Berners Tavern

Hotel / Grand Bar Cocktail Bars $$$$

The bar takes walk ins and serves cocktails every night, while the dining room is best booked ahead. Call +44 20 7908 7979 or book online for a table.

Berners Tavern sits inside The London EDITION on Berners Street in Fitzrovia, a couple of minutes north of Oxford Street. It is Jason Atherton's grand, long-established dining room and bar, set in a former banking hall under a five-metre corniced ceiling hung with hundreds of gilt-framed pictures. The scale of the room is the first thing that lands.

This is a bar for an occasion, a serious date or a dressed-up start to an evening, not a casual pint. The drinks and the wine list are pitched high, and so are the prices. If you want low-key, go elsewhere in Fitzrovia. If you want one of central London's most theatrical rooms for a cocktail, this is it.

The bar sits to the right as you enter, a large backlit island stacked with classic and unusual spirits beneath the soaring, art-covered ceiling. Time Out describes the former banking hall as a superb setting for Atherton's cooking, and the same drama carries the drinking. Seats at the bar are the spot for a cocktail before the dining room fills.

The room sits in the middle of Fitzrovia's dense restaurant grid, a short walk from both Soho and Marylebone. That central position makes it a natural first stop before dinner nearby or a grand nightcap after. The Ian Schrager hotel around it keeps the polish high from breakfast through to last orders.

The bar serves cocktails every night, backed by a wine list that runs past 800 bottles with around 70 available by the glass. That depth is unusual and is a real reason to choose Berners Tavern over a standard hotel bar. The cocktails lean classic and precise rather than experimental. Start with a Champagne or a martini, then let the sommelier steer the wine.

Hotel guests, Fitzrovia diners and a dressed-up date and occasion crowd fill the room, drawn by the spectacle as much as the menu. Early evening brings the pre-dinner cocktail set, with the bar busiest from Thursday through Saturday. The dress leans smart and the energy stays elegant.

Early evening on a weekday for a calm martini at the bar before the dining room fills.

What to order

  • 01

    Martini

  • 02

    Champagne by the glass

  • 03

    Wine by the glass

  • 04

    Negroni

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