The Connaught Bar

The Connaught Bar is the most decorated cocktail bar London has produced. It opened in 2008 under Agostino Perrone, who still oversees it, and has appeared on The World’s 50 Best Bars list sixteen times, more than any other bar anywhere. It was named the best bar in the world in both 2020 and 2021, and it was still sitting at number six on the 2025 list, which is the more impressive statistic: staying near the top for the better part of two decades is much harder than reaching it once.

The room is Art Deco, designed by David Collins, with silver leaf walls and a palette that shifts as the light drops. It manages the trick most grand hotel bars fail at, which is to feel formal without feeling stiff. Nobody is watching what you order.

The signature is the martini trolley, and it is worth understanding what you are getting before you sit down. The trolley comes to the table, the drink is built in front of you, and you choose your gin or vodka, your vermouth, and one of five house bitters. It is theatre, but it is competent theatre: the ritual exists because it lets you specify a martini exactly, not because it looks good on a phone. It is the single most recognisable piece of service in world bartending, and it started here.

The list beyond the martini rewards attention. The Allegro, built on gin and silver tequila with marjoram cordial, chilli distillate, coriander seed bitters and lime, is the sort of drink that sounds overworked on paper and arrives balanced. The bar has published its cocktails in book form, which tells you how seriously the recipes are taken internally.

Our verdict: if you drink one cocktail in London, drink it here. It is expensive and it is not trying to be anything else, but it is the closest thing the city has to a bar that is genuinely worth the money.

Go if: you want the best martini in London and the service to match. Skip if: you want a quiet local, or you are not in the mood to dress for a room.

Book ahead, particularly at weekends, and go early in the evening if you want a seat rather than a spot standing. Carlos Place, Mayfair.