10 bars which changed London forever (and for the better)

Pubs have their dominion, though you do not seek one out for a blade-cold martini any more than you lean on a bar counter hoping for a half of best drawn by hand. When London begins to abrade, a bar can still salvage the hour. Better light, better seating, better company. A drink made by someone who understands temperature, timing, and the difficult art of making a stranger feel briefly restored. Visiting these bars, I found in them not only relief, but proof that London still knows how to receive people properly. It is no accident that eight of the 10 are in hotels. London handles such bars better than most cities because it understands they are not annexes for overnight guests, but some of its finest public rooms.

What stays with me from these bars is not simply what was in the glass, but who stood across it. Thanos and Markus at The Savoy. Angelos Niakas at The Lanesborough. Michele at The Ritz. Simone at GŎNG. Monica at Tayēr + Elementary. Andrea at The Goring. James at Thirteen. Lucas at Dukes. Eder at Gambit. Angelos at Câto. This is not a list of interiors, but a route through London by way of the people who keep teaching it how to drink better, host better, and feel briefly improved. I went to every one. You should do the same.

Everything begins here. Opened in 1893, the American Bar gave London its first enduring grammar of mixed drinks, though it was Ada Coleman, running the room from 1903 to 1926, who turned bartending into authorship. The hanky panky was her calling card. Made for the actor Sir Charles Hawtrey, who asked for something with a bit more punch, it arrived with gin, sweet vermouth and Fernet-Branca, and left him exclaiming, “By Jove! That is the real hanky-panky.”

What matters is not only the anecdote, but what it shows: Coleman was not simply mixing drinks, she was writing character into the glass. When I visited, that sense of lineage still held. Thanos Tzanetopoulos ran the room with the ease of a man who makes difficulty vanish before it reaches the guest, while Markus Basset, guiding the wider drinks programme, kept the line between inheritance and living relevance taut. Sit at the slim run of stools and the American Bar still feels like the source, not a preserved artefact.

The Lanesborough has all the credentials one could ask of Hyde Park Corner — leather, chandeliers, stature, one of the capital’s grand addresses — though the Library Bar works as more than a handsome room. The martini trolley reduces luxury to first principles: temperature, dilution, garnish, each handled with absolute assurance, while the back bar extends to pre-phylloxera Cognacs and ancient Scotch. Still, what stays with me is Angelos Niakas, sometimes known as the Fallen Angel. He arrived from Greece in 2018, began polishing glasses, then rose to run the room. I met him after he had seen off a table of Texans at 4am, yet the welcome never faltered. His drinks arrive fully resolved, including his negroni charentaise, sharpened with brandy and served in a coupe. Then come the details which make you want to return: martini sundays, his corgi, Mayfair, and Lilibet, the cherished Siberian Forest cat who is part of the address itself. In lesser hands, this bar might have remained handsome but remote. Niakas makes it land.

The Rivoli Bar, in its current form, has occupied its gilded corner since 2001, though the bigger story is that The Ritz has never been content to coast on pedigree alone. Investment continues, new wings are being added, and the hotel remains bent on preserving its top rank by strengthening it. When I visited, Michele Saladino held the room with technical authority and charm. Behind the scenes sits a formidable preparation lab producing distillates, tinctures and calibrated batches, allowing the team to serve up to 500 guests a day from the minute counter without losing rhythm. The Ritz 110 still delivered its gold-flecked flourish, now poured more than a thousand times each month, though beneath the glitter sat real method. Saladino’s newer drinks, referencing the biodynamic calendar, show the same reach: mars drawing saffron-redistilled gin through Campari, Antica Formula and aged sherry, moon building a Martini line from pear eau-de-vie, Manzanilla and white miso. It is a bar which preserves the aura of The Ritz while proving it has no wish to live on inheritance alone.

Bars with panoramic views often lean too heavily on the glass, as if altitude alone were enough. GŎNG, which opened in 2014 on the 52nd floor of The Shard, works because the drinks keep pace with the outlook. When I ascended, Simone Ghiozzi brought the assurance of someone who has spent much of his London career close to the river, the city’s lifeline. Buckwheat had a nutty lift. Flower bent the French 75 through chrysanthemum and tea with grace. Best of all, perhaps, was sugar cane, made with cane pressed each morning from Borough Market, which gave the drink a snap no bottle could fake. Then there is the improbable shard-side myth which suits the site so well: during construction, a fox made its way near the top of the building, surviving on scraps left by workers. Only London could produce a story so absurd, and a bar so suited to it — urban, vertiginous, ridiculous, yet wholly persuasive.

