Editorial
The london vs paris bars comparison is the one European drinking debate worth having, and I have been having it for years. I have spent extended periods in both cities for the sole purpose of building a defensible argument. The honest answer is that they are different enough that picking an outright winner requires you to specify what you are looking for. For cocktails, London wins. For wine, Paris wins. For the overall experience of an evening out, the answer depends on which version of an ideal evening you have in mind.
London has one of the three or four best cocktail scenes in the world. Paris has caught up considerably in the past five years, particularly in the Marais and Pigalle areas, but London still leads on depth, volume, and the overall standard of the programs being run. Paris cocktail bars are good. London cocktail bars are great and there are many more of them.
No city in the world does wine bars better than Paris and this comparison does not require extended analysis. Paris has a wine bar culture that is inseparable from its food culture, its afternoon culture, and its understanding of what a bar is for. The natural wine movement was built in Paris before it was built anywhere else, and the city still leads on this category by a significant margin.
London's hidden bar culture is richer and more developed than Paris's. The speakeasy tradition, the secret rooms behind ordinary facades, the bars that require a booking under a cover story, are all more prevalent in London than in Paris. Late night drinking also favours London. Paris's best cocktail bars close earlier than their London counterparts, and the after-midnight options narrow considerably.
Paris has something London does not have a direct equivalent for: the grand brasserie and the zinc bar culture. The ability to sit at a zinc counter in a brasserie that opened in 1895 and drink a properly made Aperol spritz with a plate of oysters at any hour is a Paris-specific experience. London's equivalent is the pub, which is different and its own kind of excellent, but not quite this particular thing.
London wins on cocktails, hidden bars, late night, and the breadth of the overall bar scene. Paris wins on wine, brasserie culture, the overall sensory experience of drinking in a room that has been doing this since the nineteenth century, and the ease with which an afternoon drink becomes a three-hour experience without anyone suggesting you order more food.
Both cities are non-negotiable for anyone who takes drinking seriously. London is the more complete bar city. Paris is the more pleasurable one. If forced to choose a single evening, I would choose Paris every time. But I would not choose to live in a city without both of them within two hours of each other.
Sofia covers European bar culture and has a particular focus on the relationship between wine culture and cocktail culture in Paris, London, and the Mediterranean. She visits Paris at least four times a year and still argues with herself about whether it beats London.