Where to go in Hackney

138 places in Hackney, each one on the Guide on merit.

Broadway Market

• Climpson & Sons

  Coffee shop

  The Climpson & Sons café on Broadway Market pours the roaster's own coffee, and the house pick for a flat white is the Broadway Blend. The Fields is the rotating choice for a more adventurous espresso. Pastries and filled focaccia come from Dusty Knuckle.

• EK Bakery

  Bakery

  A Broadway Market brownie specialist behind yellow gates, baking thick, fudgy, rainbow-sprinkled brownies and seasonal cakes. The weekend shop does slices and singles; pre-order or post nationwide the rest of the week.

• Sune

  European

  Fire-cooked plates and a seriously good natural wine list, right on the canal. The kind of local that ruins you for others.

Clapton

• 107 Wine Bar

  European

  The old P. Franco brought back to life under a leftover cash-and-carry sign. Ten natural wines by the glass and a chef cooking French on two induction hobs at the back.

• My Neighbours the Dumplings

  Asian

  Hand-rolled dumplings under custom light boxes, with a sake bar downstairs and a hanging garden up top. Order the vegetable dumplings over the meat.

• Suba

  Bakery

  African and Asian-inflected bakes: a mango-glazed croissant milled to order. Good Food Guide listed.

Dalston

• 392 Kingsland Road

  Cocktail bar

  An all-killer cocktail bar with jazz nights, still flying under the radar on Kingsland Road.

• Andu Cafe

  African

  The menu has two things on it. Take the sampler and six vegan dishes arrive on injera for about £13 a head. Cash only, and you bring your own wine.

• Brilliant Corners

  Asian

  A hi-fi bar built so you can hear each other as well as the records.

• Brunswick East

  Café / rooftop farm

  An Aussie all-day cafe with the largest food-producing rooftop farm in London right above the kitchen. Brunch with a real story behind the plate, and the odd farm tour.

• Cafe OTO

  Music venue

  A ramshackle Dalston room given over to experimental and outsider music, with Persian-leaning food by day and left-of-centre sets by night. Tickets are cheap.

• Dalston Eastern Curve Garden

  Garden

  A volunteer-run community garden built on a disused railway line from the 1950s. The space has shaded pathways, raised vegetable beds, and a wooden pavilion with a café serving homemade cakes and soups made from garden produce. Free to enter, with tables scattered throughout and a pizza oven on site.

• dan's

  Natural wine bar

  A Dalston natural wine bar with a sharp, ever-changing list and a crowd that cares about what's in the glass.

• Edami

  Middle Eastern

  A casual Dalston gem baking Lebanese mankoushe flatbreads to order.

• Little Duck The Picklery

  European

  You sit at the stone island in front of the hobs while seasonal small plates and an all-natural wine list arrive, ferments scrawled on blackboards above.

• Newcomer Wines

  Wine bar

  An Austrian wine obsession with a secret garden attached. Worth the detour for the bottles you cannot find anywhere else.

• OREN

  Middle Eastern

  Tiny, warm, and built around a charcoal grill doing Tel Aviv proud. Book, because 35 covers go fast.

• Print Club London

  Screenprinting studio

  A one-day beginners' screenprinting workshop in a relaxed Dalston studio: small groups, water-based inks, eight finished prints to take home. Members get 24-hour studio access.

• Rio Cinema

  Cinema

  A glorious art-deco independent on Kingsland High Street, programming new releases, repertory and one-off screenings to a proper crowd. One grand single screen, curtains and all.

• The Dusty Knuckle

  Bakery

  A cult yard-bakery: hydrated potato sourdough and a feta, honey and fennel pastry swirl.

• The Jago

  Live music & arts venue

  A grassroots room that programmes the whole world in a week, and still runs a food bank by day.

• The Roses of Elagabalus

  Queer cocktail bar

  A theatrical, design-heavy queer cocktail bar and restaurant, more strange drawing room than club flyer. Somewhere to settle in for the evening, not somewhere you just drop by.

• Three Sheets

  Cocktail bar

  World-class cocktails in a candlelit two-top room the size of a stamp.

De Beauvoir

• Albers

  European

  An all-day neighbourhood cafe doing modern European well beyond quite good grub.

• Hector's

  European

  A petite De Beauvoir bottle shop that pours its 300 wines in over anchovies and jamon. The kind of corner you wish was on your road.