When Tayēr + Elementary opened in 2019, Monica Berg and Alex Kratena did more than unveil a new address beside a demonic roundabout. They reset the tempo of modern London drinking. I went to see both halves in action because the split is the point. Elementary, at the front, is bright, brisk, and immediate, built for draught cocktails, quick pleasure and the sort of appetite which arrives before overthinking does. This is where the one sip martini belongs — tiny, freezing, complete; its vodka, Fino sherry, Ambrato vermouth and Gorgonzola-stuffed olive making their point at once. Tayēr, behind, moves differently. Darker, tighter, more focused, it centres on a bespoke bar system and drinks of far greater intricacy. Together they form one of the clearest statements any London bar has made in years, and Monica’s exacting influence runs through both.

The Goring Bar, refreshed in 2019 and revisited in 2024, succeeds not through novelty but tone. When I took my comfy swivelling stool amid the plaster mermaids and mermen, with the garden softening the room beyond, it felt at once welcoming and properly formed. Andrea Ferrante has understood exactly what this bar should be. At the start of the menu sits a prompt, complete with mirror, asking guests to describe themselves and let the team build something around them. Even the pink flamingo (Chambord, Italicus, fig liqueur, jasmine and Champagne) reads like the first drink of a very good day, bright and scented and entirely unembarrassed by its own charm. It is one of the friendliest counters in London, and all the better for it.

Thirteen arrived with dial8 on Denmark Street in February 2023 and, on visiting, what struck me most was how fully it belonged to Soho rather than merely borrowing its old voltage. James Warren, formerly of the Groucho Club, is central to that. Upstairs, Thirteen runs on music, appetite and late-hour propulsion. Downstairs, dial8 takes the register darker and pushes further into the small hours. Beyond the bars, Chateau Denmark stretches across 16 buildings and 44 bedrooms, with in-room “maxi bars” which tell you a good deal about the house appetite. The whole site feels less like a single venue than a fresh district folded into Soho’s bloodstream. Warren gives it exactly the social intelligence it needs to stop the concept slipping into fancy dress.

Opened in December 2025, The Delany Drawing Room gave Dukes a second axis beyond the martini bar next door, and, after visiting, I came away thinking it may now be the finer room in the building. Elegant Lucas Paterson is a large part of the reason. Under his watch, whisky and darker spirits are handled with assurance and ease, through accessibly priced flights presented on oak staves, and a take on the negroni from a 10-litre cask in the room itself. The guiding figure is Mary Delany, the 18th-century artist and letter writer famed for her extraordinarily exact botanical collages, and that spirit of close observation runs through the entire proposition. Meanwhile, in the foyer, people still queue for martinis like puddings waiting to be spooned, seemingly unaware that the more interesting bar may be the one they have just wandered past.

Gambit opened with The Newman in February 2026. Beneath the hotel, Eder Neto has made a vast, Art Deco-leaning room feel open rather than submerged, and that ease carries into the list. His background runs from Hakkasan to the opening team at The Standard London, with the added distinction of becoming Britain’s first certified sake sommelier. Most striking is the fact that each alcoholic cocktail has a non-alcoholic counterpart built as a drink in its own right rather than a dutiful substitute. Angels and demons appears in both forms, the original built on butter-infused tequila, the other on Lyre’s and blood orange, each with real length and shape. Chess nights and music give the copper-topped room life, while nods to Nancy Cunard and Aleister Crowley add just enough Fitzrovia colour. Neto makes the bar feel welcoming, broad-minded and unusually inclusive for people not drinking, which remains rarer in London than it should be.

Câto, which opened in February 2026, earns its inclusion by providing such a sharp contrast to the smoother hotel-led addresses elsewhere. Created with Angelos Bafas, better known as Mr Ungarnished, it occupies a former gentlemen’s club and feels hand-built in the best sense. When I settled in, serendipitously beside Thanos of The Savoy, the drinks came stripped back until only their point remained. Pollens, cask-raised mead, ingredient-led construction, all handled without frippery. The oyster martini, served with oysters and mint-chilli mignonette, sounds like the sort of idea which might enjoy hearing itself talked about, until it arrives and proves entirely coherent. Bafas has built a room with tactility and nerve, and London needs bars like that as much as it needs gilt and chandeliers.