The Cambridge Public House sits at 8 rue de Poitou in the Marais, an English pub crossed with a modern cocktail bar that the World's 50 Best Bars ranked number 20 in the world in 2025.
The bar opened in 2019 from Parisian bartender Hyacinthe Lescoet and partners, pairing the convivial format of a London pub with precise drink-making. It runs daily from 3pm to 1am, which makes it both an afternoon pint stop and a late-night cocktail room.
Who would love it: anyone who wants a top-ranked cocktail without the hush of a tasting-room speakeasy. Who would not: anyone after a quiet table, because the pub format keeps the room loud and shoulder-to-shoulder on a good night.
The space leans into the public-house idea, with a proper bar to stand at and a short menu that bridges French and British, from homemade meat and veggie pies to sausage rolls built with French ingredients, per the bar's own site. The hybrid is the point, with craft beer and natural wine sharing the list with the cocktails.
Rue de Poitou sits in the northern Marais, the gallery-and-boutique quarter of the 3rd, a short walk from the Carreau du Temple. The Filles du Calvaire and Saint-Sebastien-Froissart stops on line 8 are both close, which feeds the late crowd.
The cocktails are the reason for the ranking, a rotating list built around clarity and balance rather than spectacle, with prices in the mid-teens in euros. Order from the cocktail board and pair it with a pie, and use the beer and wine list for the table that is not drinking spirits. Skip nothing, because the kitchen and the bar both pull their weight.
The crowd is an industry-and-local mix early that turns more international as the World's 50 Best billing pulls visitors through the door. Sortiraparis points to the ranking as the reason the small room now runs a queue on weekend nights.
Reviewers on Yelp and Tripadvisor return to the staff and the drinks, calling the welcome genuinely pub-like and the cocktails worth the global billing. The recurring complaint is the wait once the room fills, which an early or midweek visit solves.
Best time to go is early evening on a weeknight, when you can get a spot at the bar and the kitchen is quick. For another award-listed room nearby, see Little Red Door, a longtime fixture on the same global list.
The kitchen is more than an afterthought. The pies and sausage rolls are made in house and built on French ingredients, which turns the bar snacks into a reason to stay rather than a way to soak up the cocktails. Pairing a pie with a stirred drink is the order the regulars settle into, and it is part of why the room reads as a pub first and a cocktail bar second.
The ranking carries weight but also a warning. A number-20 global placement pulls a steady international crowd, so the small room runs a queue on weekend nights and the welcome can stretch thin at peak. The fix is an early or midweek visit, when the bar still trades like the neighbourhood local it started as before the lists found it.
The drinks themselves favour restraint. The list leans on clarity and balance over theatre, with classics done precisely alongside a rotating set of originals, and the bartenders steer newcomers toward the build that fits rather than the showiest pour on the board.
See where it lands among the city's best in our cocktail bars in Paris guide and the global cocktail bars list, or browse the wider Paris bar guide.
