Connaught Bar

The Connaught Bar opened in 2008 as part of Maybourne's Connaught on Carlos Place, and it has spent the years since near the top of the world's bar lists, taking the No.1 spot on the World's 50 Best Bars in both 2020 and 2021 and named Best UK Bar at Europe's 50 Best in 2026. David Collins Studio built the room around a 1920s Cubist idea: walls textured in platinum silver leaf, mirrored panels, dark leather and geometric fretwork, lit low enough that the metal seems to move as you cross it. It runs as three connected rooms rather than one, so it reads as a series of small, mirrored salons rather than a hotel lounge.

The signature is the martini trolley, wheeled to the table so the drink is built in front of you with a choice of bespoke bitters, the ritual the bar is best known for under Agostino Perrone's long stewardship. Off the main rooms sits the Champagne Room, a private salon of stone-clad walls and pale leather seating beneath a circular ceiling oculus planted with ivy, with its own back bar and a sommelier on hand.

We like it for a first-drinks reception before dinner elsewhere in Mayfair, or the Champagne Room taken on its own for a small, seated celebration. Walk-in and no-reservations for the counter, but the bar and its Champagne Room both take private bookings, arranged through the hotel's events team. Silver-leaf, low light, and a Carlos Place address that needs no explaining.