Bethnal Green pubs and bars

Hello cheeky! A tres chic bar with a subtle French lean has just arrived in Bethnal Green to bolster one of the capital’s best areas for drinking. Cheeky, because Coupette loosely translates as a ‘cheeky one’ from French. This playful starting point tells you a lot. It’s from a former head bartender at the Beaufort Bar at the Savoy, who’s brought across the world-class tipple knowledge but none of the formality. Instead, there’s a hip hop soundtrack (a shame that none of it’s French, mind) and a very cool crowd already swarming at the bar who are seemingly all friends with a staff of industry experts. The décor is east London edgy yet sophisticated – those light fittings are quite something. The cocktail menu is a conceptual, art-filled masterpiece, although a little bit lengthy and hard to digest. Each page of the drinks list offers an illustration of a French icon and a chunk of cocktails which fit that personality. Forget Eric Cantona and Edith Piaf, we’re talking architect Le Corbusier (who was actually Swiss) and punk icon Edwige Belmore. Calvados (a French apple brandy) features heavily. Try it in ‘apples’, a crisp calvados and apple juice cocktail carbonated in-house – it’s essentially posh and boozy Appletiser. And don’t miss the champagne piña colada, a silky take on the tropical drink with coconut sorbet for extra phwoar factor. It may just be the best new drink in London. Expect ooh la las all round. Despite that cool crowd, cocktails came incredibly quick to...

Mother Kelly’s is a New York-inspired bar tucked beneath one of the railway arches on Bethnal Green’s Paradise Row. But there’s a twist. The beers here aren’t just for sitting down and sipping in situ: you can also take them away to savour on your sofa too. And the selection of bottles is staggering – and it’s all judiciously chosen. The room itself is a bright, corrugated tunnel with chunky wooden decking, plenty of space to sit and stand, and a loud wall of graffiti splashed across one wall. A row of unmarked taps along the metallic back wall offer a head-spinning range of brews to those who prefer to get stuck in on-site, and they all change pretty much every day. So you've got an excuse to keep going back.

A vinous waft drifts to Bethnal Green Road from down the alley. It’s fruitier than the usual street scents, luring you past several old railway arches until it reaches its height by a bar inside Arch 12. Our bartender – wearing a black beret that would seem ironic if we weren’t in east London – pulls back tarpaulin to reveal the source, a vat of purpling grapes. She works in the area’s first urban winery, where those grapes are imported from vines around Europe and turned into wine under the arches, with a bench-filled taproom in among the barrels and fermentation tanks. Renegade has been producing since early 2017, with four wines on the roster – three white, one red – and an English sparkler coming soon. They had sold out of the bacchus I was most interested in trying, made from British grapes. But a chardonnay caught my attention, French oak barrels of the stuff aging at the rear of the room. It had all the right bold and buttery characteristics and slipped down a dream alongside a British cheese platter – including a jet-black charcoal cheddar – served with a generous basket of bread from Bow’s Breid bakery. Their sauvignon blanc was a quaffable number, but it didn’t compare. A few other wines from European producers are available, but it would be a shame not to try the output from these passionate winemakers. Indeed, after I showed a nerdy interest, I was enthusiastically presented with a sample of grape juice from early on in the fermentation process. Curiosity seems...