While looking for the Spy Bar, I get lost. Located deep in the bowels of the glossy OWO and Raffles hotel complex – once the HQ of the Ministry of Defence – the Spy Bar trades heavily on its history. This is the building in which Ian Fleming worked and came up with the idea for James Bond, and they don’t let you forget it. The basement bar is behind a door marked with a tiny 007 and was once a storage vault for the reports and papers of MI5 and MI6 agents. Thankfully, the Spy Bar isn’t an immersive experience, but simply a very good place to drink an expensive cocktail - Vesper martinis, of course.
We know a lot about bars in London. We know about the city’s best bars. We know about rooftop bars. We know about cocktail bars. And yes, we even know about (whisper it) hidden bars. There’s a chance you might have walked past a bunch of these secret smashers without even realising they're there. That’s how extremely secret they are. London has its fair share of mysterious, hard-to-find drinking establishments and if you promise to be discreet, we’ll let you in on them...
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Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines.