London Hotel Bars Worth Arriving Early For

The half hour before anybody arrives is the part people plan least and enjoy most. A good hotel bar turns waiting into the beginning of the evening rather than a gap before it. These are the ones worth being early for, and what each is actually like.

Mayfair and Park Lane

The densest concentration in London and the least surprising. What varies is temperature rather than quality.

The quiet end. Panelled rooms, low light, staff who have worked there a long time and will not hover. You can talk without raising your voice, which sounds obvious until you have tried the alternative.

The busy end. Cocktail bars that fill from about eight and have a queue by nine. Excellent drinks, no conversation. Fine as a second stop, poor as a first.

If you are meeting somebody here, the quiet end. Mayfair and Park Lane are also where most of our outcall bookings go, so the logistics are easy.

Knightsbridge and Belgravia

Calmer, slightly older, and considerably more discreet. The bars here run on regulars rather than footfall, which shows in how little attention anybody pays you.

Belgravia in particular is about as unobserved as central London gets. White stucco, embassies, almost no through traffic, and hotel bars that feel like somebody’s drawing room. If the point of the evening is that nobody notices it, this is the postcode.

See Knightsbridge and Belgravia.

Marylebone

The one people underrate. Marylebone has the best ratio in London of quality to fuss: proper bars, no queue, and you can get a table at half past seven on a Friday without arranging anything.

It is also central without being in the middle of things, which matters more than it sounds. Ten minutes from Mayfair, none of the crowd. Marylebone is one of our busiest areas for exactly that reason.

The City, and why it empties

Worth knowing if your evening starts near Liverpool Street or Bank. The City has some genuinely good hotel bars and they are heaving from five until about half past seven, then almost empty.

That emptiness is an advantage. A bar that was three deep at six is calm at eight, the staff have recovered, and you have the place more or less to yourself. Arrive at the wrong end of that curve and it is the worst option in London.

What to actually do with the half hour

A few things that make the difference between waiting and starting.

• Get there twenty minutes early, not five. Enough to have a drink in front of you and have stopped moving at the speed of the street.
• Take a table, not the bar. Two people at a bar have to talk sideways. It is a surprisingly large difference.
• Settle as you go. Nothing kills the end of a drink like waiting for a bill.
• Pick somewhere you can leave easily. If the plan is to move on, being able to stand up and go without a production matters.

If you are meeting an escort there

Tell us the bar when you book. It changes who we suggest, because a hotel bar meeting is not the same booking as an incall and not everybody is comfortable with the public opening.

Agree how it starts: whether she comes to your table, whether you meet at the door, whether you have met before as far as the room is concerned. Thirty seconds on the phone, and it removes the only genuinely awkward moment in the evening. Our guide on London hotel bookings covers arrival properly, and dinner dates if the drink is the first half of something longer.

One practical note: if you are staying at the hotel, the bar is a better meeting point than the lobby, and the lobby is a better one than the room. Nobody in a hotel bar is looking at anybody.

The short version

Mayfair for the room, Belgravia for the quiet, Marylebone if you want a table without a plan, the City after half seven.

Browse the roster, or ring +44 20 7846 3480 and say which part of town you will be in.