Central theatre-and-cocktail core; classic hotel bars and themed speakeasies.
Daytime
(13)Soho record shops, Chinatown lunch, Covent Garden market performers
BAO
The gua bao that created queues around the block in Soho — a steamed bun filled with braised pork, peanut, coriander, and fermented greens that became one of the defining food moments of 2010s London. Shing Tat Chung, Erchen Chang, and Wai Ting Chung started with a market stall, then opened this tiny Soho restaurant where the bao, the fried chicken, and the Taiwanese small plates introduced a cuisine that most of London had never encountered. The restaurant is small, the tables are close, the waiters shout orders to the kitchen, and the energy is the energy of a room where every table is eating the same thing because it is impossible to improve on the obvious order.
Editor's Pick$$
Order: The classic gua bao — braised pork, peanut, coriander, fermented greens — is mandatory and the reason the restaurant exists. The fried chicken bao for a second take. The Horlicks ice cream for dessert (trust me). The 40-day aged beef bao if available. Small plates to share: the trotter nuggets, the confit pork rice, the sweet potato leaf with garlic. This is not a place for a single dish — order broadly and share everything.Best: Arrive before noon for lunch or before 5:30pm for dinner to avoid the worst of the queue. Weekday lunchtimes are more manageable. The Soho location means the surrounding streets provide entertainment while you wait. BAO has expanded to multiple locations, but Lexington Street is the original and has the most energy.
Bar Italia
The 24-hour Italian cafe that has anchored Frith Street, Soho, since 1949 — a neon-lit, Formica-tabled, espresso-fuelled room that has served everyone from Francis Bacon to the post-club crowd at 4am without ever changing its formula: strong coffee, Italian sandwiches, and the particular atmosphere of a place that never closes and therefore belongs equally to every hour of the day. The Polledri family has run Bar Italia for three generations, and the decor — Rocky Marciano poster, Italian football pennants, the original Gaggia machine displayed like a religious artefact — has the accumulated authenticity of a room that has been itself for seventy-five years. Across the street from Ronnie Scott's, next door to Hazlitt's hotel, and in the heart of what remains of Italian Soho, Bar Italia is not a cafe in the specialty-coffee sense — it is a cafe in the human sense, a room that exists for the city to use at any hour.
Editor's Pick$
Order: An espresso at the counter — standing, the way Italians drink it. A cappuccino if you must sit. The panini and focaccia are simple and correct. Do not order a flat white or an oat milk latte — this is not that kind of place, and the Gaggia machine would not forgive you. Late at night, after Ronnie Scott's or after the clubs, the espresso is both medicinal and ceremonial.Best: There is no best time — that is the point. 3am after a jazz club, 7am before the city wakes, noon when Soho is at its busiest, 6pm when the Italian families who still live in the neighbourhood stop in. Each hour has its own Bar Italia. But if forced to choose: early morning, when the espresso machine is the loudest thing on Frith Street.
ICA Cinema
The Institute of Contemporary Arts' cinema — a single screen inside the ICA building on the Mall, programming experimental film, artist moving image, documentary, and the kind of cinema that exists at the boundary between film and art. The ICA has always been London's most adventurous cultural institution, and the cinema reflects that: programmes that would not survive in commercial exhibition find their audience here, from Apichatpong Weerasethakul to Chris Marker to debut filmmakers whose first screening is in this room. The setting — a Nash terrace on the Mall, between Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square — adds a surreal contrast between the experimental programme and the ceremonial address.
Editor's Pick$$
Order: The ICA cinema is for film that challenges convention — expect essay films, artist moving image, documentary hybrids, and international work that the BFI's broader programme might not reach. Check for filmmaker introductions and post-screening discussions. Combine with the ICA gallery exhibitions and the bookshop, which stocks film theory and criticism alongside contemporary art publications.Best: Evening screenings for the most engaged, specialist audience. The ICA runs late events that combine screenings with music or performance. Weekday afternoons for quieter screenings and gallery visits. Check the monthly programme — the ICA's film selections change frequently.
