Covent Garden bars

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Find the best classic cocktails and foamy pints with our guide to Covent Garden bars

Cabaret, live music and some of the city's best cocktails - Covent Garden has it all. Try the raunchy fun of cabaret bar Cellar Door, or hang out at relaxed wine bar Bedford & Strand. The area's drinking scene is diverse, so check out more of our picks of the best places for after-hours drinks in the area.

Think we've missed a great bar in Covent Garden? Let us know in the comment box below.

Hawksmoor Seven Dials
Rating: 5/5 11 Langley St, London, WC2H 9JG
The original Hawksmoor, in Spitalfields, was a simple bar and grill with high aspirations. Cocktail supremo Nick Strangeway was hired by Hawksmoor's owners - no slouches in the drinks expertise themselves - to create a distinctively different cocktail bar...
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Brasserie Max
Rating: 4/5 10 Monmouth Street, London, WC2H 9HB
Beneath a row of flags topping the stern, stylish Covent Garden Hotel, this bar-restaurant offers guests and chatterers a lovely environment in which to sip drinks and munch on snacks - but at a price.
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Cellar Door
Rating: 4/5 Zero Aldwych, London, WC2E 7DN
A gaudy neon arrow points the way to this tiny basement, where cabaret, lounge singers and drag acts ensure things go with a swing.
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Bedford & Strand
Rating: 3/5 1A Bedford Street, London, WC2E 9HH
In an area otherwise dominated by tourist traps, Bedford & Strand is popular with local workers, who stream to the basement bar for after-hours drinks.
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Detroit
Rating: 3/5 35 Earlham Street, London, WC2H 9LD
Paying homage to the near-bankrupt American city in name alone, this long-established urban cocktail mecca near Seven Dials is part Prague metro in appearance and part cool dive, although it's not for the claustrophobic...
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Circus
Rating: 3/5 27-29 Endell Street, London, WC2H 9BA
Behind a very discreet entrance on Endell Street, almost opposite The Hospital members' club, jazz joint Octave played its last 7th augmented flat 9th chord in July last year, and Circus has now moved in.
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Freud
Rating: 3/5 198 Shaftesbury Avenue, Covent Garden, WC2H 8JL
Back in the late 1980s, this was the place to be. A hidden cellar with a faintly industrial feel, it carried with it a certain easygoing democracy, a welcome change from style-trial nightclubs and members-only enterprises such as the Groucho.
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