The Open Guide to London: the free London guide

Pubs are great. We like pubs. Some of them have beer gardens. Most people have experienced the dilemma of finding a pub that's open after 11pm - a particular nightmare in the centre of town. Similarly, there are those venues that conjur up a strange air of 'Deliverance' that are best avoided unless you carry fire-arms as a matter of course (or like getting beaten up/stared at in a strangely disturbing way.)

Some pubs (notably JD Wetherspoon ones) have non-smoking areas for people who don't want to inhale second-hand-smoke while enjoying a beer.

Pub-related phenomena include closing time, pub crawls and vertical drinking.

• View all pages in Category Pubs
• Search the Open Guide to London for your perfect pub
• View all pages in Category Beer Gardens
• View all pages in Category Good Beer Guide

Our recommendations

• The Porterhouse (Covent Garden) is a good but pricey pub in the West End.
• The [Head of Steam]? is a good real ale pub next to Euston Station.
• The [Wenlock Arms]? is... well, it just is. Real ale and real cider.
• [De Hems (Soho)]? is a very nice Dutch bar that also does draught Kriek and other good Belgian beers.
• The [Jerusalem Tavern]? in Clerkenwell does some very nice and unusual beers from the small St Peter's brewery.
• If you're ever forced to go to Bromley, [The Partridge]? on the High Street is probably your best bet.

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London Pub Guides

• Time Out Pubs Guide Over 1000 pubs reviewed
• Pubs.com ("traditional and historic London pubs")
• Fullpint (New London pub guide)
• fancyapint? guide to London pubs (includes the facility to find a pub by nearest tube station)
• The Random London Pub Finder ("It is our mission to return a joyful element of luck to the night on the tiles, to free the harassed from the onerous duties of choosing a pub for the big night out (which everyone then complains about anyway), to allow the pub going public to throw themselves into the arms of fate!")
• intro.htm London Elite guide to pubs and bars ("The establishments and service providers listed on this site have been carefully chosen as places that exude that extra style and class that the discerning consumer seeks in London. They are not necessarily the most expensive. We avoid places that are pompous and pretentious and which take themselves too seriously.")
• Pub Guide to London Cider Pub Guide to London A wiki for real cider outlets.
• direct.html Evening Standard London pub and bar guide
• Pubfinder:Comprehensive Pub Guide Directory of over 18,000 London and UK pubs.
• context/strange but true.html Strange but true London pub facts
• This once great link is down, to be repaired:[http://users.ox.ac.uk/~mert0108/outwith/index.html#london Pubs Outwith Oxfordshire (London section)] (Colin Batchelor's pub guide. I'm not clever enough to write it a suitable description, although the first sentence in these parentheses actually does quite a good job.) But, argh, it has gone. We are going to hunt him down and make him put it back. See http://tantallon.org.uk/ in the meantime.
• Cask Marque have lists of pubs that have been approved by their beer criteria. Unfortunately their lists are indexed by now extinct postal counties so the following are useful
  • North, Northwest & East London
  • West, Southwest & Southeast London
  • South East - includes Bromley etc
  • Middlesex & North West Surrey - includes Croydon, Sutton , Kingston , Twickenham
  • Berkshire
  • Buckinghamshire, West Hertfordshire
  • Surrey
  • Essex