The Best Liverpool Street Bars

Liverpool Street.

Truly, it is where your liver belongs.

Teetering on the border between The City and Shoreditch, Liverpool Street is the booze-laced threshold between work and play; a spot where you can head for a post-work drink or an aperitif to a night out. There’s illicit speakeasies and activity bars; subterranean drinking dens and sky-high cocktail terraces.

So without further ado, we present the best bars in Liverpool Street:
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Sushisamba

A classic for a reason. That reason primarily being the al fresco lounge seating, 39th floor rooftop views, cocktails infused with Japanese ingredients like the Shiso Fine, aaand the life-size, illuminated orange tree growing out the centre of the bar.

Details: Heron Tower – 39th Floor, 110 Bishopsgate, EC2N 4AY | Open Sun-Tues, 11.30am-1.30am; Wed-Sat, 11.30am-2am
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Discount Suit Company

A brick-lined cocktail vault hidden below an old tailor’s, replete with leather sofas, a Motown soundtrack on vinyl and an ever-changing cocktail menu leaning heavily on old-school bitters and aperitivi.

Details: 29a Wentworth Street, E1 7TB | Open Mon-Thurs 5pm-midnight, Fri 2pm-1am, Sat 5-11pm

Lounge Bohemia

Hidden beneath an unassuming Shoreditch Kebab shop is this 60s Prague-styled cocktail bar serving once in a lifetime molecular cocktails that turn up smoking or bubbling form the likes of test tubes or upside-down lightbulbs.

Details: 1e Great Eastern Street, Shoreditch, EC2A 3EJ | Open Mon-Sat 6pm-12am Sun 6pm-11pm
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Swingers

Not one but five bars, surrounded by the bucolic rolling hills of two crazy golf courses, filled with quintessential golf club touches like sand traps, loop-the-loops, lighthouses, cocktail-bearing golf caddies and giant tanks of Greenwich’s Meantime beer.

Details: 8 Brown’s Buildings, (Between Bury Street and St Mary Axe), EC3A 8AL | Open daily noon-late (from 10.30am Saturdays)
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Jin Bo Law

One of London’s lesser known rooftop bars, which makes it increasingly likely that you’ll get a table out on the terrace (especially if you book ahead). From this glossy spot you can clock the Shard, the Gherkin and the Walkie Talkie in one sweeping vista, and find some Peas of Mind in the form of soju, chartreuse, yuzu and salted pea cordial…

Details: Dorsett City Hotel, 9 Aldgate High Street, EC3N 1AH | Open Mon-Wed 5pm-1am, Thurs-Sat 12pm-1am, Sun 12pm-12am
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Iris

The very top of the Gherkin was designed as a show-stopping, surprisingly intimate, entirely glass-encased cocktail bar with staggering 360 degree views of the city that only an elite circle of private members were able to access. Until now.

Details: The Gherkin, 30 St Mary Axe, EC3A 8EP | Open daily 11am-11pm, bookings only
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Black Rock

Black Rock is a veritable palace of whisky, coming to you from the team behind the dearly departed Worship Street Whistling Shop. Settle in to this basement bar where you can pour a dram out of the very table you’re sitting at. Which is also a tree.

Details: 9 Christopher Street, EC2A 2BS | All open Mon-Sat, 5pm-late
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Silverleaf

An ultra-suave cocktail bar in the Pan Pacific Hotel, headed up by Milroy’s founder Martyn “Simo” Simpson, his old colleague Chris Tanner, and Callooh Callay’s Liam Broom. They have an incredible cocktail list (with no ingredients, just flavour profiles and strange symbols), a golden whisky vault recessed into one of the walls, and a private drinking room where you can even stash your own spirits…

Details: Silverleaf | 80 Houndsditch, EC3A 7AB

Main image: Jin Bo Law

Like discovering great bars? Check out the Best Bars in Shoreditch & Spitalfields