garden as a bar and restaurant. Menu arranged by continent, live music most nights, and a good deal easier to find than the original ever was.
Swift, Soho
Upstairs for a quick, excellent pre-dinner drink. Downstairs for a dark room and one of the better whisky lists in central London. Most people never get past the ground floor.
Bar Termini, Soho
Thirty seats, an Italian counter, and a negroni that arrives pre-batched and perfectly chilled in under a minute. A bar for one exceptional drink on the way somewhere, not for settling in.
How to order well
Ask the bartender. At every bar on this list, saying what spirits you like and what mood you are in will get you a better drink than reading the menu. This is the single biggest difference between people who enjoy these bars and people who find them overpriced.
Order the house drink first. If a bar has a signature, have it. It is on the menu because it is what they do best, and it tells you what the kitchen, so to speak, is about.
Do not order a Guinness at the Connaught. Not a rule so much as a waste. Match the drink to the room.
Practical notes
Book the small ones. Nightjar, Oriole and Tayēr all need it, particularly Thursday to Saturday. Happiness Forgets is standing and fills early. Three Sheets and Satan’s Whiskers are easier on a weeknight, and Satan’s Whiskers will take a table over the phone.
Prices. Budget the low to mid twenties in Mayfair and St James’s, and somewhere in the teens in Soho, Shoreditch and further out. Prices move, so treat that as a band rather than a quote.
Time it. Central London bars are at their worst between six and eight when the after-work crowd arrives. Before six or after ten is a different room entirely.
For the rooms rather than the drinks, see the best bars in London. For a view with it, London’s rooftop bars. And our main London guide covers the rest of the evening.