Drink
As well as screening live sports (including GAA), this Irish bar in Stamford Hill also hosts a range of events, including live music, spoken word and comedy. Coupled with a late licence (until 3am Thurs – Sun, and 2am the rest of the week), a decent Guinness and an eclectic crowd, Mascara Bar is a great spot to have up your sleeve.
Fair Shot is a registered UK charity that works to transform the lives of young adults with learning disabilities by equipping them with all the tools they need to enter the hospitality workforce. Founded by Bianca Tavella in 2019, the organisation runs a traineeship programme out of their cafe, which is followed up by an employment programme that connects their trainees with partners looking to employ them. Since launching their first in-person Fair Shot Café on South Molton Street back in December 2021 (they’ve since expanded to the larger current site in Covent Garden), they’ve supported 45 young adults out of the unemployment cycle with 100% of their job-ready graduates currently in employment. Drop by the cafe for coffee, cakes, toasties, sarnies and soups and help support even more people into work.
Change Please, a coffee company that works to end homelessness, and Toast Ale, a sustainable brewer that uses surplus bakery bread to make their beer, have joined forces for their first joint venture. Good Company is a café and taproom that serves coffee, cakes, hot food, beers and other drinks from brands that share Good Company’s ethos. The cafe also provides training opportunitites to those experiencing homelessness, continuing Change Please’s mission of breaking the unemployment cycle.
Trampoline is a cafe with a powerful mission; not only does it serve expertly-made coffee and delish hot meals, like curries and thalis from Yogi’s Sri Lankan Kitchen, Trampoline also provides employment to refugees, giving them valuable experience and a springboard from which to start a fulfilling career. As well as creating a space where everybody feels welcome, through partnerships with organisations like Groundwork London, Thomas Franks and The Hotel School, the cafe helps the refugee community into meaningful employment.
Run by Alex Loveless and Clara Solis, La Camionera (Spanish for ‘female truck driver’, a euphemism for butch lesbians) is the second lesbian bar and the first FLINTA (female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans, and agender) owned one in London. After a wildly successful pop-up in the basement of Off Broadway and popular crowdfunding campaign, La Camionera moved into a permanent site on Well Street. Taking inspo from Spanish bars, there’s hand-painted tiles, terracotta colours and stained-glass lampshades inside and a little garden out back. Pop by for coffee during the day, natural wine in the evening or one of the regular events, like singles nights and poetry readings.
With a prime position on the riverside terrace at Somerset House, Setlist is an ideal spot to indulge in some outdoor drinking and dining. There are two fully furnished terraces bookending a covered pavilion, so you’re sorted whatever the weather, plus art installations and a music programme curated by Clem from Prince of Peckham. Four female chefs have curated the food offering – there’s West African food from Opeoluwa Odutayo, Italian-inspired small plates and pizzette from Sophie Wyburd, tacos from Andrea Montes Renaud and Laura Copp, aka Masafina, and ice creams from Terri Mercieca’s Happy Endings. There’s a great drinks selection too, including frozen cocktails, Pimm’s, spicy margs, spritzes, beers and wine.
As well as being an Arsenal pub (it is bang in the middle of Finsbury Park after all), the Twelve Pins is also an Irish pub, so you can bet on a good Guinness and a decent whiskey. There are plenty of screens everywhere, including in the beer garden, so you can catch the matches, and there’s also hearty home-cooked food (pies, roasts, spicebags) coming out of the kitchen.
Recently renovated after more than five years in business, Clapton wine bar Nobody Asked Me is back pouring the good stuff for the people of E5. Natural wines from across Europe is the bar’s specialty and there’s a regularly changing list, plus cocktails, beers, ciders and softies for the wine-averse. You can buy bottles to takeaway and there’s also a small plates offering if you wanna drink in, with raceltte (plus pickles, sautéed onions, baguette, saucisson, taralli, Dijon sauce and garlic potatoes) served on Saturdays.
The Baring in Islington has been one of the biggest success stories among the new wave of London food-first pubs. It opened to rave reviews in 2022 and has been perennially booked out for its high-class Sunday roast. And now the team, made up of Adam Symonds, Rob Tecwyn and Jay Styler, have done it again, taking over The Crooked Well in Camberwell and reopening it as The Kerfield Arms (the pub’s original name). It’s got the same signature stripped-back style as The Baring, and the food is perhaps even stronger. Don’t miss the taramasalata with chunks of warm pizza dough; the Cornish squid and lardo shish with a pul biber chilli oil; and the crispy pig cheek and smoked eel croquette swimming in a warm tartare sauce; the Swaledale rack of hogget with violet artichoke and bagna cauda; and the outrageous strawberry and chamomile custard doughnut. The Kerfield Arms also has a whole section that’s more pub-like, which is saved for walk-ins only. So you could quite happily pop in for a pint of Deya Tappy Pills or Lost & Grounded pale ale whenever you please.
