The best bars in Dalston

An easy-going neighbourhood drinking spot that’s big on vibes and low on unnecessary pretence. Come for the potent £8 martinis and open front and pavement tables which in the warmer months make for a welcoming place to work your way through Ellie’s punchy cocktail list, from a pleasingly tart raspberry daiquiri to an always-welcome spicy marg. With rows of stools pulled up to the bar, an excellent playlist of alt throwbacks, and a ‘kitchen at the party’ feel to its small-but-cosy confines, this is a low-key bar par excellence. 

This Kingsland Road drinking den is a kind of 1980s fever dream of a bar. It’s avant garde in a way that brings to mind new-wave music videos, art schools, and phrases like ‘abstract aesthetics’. Luckily, Bar Lotus has an exceptional roster of drinks, all prepared on a minimalist island slap-bang in the middle of the room. Each of the venue’s signature cocktails excels at being surprising and creative while never seeming gimmicky or frivolous.

This Kingsland High Street veteran was once the face of east London’s party scene. And in true Dalston style it's home to all sorts: popular with a large and diverse LGBT crowd, but welcoming to all and everyone. DJs – mostly local, many well-known – keep people dancing with sets most nights. Drag brunch on Sundays is a big, boozy draw. 

If you’ve ever dabbled with London’s craft cocktail scene, you’ll no doubt be familiar with A Bar with Shapes for a Name. But the real magic happens up the road at the bar’s multifunctional sister space, Bauhaus Warehaus. It’s here that they make and chainsaw their mega massive ice cubes, whip up pre-batched bottle cocktails in vast centrifugal machines and experiment with new recipes. With a long airy indoor bar, and a sizable garden out back, Bauhaus Warehaus feels clinical yet cosy. The brown butter old fashioned and olive oil negroni both offer a creamy take on the classics. But try also their seasonal offerings, such a very 1980s rhubarb gimlet and banana martini. Fun, but functional. 

A scruffy, tiki dive bar that always brings the party, rock up to Ridley Road and discover good times in an unlikely beach shack setting. Grab a can of Red Stripe, a signature ginger mojito, or even a piña colada and position yourself under the mirror ball on that groovy (and often sweaty) dance floor.

Three Sheets has fast become a hangout for those in the drinks biz who flock here to sample standout, pre-batched cocktails and enjoy the low-key, stripped-back setting. The owners make sure everybody feels welcome, though, and will happily offer up suggestions to suit your palate to a tee. Bar perfection. 

This Dalston restaurant-bar has a strong Japanese theme running through it, serving dishes inspired by the country’s izakayas. There’s also regular live jazz and DJ sets played through a top-notch soundsystem – well, it is named after Thelonious Monk album. Wash down nigiri with natural wines and sake. 

Beer, wine and... cheese toasties? This cute little neighbourhood dive bar is the perfect stop off for one of those nights that starts with 'just one drink' before rolling into a chaotic evening that ends far too late (this is where the stomach-lining toasties come in handy). Decor is chic with a hint of goth, and there's a very decent cocktail menu too, with mezcal margs, chocolate sazeracs and cherry bombs on offer alongside more classic combos. 

A roomy 150 capacity basement cocktail bar with regular DJs. Drinks are not just delicious, but pretty reasonably priced - there's a £7 martini (the Umbrella Vesper), and all the rest are a tenner. We like the smooth and chocolately Kinder Bueno, made with whiskey, Irish cream liqueur, hazelnut, cacao and clarified milk, and the punchy Korean Jesus, with tequila, mezcal, plum soju, gochujang, sesame, coriander, ginger and honey.

A resolutely gorgeous Grade-II listed shopfront that used to be an F Cooke pie and mash shop, and has been given a new lease of life by Exale Brewery. There’s the exquisitely-tiled and elegant front room – a calling card for Art Nouveau ultras – as well as a Victorian side den, a sprawling main lounge, an area for darts and shuffleboard, a huge beer garden (complete with a boat and pétanque court), and a leopard-print carpeted private karaoke room right at the top. 

East London's craft beer champs 40ft Brewery can be found right by Acme Fire Cult's outdoor flame-grilled restaurant and Dusty Knuckle's cult sandwich shop and bakery. Rock up on a sunny evening for 10 taps of fresh beer brewed on site as well as natural wines, guest ciders and cocktails as well as a short bar snack-sized menu from the Acme chaps.

Missing The Glory, the infamous London pub that was a key part of the capital’s LGBTQ+ scene? The Divine is the new venue run by that much-missed space’s team and owned by iconic drag queens Jonny Woo and John Sizzle. You’ll find a whole host of drag shows to liven up your nights downstairs – and, after the show’s over, you can stay and hang out across the venue’s two floors, dancing until the small hours as the space turns into a drag-fuelled disco.

Surrounded by Turkish grill restaurants and party-focussed nightspots is this bar where cocktails are king. The seasonal menu lists seemingly simple drinks with just a few ingredients, but they're all pretty delicious. What started out as a bit of a sophisticated cocktail joint has morphed into the perfect late-night watering hole. 

Open until 3am on Friday and Saturday nights, Dalston Jazz Bar is the lowkey party spot that you need have in your back pocket for those 'where shall we go now?' weekend moments. Don't miss their fabulous fish either – there's a 'pay what you want' menu of oysters, tiger prawns, mussels and more, and you pay what you think it's worth to help cover the live music (and it's definitely not all jazz, btw). 

This subterranean space should be more than familiar to east London’s more millennial partiers. Once known as Ruby’s, this cosy basement is now the boozing adjunct to Corrochio’s; a dedicated agave spirits den made for tumbling into before – or after – dinner at one of London’s best Mexican restaurants.

This secretive spot next to Dalston Junction station styles itself as a ‘Queer Clubhouse’, and is by quite some distance the fanciest LGBTQ+ venue in the city (and certainly the only one to have featured in World of Interiors). Patrons arriving at the inconspicous front door are given stickers with which to cover their phone cameras before they’re allowed to slip through the curtained entrance into a sumptuous ground-floor bar where a chic crowd of Hackney queers sip on cocktails from an ever-changing menu of booze-heavy modern classics – think boulevardiers, Trinidad sours and an arguably-too-dirty martini. 

This enticing room is home to a wide range of experimental music that exists well outside the mainstream. Operating as a relaxed, light and airy café during the day and a live music space and bar in the evenings, Oto puts a strong emphasis on the more out-there of underground artists. Listen to Norwegian improv/free jazz/psych-rock while sipping fancy beer.

Another jazz-club-meets-bar to suit the chin-stroking crate-diggers that have long frequented this part of town, Servant Jazz Quarters is situated just behind Dalston's cultural hub, Gillett Square. When the music isn’t in full swing in the downstairs basement, take your time mulling over the list of classic and original cocktails.

A venture from Brilliant Corners – Hackney’s Japanese-inspired hi-fi restaurant and listening bar. It's named after an early record by jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, and focusses on live music and fireside cooking from a robata grill.

By day a bottle shop, by night a fairly chichi wine bar, Newcomer claims (and we’ve no reason to doubt it) to stock the biggest selection of Austrian wine and beer in London. The bar at the front pours a daily selection and is open until 11pm Thurs-Sat.