Connaught Bar

Opened in 2008 inside the Connaught hotel on Carlos Place in Mayfair, the Connaught Bar was conceived as a deliberate break from the stuffy, museum-like grand-hotel bar. The room is the work of the late David Collins and his studio: an Art Deco-inspired space of textured platinum silver-leaf walls, dark leather banquettes, marble floors and mirrored panels arranged around a cool grey bar, its 1920s cubist aesthetic softened by candlelight. Presiding over it since the beginning is Agostino "Ago" Perrone, the Connaught's director of mixology, who became one of the defining figures of modern hotel bartending. The bar has appeared in the World's 50 Best Bars ranking every year since 2010, was named the world's best bar in both 2020 and 2021, and held Europe's best-bar title in consecutive years.

Its signature ceremony is the martini trolley — a gleaming black-and-chrome cart wheeled tableside, from which a bartender builds your martini to order, letting you choose the gin, the degree of dilution and a spritz from a line-up of house-made aromatic bitters. The drinks list is presented as a themed, seasonally rotating "book" of chapters rather than a straight menu, mixing signature creations, reworked classics and rare vintage serves; prices run from the merely expensive to the famous £1,000-plus 1893 Sidecar.

Crucially for non-drinkers, the no-alcohol drinks are treated as first-class cocktails rather than an afterthought: recent chaptered menus have carried a dedicated zero-proof serve within each chapter, and the bar's Phaidon recipe book, "Cocktail Recipes and Iconic Creations", includes roughly a dozen alcohol-free builds among its 100 recipes. The house style leans on fermented and infused ingredients rather than off-the-shelf non-alcoholic spirits. The Glossy is poured a coppery red to echo the room's palette and layers red-berry kombucha, milk oolong tea, Amalfi lemon-leaf syrup and pink grapefruit juice; The Smooth Mover is a lighter, savoury-leaning blend of salted cacao coconut water, eucalyptus syrup and lime juice. Expect the same trolley-side theatre, glassware and garnish work given to the alcoholic list, at broadly comparable prices.