Monmouth Coffee
London's specialty coffee pioneer — roasting since 1978 when the idea of single-origin, carefully sourced coffee was virtually unknown in Britain. The Monmouth Street shop is tiny: a narrow room with a few wooden tables and a counter where coffee is brewed with the focused attention of people who have been doing this longer than anyone else in the city. The queue extends down the street on weekend mornings, which is both an inconvenience and a testament to what happens when a roaster spends four decades refining its craft. The beans are sourced directly from farms, roasted in small batches at the Bermondsey roastery, and served in a room that smells like the platonic ideal of coffee. The Borough Market location is larger and has the advantage of the market context, but Monmouth Street is the original and has the particular authority of a place that started it all.
Editor's Pick$
Order: Filter coffee to taste the roast at its purest — Monmouth's beans are the product, and filter is the most transparent way to experience them. An espresso for the concentrated version. Buy a bag of beans — the staff will recommend based on your brewing method and flavour preferences. The pastries are from outside suppliers and decent. But you are here for the coffee.Best: Early morning on a weekday before the queue builds. The Monmouth Street shop is busiest Saturday mornings. Weekday afternoons are calmer. The Borough Market location (open Thursday-Saturday) has more space and the market provides breakfast context.
Prince Charles Cinema
London's cheapest and most beloved repertory cinema, tucked behind Leicester Square in a basement that programmes cult double bills, sing-along screenings, marathon sessions, and the kind of audience-participation events that turn film watching into a communal sport. The Prince Charles is the anti-multiplex: tickets cost a fraction of West End prices, the programme changes daily, and the audience often knows the film better than the projectionist. The sing-along screenings (Grease, The Sound of Music, The Rocky Horror Picture Show) are London institutions. The regular repertory — double bills of classic films, themed weekends, all-night horror marathons — attracts the most devoted film audiences in the city.
Editor's Pick$
Order: The sing-along screenings are the signature — audience participation, costumes, and the particular energy of a room full of people who know every lyric. The repertory programme runs classic double bills and themed seasons. The 'movie marathon' events (8+ hours of themed films) are for the committed. Check the website daily — the programme rotates constantly.Best: Friday or Saturday night for sing-along and cult screenings — the atmosphere is the point. Weekday matinees for quiet repertory screenings at remarkably low prices. All-night marathon events typically start late Saturday and run into Sunday morning.
The Connaught Bar
Named the World's Best Bar multiple times, Agostino Perrone's martini trolley is the bar's defining ritual — a silver cart wheeled to your table where a martini is mixed to your specification with the ceremony of a sommelier decanting a first-growth Bordeaux. The room itself is a David Collins-designed art deco space in the Connaught hotel: cubist murals, silver leaf, platinum leaf, and a hush that makes the clink of ice feel significant. This is luxury cocktail drinking at its most polished — the kind of bar where the precision of the service matches the precision of the drinks and both are calibrated to make you feel that a £25 martini is not merely reasonable but necessary.
Editor's Pick$$$$
Order: The Connaught Martini from the trolley — you choose your bitters, your vermouth ratio, and your olive or twist while Perrone or his team build it tableside. This is the signature experience. Beyond the martini, the cocktail menu is structured around flavour families and the bartenders are precise enough to match your mood to a drink. The Champagne list is serious if you're starting with bubbles.Best: Late afternoon for the most serene experience — the room glows in the early evening light and the service is at its most attentive. Evening bookings fill, especially Thursday-Saturday. A weekday visit between 5-7pm is the connoisseur's window. Mayfair provides the appropriate context: Mount Street, the galleries, the quiet wealth of W1.
Evening & Night
(10)World-class cocktail bars, pre-theatre drinks, Soho clubs until late
Curzon Soho
The Curzon chain's Soho flagship — three screens on Shaftesbury Avenue programming new arthouse releases, international cinema, and the kind of curated film selection that sits between the BFI's institutional depth and mainstream exhibition. Curzon has built a reputation as London's premium arthouse brand: comfortable seats, excellent projection, a bar worth visiting, and a programme that reliably surfaces the best independent and foreign films of the year. The Soho location puts it in the centre of London's cultural life — theatres, restaurants, and bars within steps.
