London nightlife without a guest list: where to actually go

Boxpark: four of them, and they are not the same

Boxpark started in Shoreditch in 2011 as the world's first pop-up mall built out of shipping containers, and it has since become the most reliable answer in London to the question of where to take six people who want different food and a drink and something on a screen.

It is not a nightclub and it does not pretend to be. Street food traders round the edges, bars in the middle, long tables, big screens, and a DJ or a quiz or a comedy night depending on the day. No dress code worth worrying about, no booking needed for most of it.

1. 1

   Boxpark Shoreditch

   2 to 10 Bethnal Green Road E1 6GY · Mon to Thu 11am to 11pm, Fri and Sat to 11.45pm, Sun to 10.30pm · Shoreditch High Street

   The original, and still the best one for a night that starts early and moves on. Sixteen or so food traders and a full run of independent shops on the upper deck. Friday nights run a DJ series. It has been reported as closing more than once and it is still trading, with a live events calendar, which is worth knowing if you read something from 2024.

2. 2

   Boxpark Camden

   192 to 198 Camden High Street NW1 8QP · Camden Town

   The newest, opened in late 2024 on the old Buck Street Market site. Three floors, around 60 independent food and retail traders, two bars and a rooftop terrace. Weekly quizzes, comedy and live music. It is the one to pick if you are already doing Camden in the day.

3. 3

   Boxpark Wembley

   Olympic Way HA9 0JT · Wembley Park

   At the foot of the walk up to the stadium arch, which makes it either brilliant or impossible depending on whether there is an event on. On a normal night it is the biggest screen in north-west London and a very good place to watch football. On a concert night, do not try.

4. 4

   Boxpark Croydon

   99 George Street CR0 1LD · East Croydon

   Fifteen minutes from London Bridge by train and a genuinely different crowd, which is the point. Croydon is where a lot of south London actually goes out and this is the anchor.

All four run big-screen sport, and all four get extremely full for England games and finals. If that is why you are going, get there two hours early or accept you are watching from the back.

The Alchemist: six London bars, one trick

Theatrical cocktails, done properly and without embarrassment. Drinks that change colour when the bartender pours something over them, smoke under glass, things served in a lightbulb. It is not a serious cocktail bar in the Soho sense and it is not trying to be, it is a very good night out for a group that wants a show with the first round.

Six London sites, and they are strategically placed: three of them in the City, which means they are quiet at the weekend and rammed on a Thursday.

Victoria

52 Grosvenor Gardens SW1W 0AU

Nearest to the theatres and the station

St Martin's Lane

63 to 66 St Martin's Lane WC2N 4JS

The West End one. Book on a show night

Monument

16 to 18 Eastcheap EC3M 1BD

City. Dead on a Sunday, heaving on a Thursday

Bevis Marks

6 Bevis Marks, Aldgate EC3A 7BA

City, and walkable from Liverpool Street

Canary Wharf

Reuters Plaza E14 5AJ

On the Jubilee line, useful on a day out east

Battersea

1 Ponton Road, Nine Elms SW11 7BD

Opposite the US Embassy. Outdoor terrace, open from 8am, bottomless brunch from £40

The Gun, and why a Georgian pub belongs in a nightlife guide

The Gun, 27 Coldharbour, E14 9NS. Grade II listed, a pub since the eighteenth century, and named for the cannon fired to mark the opening of the West India Docks in 1802. Nelson used it to meet Lady Hamilton, which the pub has never once been shy about mentioning.

Fuller's took it over in 2016 and run it as a gastropub with a covered all-weather riverside terrace, a gin garden and three private rooms. The reason to come is what the terrace faces. Straight across the water is the O2, lit up, and there is nowhere else in London where you can sit outside with a pint and have that view without paying for it.

It is twenty minutes on foot from Canary Wharf, or a short DLR hop to Blackwall or South Quay. Go for the last two hours of light.

This is a sit-down, talk-to-each-other venue, not a late one. It is where a night starts, or where a night ends properly instead of badly.

By neighbourhood, and what each one is actually for

1. 1

   Soho

   W1 · Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Tottenham Court Road

   Dense, walkable, and almost impossible to read from outside because half the good rooms are up a staircase or down one. Old Compton Street, Berwick Street, Frith Street. Bar Italia has been open since 1949 and is still open at four in the morning. Start here if it is your first night and you want short walks between three very different rooms.

2. 2

   Shoreditch and Hackney

   E1 and E8 · Shoreditch High Street, Old Street, Dalston Junction

   The one that actually goes late. Rivington Street and Curtain Road for bars, Kingsland Road north into Dalston for the small rooms. Dalston Jazz Bar on Bradbury Street serves seafood on a pay-what-you-think basis with a £20 minimum, live jazz next to the table, and at ten the tables clear and the owner starts DJing.

3. 3

   Peckham

   SE15 · Peckham Rye

   South London's answer, and the one that has held its character. Peckham Palais on Rye Lane is a nineteenth century department store turned club, with a 250-capacity cocktail room called the Ballroom upstairs and a proper sound system in the basement. Rooftop bars above the multi-storey car park in summer.

4. 4

   The City, Thursday only

   EC2 and EC3 · Liverpool Street, Bank, Monument

   A working district that empties at the weekend. Thursday after six is the only night it is full, and it is very full. Discount Suit Company at 29A Wentworth Street is a small basement bar in an old tailor's stockroom doing genuinely good drinks with Northern Soul on the speakers.

5. 5

   The riverside, east

   E14 and SE10 · Canary Wharf, North Greenwich, Blackwall

   The Gun at Coldharbour, the pubs along Greenwich riverside, and the O2 across the water. A completely different kind of night: outside, wide, and about the view rather than the room.

6. 6

   Battersea and Nine Elms

   SW8 and SW11 · Battersea Power Station on the Northern line

   The newest nightlife district in London and it still feels slightly like a film set, which some people love. The Alchemist, the arches at Circus West Village, and Control Room A inside the power station, which is a bar in the room that used to run the electricity for a fifth of the city.

The practical things nobody tells you

• The Night Tube runs Friday and Saturday nights on the Central, Jubilee, Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria lines. Night buses run every night, all night, and cost the same as a day bus.
• Most London bars stop serving at eleven on a weeknight. The late licences are in Soho, Shoreditch, Dalston and Peckham, and almost nowhere else.
• Bring ID even if you are fifty. Challenge 25 means door staff ask, and a lot of places will not take a photo of a passport.
• Very few good London bars have a dress code. The ones that do are members' clubs and you were not getting in anyway.
• A pint is £6 to £8 in central London and a cocktail is £12 to £16. Anything advertised much under that is telling you something.

What it costs

Where not to go

• Leicester Square. Every London nightlife guide says it and it is still true.
• Anything with a person outside handing you a flyer for a discount on entry.
• Booking a rooftop bar in November. London rooftops are a May to September proposition and the heaters do not fix it.
• Trying to do Shoreditch and Soho on the same night. They are twenty minutes apart and you will spend the whole evening in transit.
• Boxpark Wembley on an event night, unless the event is why you are there.