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Slideshow
Top 10 unusual London bars
For the curious imbiber London is a wonderland of watering holes, from the tastefully discrete to the beautifully bizarre, as Euan Ferguson discovers.
In a city with so many bars and pubs it’s sometimes difficult to navigate your way through the banal to discover the brilliant – the kind of bars hidden from view and jealously guarded by locals. Take one such bar in Peckham located ten floors up in a multi-story car park. Others could not be more in view if they tried, for example the recently opened Aqua Shard – London’s highest bar.
These bars and others have been been collected by Euan Ferguson in Drink London, a handy compendium listing not only some of London’s best bars, but ones “with a twist”, all of which offer something other than the “room in which to drink” model.
Discover some of London’s most unique bars and pubs by clicking through these excerpts taken from Drink London.
Ape & Bird
Drink… in a reinvented gastropub with a secret in its cellar.
Some might argue that the pub doesn’t need updating, but if it has to be done, this is the blueprint. The folk behind a small but hugely hip group of bar/ restaurants (Polpo, Spuntino and others) opened this prominent place on Shaftesbury Avenue in late 2013 and labelled it a ‘public house’, but it doesn’t look much like your average Dog & Duck. On the ground floor is a casual restaurant and a separate (almost) traditional drinking space, but the real appeal comes with the downstairs ‘dive bar’, a seductively lit and secretive spot with simple cocktails and high-backed booths for groups. Among the theatres, chains, rip-offs and endless crowds of the West End, this is a highly civilised hideaway.
Essential order: A herbaceous and vivacious southern European digestif – the Aperol Spritz goes down easy.
142 Shaftesbury Avenue, Covent Garden, WC2H 8HJ.
020 7836 3119
Cable Café
Drink… in a perfect noir of a bar.
At night, this singular little spot is one of the most atmospheric hideaways in London. Beside a neon manual coffee machine and below old railway station lamps, couples chat in hushed tones and lone readers repose like Left Bank poets against a soundtrack of mellifluent jazz. The tobacco-brown wood walls are dotted with various vintage bits and pieces, bands sometimes play in a corner, there’s no written menu, mobile phones somehow seem inappropriate. A place to lose yourself for a while.
Essential order: Something strong, neat and Continental – how about a Campari on ice (or even a double espresso)?
8 Brixton Road, Kennington, SW9 6BU.
020 8617 9629
The Duke of Cambridge
Drink… in Britain’s only organic pub.
A true groundbreaker when it opened in 1998, this spacious and rustic Islington pub is still the only one in Britain to ensure everything served is organic. Food is to the fore, and it’s very good, but the environmental-minded drinker will find plenty to keep them satisfied. It’s 100 percent certified: ales from around Britain, some of them brewed especially for the bar, organic and biodynamic wines from England and beyond, and spirits including Highgrove gin and Bruichladdich malt whisky.
Essential order: It’s all organic, so it’s all sort-of good for you. Take your pick!
30 Peter’s Street, Islington, N1 8JT.
020 7359 3066
The Faltering Fullback
Drink… in a vertical garden that grows up and up.
This slightly suburban oddity is like three pubs in one. There’s a casual front bar hung with all sorts of junk-shop esoterica, and a sports-friendly back room with big screens showing all the football and rugby, but the real draw is the garden. Its footprint is small but it takes to the skies – stacked up are four decked floors, some covered, some open, festooned with flowers, plants and trinkets, all offering numerous opportunities to sit in a vertical horticultural paradise.
Essential order: A cold Vedett lager amid the greenery is hard to beat come summer.
19 Perth Road, Stroud Green, N4 3HB
020 7272 5834
The Palm Tree
Drink… in the imagined East End of jellied eels and gentlemen gangsters.