Editor's Pick$$
Order: Curzon Soho is the best central London option for new arthouse releases — the programme runs current independent and international films alongside occasional repertory. The bar downstairs is a natural pre-screening stop. Check for Q&A screenings with directors and actors — the Soho location attracts industry talent. Screen 1 is the largest and best equipped.Best: Weekday evening for new releases without the weekend competition. Opening nights for major arthouse releases attract a knowledgeable, appreciative audience. The Curzon Home Cinema streaming service extends the experience if you want to continue at your hotel.
Rules (Cocktail Bar)
The upstairs cocktail bar at Rules — London's oldest restaurant, established 1798 — all wood-panelled Edwardian glamour, and often overlooked by tourists fixated on the dining room below. Keep the order traditional, as the setting demands: a classic martini or a champagne cocktail. It is ideal pre-theatre for the full Covent Garden experience, and noticeably quieter than the restaurant. A jacket is preferred. To drink here is to drink inside more than two centuries of London history, in a room that has barely needed to change because it got it right the first time.
Stamped$$$
Order: Classic martini or champagne cocktail. Keep it traditional here - the setting demands it.Best: Pre-theatre for the full Covent Garden experience. Upstairs bar is quieter than the restaurant.
The Ivy
The original Ivy in Covent Garden — a theatrical London institution since 1917, all stained glass and discreet star-spotting, serving comforting classics with West End flair (ignore the spin-off cafés entirely). Order the shepherd's pie or the fish cakes, the classics done right, or the excellent Ivy hamburger. It is made for pre- or post-theatre dining, the location timed perfectly to the West End; book well ahead for weekend dinner and observe the smart-casual dress code. More than a century in, it remains the definitive grand London dining-out experience, theatrical in every sense.
Stamped$$$
Order: Shepherd's pie or fish cakes - the classics done right. The Ivy hamburger is also excellent.Best: Pre or post-theatre. The West End location means perfect timing for shows. Book well ahead.
Blacklock (Soho)
A loud, unpretentious basement chophouse in Soho — skinny chops by the rack and an all-in Sunday roast that is one of the best-value feasts in the city. Order the all-in for the table, a mixed pile of chops, or come on Sunday for the legendary roast; the Old Fashioneds are properly made for a meat house. Sundays are for the roast, weeknights for a more relaxed chop feast. It is fun before it is anything else — a basement full of noise and charred meat and good cheap-ish drinking, the original of what became several locations and still the one with the most energy.
Inked$$
Order: All-in - the mixed chops for the table. Sunday roast is legendary value. Old Fashioneds are properly made.Best: Sunday for the roast. Weeknights for a more relaxed meat feast.
Cahoots
A fully committed 1940s Underground-station bar in Soho — luggage racks, wartime announcements, staff in character, the works — where the immersion is the whole experience. The cocktails are theatrical to match, arriving in milk bottles and tins and whatever else the theme demands; embrace it or stay home. Book for the experience, and aim for midweek when it is easier to get in. The actors and staff hold character throughout, which is either delightful or exhausting depending on your mood — go when you are ready to play along, because half-hearted is the only wrong way to do it.
Inked$$$
Order: Theatrical cocktails - they come in milk bottles, tins, etc. Embrace the theme.Best: Book for the experience. Midweek is easier to get in. The actors/staff stay in character.
Experimental Cocktail Club
A Parisian import hidden behind an unmarked door in Chinatown — ring the bell to enter — where velvet seating, low light, and serious cocktails deliver genuine speakeasy mystique. The signature serves change seasonally; trust the menu, because the Paris team knows exactly what they are doing, and the London room holds its own against the Paris and New York siblings. Come midweek for a seat, because weekends get very busy, and reserve ahead for groups. It is the real thing rather than a pastiche of one: a hidden door, a beautiful room, and drinks worth finding it for.
Inked$$$
Order: Their signature serves change seasonally. Trust the menu - the Paris team knows what they're doing.Best: Midweek for a seat. Weekends get very busy. Ring the bell to enter.