The Best Pubs In London (For Every Situation)

The look: sexy with a solid sprinkling of haunted. The outfit: anything that could belong to Florence Welch. The setting: The Holy Tavern, a tiny 300-year-old pub in Farringdon where wafting from the bar to dimly lit nooks just makes sense. Especially on Tuesdays, when this legendary fire hazard of a tavern is exclusively lit by candlelight and roaring fireplaces. So as well as being one of our favourite places to hardcore brood Dickens-style, it’s also the best pub in London in a power cut. 

A Kensington pub-cum-restaurant with seating cushy enough to take a kip on, The Abingdon makes an hour slip into three with relaxed ease. There are sofas with cushions on cushions, chintzy chairs, and big red booths to hide away in. The only thing that could make this snug set-up even better is a piping hot, ice cream-topped bowl of sticky toffee pudding—and The Abingdon’s is a very decent one indeed.

When we walk through the door at The Sheephaven Bay, a person in a pork pie hat and red suit with a maniacal smile waves at us. That person is the potato man from the Tayto packets. Expect to see a lot of him at this Camden pub. Crumpled in the fist of someone swigging a perfect pint, nestled beside a wall of memorabilia, and lined up on your table in a variety of flavours. 

If a pub clears its memory-stained maroon-carpeted floor, pulls down the projector, and allows anyone who’s several pints deep to murder Hanging On The Telephone, then you should be there. This is the scene most Fridays at the Army & Navy in Dalston, an old-school boozer that attracts young and old to belt something out after several reasonably priced lagers.

The Montpelier has seen things. Good, bad, and ghostly. This perennially lively Peckham pub can feel like a night out come the weekend, although it still has intimate corners for unwelcomely intense conversations inside and out. On any given ‘Balearic Thursday’, the start of something (or the inevitable end) appears to be happening over a Negroni and a pint of Beavertown. Dating apps may be romantic purgatory, but they’ve found a home here.

Look, it’s pizza’s world and we’re just living in it. Over recent years, our dough deity has hot honey sizzled and sourdoughed its way into many pubs, but only The Chancellors in Hammersmith can call itself home to London’s best pizza. We’re happy for them, and happier for us. Even if this warm, Tudor pub didn’t have gravity-defying, New York-style pizzas, we’d still sink pints here. You will need to get organised and pre-order your pizza dough in advance, but the cold pints and pepperoni pie are worth it.

In a world full of curated fun and Negroni flights, it’s nice that you can still get a frosty lager in a room full of people that tickles the old hippocampus into fight or flight mode. Quinn's can be one of those places. More often than not, very little happens at this late-night Irish institution on Kentish Town Road. It’s a big, old, and often sedate drinking den. But wander in on the right (or wrong) night, and the wrong look can add a little spice to your evening.

Sometimes all you can feasibly type in the group WhatsApp after your fourth pint of Hackney-brewed ale is ‘pub on the park’. Inside, it’s a casual, blank canvas boozer with long benches. Outside there’s a big beer garden overlooking London Fields and two covered mezzanines that are ideal for scooting up when your favourite Elf Bar socialites make an appearance at 9pm. 

Let’s put allegiances aside for a second and just talk pubs. A good football pub needs three things: screens (multiple), snacks (many), and the potential to get a little out of hand (intangible). For Arsenal fans, The Woodbine in Highbury is reliable, and The Bank Of Friendship is across the road. For Spurs fans, few locations are better than The Antwerp Arms in Tottenham and its lush lawn on Bruce Castle Park. As for Chelsea fans? Well, the less said the better.

The Guinea Grill is a handsome Mayfair pub that knows how to woo us. Potatoes. They do pancetta confit ones, mashed, gratin, but it’s the beef dripping chips that are our type on paper (and plate). They’re thick and fluffy—think chippy-sized, not Maccas—and just the thing for chasing down drops of béarnaise. 

At the precipice of the Britpop years, this Camden boozer was the place to be seen—ideally while sporting skinny jeans that defied the laws of human blood circulation. Even if you now claim your Don’t Look Back Into The Sun tattoo was inspired by a Mary Oliver poem, The Hawley Arms is still a proud Noughties time machine. Pints are poured by potential NME readers, Amy Winehouse tributes line the bathroom walls, and the Arctic Monkeys soundtrack is too loud to talk over. But if Effy from Skins taught us anything, it’s that not speaking is hot. 

Skehans is a ‘purveyor of craic’ and core memories. Drop by for a sleepy Sunday night folk session, next to a crackling wood-burning stove. Put your Year 3 bodhrán lessons to use at a jam night. Or, stay riveted to your stool as a trad band transports you from Nunhead to Temple Bar. 

When we need a pub that has zero respect for our circadian rhythm we go to The George Tavern. Like a lot of the world’s famed party animals, this Grade II-listed tavern-venue hybrid in Shadwell has its own Wikipedia page because Geoffrey Chaucer wrote about it, Nick Cave has played here, and most notably, we lost a Benefit eyeliner in the bathroom circa 2am a couple of years back. There are gigs almost every night of the week and its post-midnight weekend hours have rescued many a tipsy Londoner from a sad Simmons fate.

If Johnny Sexton is your dream dinner party guest and you get evangelical about a two-step pour, you’ll love The Faltering Fullback. On match days this Finsbury Park pub is crammed with Martin McDonagh groupies and people who found an Irish grandparent post-Brexit. You’ll find them all standing shoulder to shoulder, trying to sing ‘Ireland’s Call’ louder than their neighbour.

A flute-whistling, harmonica-tooting, according-swaying Wednesday night pick-me-up of the most knee-jigging variety, The Dog & Bell’s trad nights are a weekly joy. The Deptford local has a bustling, time capsule feel to it, with dogs around the bar, grizzled locals wordlessly sinking Guinnesses, and SE8 fine art undergrads lighting up in the pavement seating area until kingdom come.

Once upon a time this little Spitalfields boozer would present free roast potatoes on its bar for punters to snack on. This old-school tradition is rarely seen nowadays, but it gives you an idea of the kind of pub The Pride Of Spitalfields is. It’s a carpeted bungalow-type space that has no interest in changing. Unlike much of the area around it, this is a drinking hole of the most traditional variety. City boys, labourers, and old dears alike will spill out onto the pavement.

There’s something very British about a brown-wooded bungalow in Paddington with carpets that smell like the memories of a trillion pints. But the food at The Heron isn’t British, it’s some of the best Thai food in London. Fierce sour and spicy seafood salads will do their best to keep you warm, but if not, an enormous bubbling tom yum will do the trick. 

If you just want to get drunk somewhere that, if you squint just the right amount, you could be in an Aesop store, go to The Pelican. The Notting Hill pub is less Del Boys in distress and more artfully distressed walls, caramel leather banquettes, and scampi that’s of the monkfish variety. For more fancy pubs, look out for those named after creatures you’re probably not legally allowed to keep as pets: The Parakeet, The Cow, The Bull & Last.