Most of the week Metropolis runs as a strip club but every Saturday it turns into a night club, so the punters can also get in on the dancing action. Expect house, disco and dirty pop until 4am at Club Metropolis, otherwise look out for guest DJs and residencies from the likes of Homoelectric.
If you’re after a pint and somewhere to watch the footy, the Shacklewell Arms is happy to oblige, but really this backstreet dive pub in Dalston is all about the music. It’s become one of the best venues in the city to catch alternative bands and artists before they blow up, and the club night are always a vibe (and very sweaty too). LNZRT is behind the music programming – the biz also does Moth Club and Wide Awake Festival so you can be sure it’s always on point.
If you’re after some late-night action in north London, Slim Jim’s Liquor Store is where to go. With free entry, regular live music from grassroots artists and extensive stock of whiskey (over 90 different ones from around the world), the dive bar has become a firm fave for the city’s rockers and rollers. There’s live gigs every weekend but the music never stops at Slim Jim’s, thanks to it’s killer jukebox. And it’s open all week long too, closing at 1am on Sundays, 2am on Mondays – Wednesdays and 3am the rest of the week.
Brunch isn’t just for the weekend at Millfields Coffee, it’s a daily occurrence. This Clapton coffee shop serves up it from 9am – 4pm everyday, so you can have shakshuka, waffles with spiced ricotta and seasonal fruits, breakfast bao buns, and baked avo with fried eggs and avo whenever the mood takes you. There are also pastries and sandwiches on the menu (the bread comes from Charles Bakery) and the coffee is from Dark Arts Coffee. And it’s open into the evenings on Fridays and Saturdays, doing wines, beers and Mediterranean plates.
Situated at an absolutely prime position, Between the Bridges is an open-air bar and events venue right next to the Thames, just in between the Southbank Centre and the London Eye. It’s free to enter, so you can walk up and grab a beer or a cocktail – or some street food – and soak in the skyline sights. There’s also a huge programme of events that runs throughout the summer, featuring a number of special guests. There’ll be music from the likes of Guilty Pleasures, Old Dirty Brasstards, Barrioke, and Swiftogeddon; drag brunches with drag superstars Trinity The Tuck, Tayce, and Cara Melle; Whitney bottomless brunches; and more.
If you’re catching a show this summer, head out to the Forza Taps terrace at the National Theatre for some drinks beforehand. An extension of Forza Wine, the terrace is serving a range of snacks and picky bits, including taralli, garlic toast, and arrosticini, skewers of bavette with lardo, pork with nduja, and polenta with Chianti tomato sauce, all served with pink onions and crisps. There’s also wines on tap, spritzes, negronis and spicy Palomas to sip on out in the sun.
If you want a few beers, maybe a marg or two, a few tacos and a quesadilla, head to El Camion in Soho. If you want your night to go from relaxed dinner to big night out, head downstairs to basement bar The Pink Chihuahua. Open until 3am, it’s always a vibe in the bar, partly because it’s pretty small, partly because you need a membership to get in, partly because the music is fun but mainly because the drinks are killer. The Pink Chihuahua is the last place that legendary bartender Dick Bradsell worked and he was known for his mega espresso martinis.
A Bar With Shapes for a Name, aka Shapes, aka yellow triangle red square blue circle, is a regular on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars in the UK list. Run by Remy Savage and Paul Lougrat, it’s become beloved by regulars for its Bauhaus-inspired design, lack of branded bottles (spirits are chosen through blind tastings) and punchy batched cocktails made using lab technology. It’s open until 4am so if you’re out and about in Dalston and aren’t ready to call it a night, you can drop in here for some excellent drinks.
BLOODsports is the new American-inspired ‘watching bar’ with a 2am licence from the MEATliquor team. There are 30+ screens inside the bar so you can watch sports day and night, or catch a horror movie in between games if that’s more your thing. There’s also karaoke, pool, pinball, arcade machines and a Psycho-themed photo booth to keep you entertained. During the day Hideout Coffee will be serving up coffee and doughnuts, with MEATliquor burgers, Monkey Fingers, Chicago dogs and a deep-fried bacon-wrapped hot dog hitting the menu from lunchtime. As well as beers, boilermakers and boozy slushies, the bar is doing a ‘Bloods & Drips’ menu, which includes tomato-based drinks, like Bloody Marys and Micheladas to soothe hangovers, and drips like negronis and martinis to retox with.