The best cocktails in London
38 places
69 Colebrooke Row
£££A small Islington backstreet bar that calls itself the Bar with No Name and goes by its address, with live jazz, blues and rock 'n' roll and house cocktails at £15.
A Bar with Shapes for a Name
£££Built on Bauhaus principles down to the glassware, with a menu of about a dozen drinks and nothing surplus to it.
Archive & Myth
£££Reached at your booking time through the Magic Mike Live entrance to the Hippodrome and down the stairs beside the lift, into a room below the casino.
Artesian
££££Four consecutive years as the best bar in the world in the 2010s, and still a room built for a long drink rather than a quick one.
Bar Termini
£££Twenty-odd seats, negronis aged in the bottle, and an espresso counter by day - closer to Rome than to Soho.
Barts
£££Behind an unmarked black door at the back of Chelsea Cloisters, and the one bar in the guide that asks for a password. Cocktails arrive in antique books and cigar boxes.
Basement Sate
£££Down from a red door at 8 Broadwick Street to a small candlelit room of leather seats. The seasonal list runs £13 to £15, with ten alcohol-free cocktails at £11.
Blind Spot
£££A bar inside the St Martins Lane hotel with no sign from the street and a menu built as a trip round the world, from Harare to Turin and Havana. Two-for-one from 5pm to 7pm.
Coupette
£££Calvados and apple run through the whole menu - a bar with a thesis rather than a list.
Discount Suit Company
££Opened in January 2014 in a suit tailor's old store room off Petticoat Lane and kept the name: bare brick, old joists and classically inspired cocktails to Northern Soul.
Disrepute
£££Green doors under a lit sign in Kingly Court, cocktails at £16 to £18 and a 3am close. Calls itself a hideaway; the lists call it a speakeasy.
Dukes Bar
££££The martini is made at your table from frozen bottles and there is a two-drink limit, which tells you most of what you need to know.
A strict limit of two martinis per guest. It is not a suggestion.
Evans & Peel Detective Agency
£££The street door leads to a detective's office, where you state your case at a desk before being shown through to a basement done as a Prohibition-era den.
Experimental Cocktail Club
£££The London branch of the Paris bar that opened in 2007: an unmarked door on Gerrard Street and stairs up to rooms Dorothée Meilichzon designed to look plucked from the 1920s.
Happiness Forgets
£££Low ceilings, low light and a short menu under Hoxton Square - one of the rooms that started London's basement bar habit.
Isabel
££££A Beaux-Arts dining room off Albemarle Street, with a bar downstairs that runs late.
Named by two sources for the look rather than the cooking.
Kwãnt
££££Erik Lorincz, formerly of the Savoy's American Bar, running a basement room under Shepherd Market.
Lyaness
££££Ryan Chetiyawardana builds the menu around a handful of house-made ingredients and rewrites it wholesale - a river view attached.
Nightjar
£££Live jazz and blues every night in a basement off Old Street, with drinks built to match the era rather than the trend.
Live music nightly, with a music charge after a certain hour. Book.
NoMad London
££££A three-storey glass atrium filled with plants, inside the former Bow Street Magistrates Court opposite the Royal Opera House.
The building is the draw - a working courthouse until 2006.
Opium
£££Three cocktail bars styled on 1920s Shanghai behind a jade door on Gerrard Street, with dim sum from the kitchen. Every classic is £10 from 5pm to 7pm.
Oriole
££££A basement off Smithfield market with live music nightly and a menu organised by continent - the sibling to Nightjar.
Satan's Whiskers
£££No bookings, taxidermy on the walls, hip-hop loud enough to talk over, and a menu rewritten daily - named the best cocktail bar in London and third in the UK.
Walk-in only, and it fills early. The menu changes every day.
Scarfes Bar
££££Gerald Scarfe's caricatures cover the walls, there is a fire and a live band most nights, and it feels like a library that started serving drinks.
Seed Library
£££Ryan Chetiyawardana again, in a stripped concrete basement doing short, low-alcohol drinks with none of the ceremony.
Sibin
£££A small bar tucked inside the Great Scotland Yard Hotel, built around heritage whiskies, wines and Champagnes, with cocktail masterclasses and live music.
SOMA Soho
£££Through an unmarked door on Denman Street and down to a stainless steel counter, with cocktails built on flavours from the Indian subcontinent. Jazz early, Golden Age hip hop later.
Sucre
£££A Soho basement lit by cut-glass chandeliers, over an open fire kitchen.
One source calls it impressive but just subdued enough not to feel gimmicky, which is the distinction this whole list turns on.
Supermax
££A late-night cocktail and disco bar reached through Happy Face pizzeria, with £9 cocktails at aperitivo hour until 7pm.
Swift
£££Quick drinks upstairs, a dark room and a long whisky list downstairs - built so you can use it either way.
Tayēr + Elementary
££££Alex Kratena and Monica Berg split it in two - a standing bar at the front, a seated tasting room behind - and it reached fourth in the world.
The American Bar
££££Trading since the 1890s and the room where the Savoy Cocktail Book was written - a pianist, white jackets, and no concession to fashion.
The Connaught Bar
££££The martini is mixed at your table from a trolley of tinctures and you choose as it goes - twice voted the best bar in the world, and on the list more times than any other bar ever.
The Mayor of Scaredy Cat Town
££Walk into The Breakfast Club café on Artillery Lane and through a door built to look like a SMEG fridge to a candlelit basement bar.
The Natural Philosopher
££Entered through The MacSmiths repair shop on Hackney Road. Every house cocktail, classic and freezer martini is £13, and the pickle cocktails are £10 before 10pm.
The Spy Bar
££££Two basement rooms numbered 006 and 007 in the Old War Office, where MI5 and MI6 agents' identity papers were kept. The order is a martini.
The Vault at Milroy's
£££Through a bookcase at the back of Milroy's, a whisky shop established in 1964, and down to a small basement where the cocktails lean on whisky.
Three Sheets
£££Two brothers, a short menu and no theatre - the drinks arrive without a speech, which in this scene is the point.