The Palm Tree stands on its own. Literally, as it’s the sole survivor of a war-bombed terrace, meaning it cuts a lonely figure in Mile End Park; and
figuratively too – ‘distinctive’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. Gold-embossed flock wallpaper, red velvet drapes, slightly seedy orange lighting, an ancient
cash register, old cockneys communing at the bar and a jazz band in the corner. It’s outlived every design fad from the last thirty years and remains a true one-of-a-kind. In the summer, drinkers make the most of the green canalside location. Be warned, though: the Palm Tree famously doesn’t serve tap water, meaning you’ll have to search for another oasis if you’re dying of thirst.
Essential order: The attraction here isn’t what you’re drinking, it’s where you’re drinking it. But there are usually a couple of uncomplicated real ales on.
127 Grove Road, Mile End, E3 5BH
020 8980 2918
Mayor of Scaredy Cat Town
Drink… in a fridge.
Well, to be more accurate, behind a fridge. The chiller in question is a retro American model in Spitalfields diner the Breakfast Club: tell a staff member you’re here to see the mayor, and a secret door leads down to what might be the daftest-named bar in London – and maybe the most frolicsome too. In an era of po-faced Prohibition pretenders, it’s great to see somewhere take the ‘speakeasy’ theme with far more than the recommended pinch of salt. The ‘house rules’ includes an insistence you leave by a different exit to maintain the secrecy.
Essential order: The classic cocktails are all straightforward but splendid.
12 Artillery Lane, Spitalfields, E1 7LS
Aqua Shard
Drink… in some views with your booze. Few bars match up in height to Aqua
Shard, sandwiched halfway up the tallest and pointiest building in the EU. At 114 metres above the scurrying pedestrians and toy-sized trains of London Bridge, Aqua’s one of the most altitudinous bars in London, and it’s the spectacular floor-to ceiling vista that make it worth the trip up in the lift. All 32 boroughs (plus the City) spread out around in a gloriously elaborate panoply of streets, tower blocks, parks, churches, railway lines and countless iconic structures to point out. Every seat comes with something different and endlessly fascinating to look at – which makes Aqua an ideal spot if you’re worried conversation might dry up.
Essential order: The inventive tea-based cocktails are a cut above – try Heaven On Earth, with aged rum, sherry, tangerine and pistachio maple syrup.
Level 31, The Shard, 31 St Thomas Street, Borough, SE1 9RY
Frank ’s Café
Drink… in an art-filled concrete car park with a view.
Ten floors up in a deserted car park in Peckham… It doesn’t sound like the setting for one of London’s most consistently cool bars, but scale the heights and you’ll be rewarded with not only large-scale new sculpture works on the way up, but an arresting panorama of the city from an unusual aspect when you arrive at the top. The downside, so to speak: it’s only operational over the summer months and is open to the elements – dress accordingly.
Essential order: Simple cocktails, simple food – a Negroni, ox-heart skewers.
Tenth floor, Peckham Multistorey Car Park, 95a Rye Lane, Peckham, SE15 4ST
Little Bar
Drink… in a less-than-large local you’ll long to live near.
By the time you leave this diminutive Tooting drinkery you’ll probably want to open your own little bar. How hard can it be, you’ll think – but Little Bar makes it look easy. Everything seems to suit the size – the small list of cocktails, spirits, beers, ciders and wines is clearly chosen with great consideration, and there are platefuls of cheese and charcuterie. Grab one of the stools and before long you’ll probably get to know the chatty staff too.
Essential order: Negronis are a speciality: have an ‘Unusual’ one with Hendrick’s gin.
145 Mitcham Road, Tooting, SW17 9PE
020 8672 7317
Trailer Happiness
Drink… in a ’70s Hawaiian beach lounge.
Three wines, three beers, but barrel-loads of rum – this Notting Hill basement bar is all about totally tropical cocktails to be drank with tongue in cheek (one contains Ribena). It’s on the tiki side of tacky, with groovy patterned wallpaper, Eero Aarnio-style armchairs and wallfuls of JH Lynch ‘Tina’ prints. A riot.
Essential order: That old Polynesian favourite, the Zombie, comes with nine rums, spiced syrup, cherry, absinthe and lime.
177 Portobello Road, Notting Hill, W11 2DY