• Leigh's

  Coffee shop

  A chic little De Beauvoir cafe that takes its toasties seriously.

Finsbury Park

• Baban's Naan

  Bakery

  A tiny Kurdish naan shop: fresh garlic and za'atar, absurdly good, culturally sharp.

Hackney

• Behind

  European

  Eighteen seats around a horseshoe counter in Hackney, where the chefs plate and serve the fish in front of you. Andy Beynon took the star twenty days after opening.

• Cafe Cecilia

  European

  Max Rocha's pared-back canalside room in Hackney, where the fashion crowd and stylish septuagenarians eat the same simple, faultless plates. Few openings in recent years have landed this well.

• Casa Fofó

  European

  Adolfo De Cecco rewrites the tasting menu every morning in a bare-brick Hackney sleeve named after his grandfather, and earned a Michelin star doing it.

• Circle13

  Cocktail bar

  A cocktail bar with a pétanque piste in the centre, opened by world championship player Monty Quaia and hospitality veteran Marc Sarton Du Jonchay under the railway arches on Hemsley Place. The drinks menu leads with zero-ABV highballs that can be upgraded with spirits. Chef Sean Donnelly serves rotating pintxos including charred leek with potato crisp and cider-caramelised onion croquetas.

• DALLA

  European

  A backstreet trattoria the size of a living room, doing obscure regional dishes better than most do the famous ones. Book ahead, it is small.

• Elephant Hackney

  European

  Southern Italian in a cinematic Victorian-pub room. The ex-Manteca kitchen delivers.

• Equal Parts

  Listening bar

  Twenty-six in the operator-voted UK Top 50 and Time Out's best bar in London in 2025. A Grade II listed room modelled on Hopper's Nighthawks, wired to a rare-vinyl record deck.

• Facing Heaven

  Asian

  A tiny cult vegan Sichuan from the Mao Chow team, all numbing chilli and heat.

• HELMA Café + Wine

  Café & wine bar

  A small family cafe doing seasonal veg and natural wine with serious kitchen pedigree behind it. Dog friendly.

• Little Georgia

  European

  A Hackney cafe serving Georgian home cooking from family recipes. It runs cooked breakfasts and sandwiches by day, then switches to traditional dishes at night including khachapuri cheese bread, khinkali dumplings, and spicy beef stew. The Hackney branch is BYOB.

• London Fields Lido

  Lido

  A heated 50 metre outdoor pool in the middle of London Fields, open year round and properly beloved. Swim lengths under open sky, then sprawl on the grass after. The lanes get busy in summer, so go early.

• Miga

  Asian

  Modern Korean with real family lineage behind it rather than concept-restaurant gloss.

• MOTH Club

  Live music venue

  A former ex-servicemen's club from 1972, now a live music and comedy venue with gold tinsel curtains and WWII memorabilia on the walls. The stage hosts indie bands, stand-up nights, and club events spanning Northern soul to disco. It sits opposite Hackney Central overground station.

• Ornella

  European

  A Milanese-leaning room in London Fields going for cosy and low-key over big-opening noise.

• Rocola

  European

  Twenty-four seats on Mare Street, ten of them at the counter, named after the Spanish for jukebox. A rotating guest chef keeps the menu from settling.

• Shankeys

  Asian

  Like a wedding reception two hours after the free bar opened, with the spice turned right up.

• Teal by Sally Abe

  European

  Sally Abe's first solo restaurant, seasonal British finesse at neighbourhood prices in Hackney. A well-pedigreed chef cooking with confidence on her own terms.

• The Flower Appreciation Society

  Floristry studio

  Seasonal, natural floristry in a properly tasteful register, women-founded. Much more Vana than a generic bouquet workshop.

• The Last Tuesday Society Absinthe Parlour

  Absinthe parlour

  Theatrical absinthe service in a candlelit room above a basement of two-headed taxidermy.

• The Spurstowe Arms

  Pub with Dough Hands pizza

  A handsome Hackney boozer that happens to do one of London's better pizzas.

• Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities

  Museum

  An overflowing cabinet of shrunken heads, occult relics and jars best not examined too closely.

• You Call The Shots

  Bar

  An unpretentious Hackney bar with rotating chef residencies turning out stellar food.

Hackney Central

• Behind This Wall

  Cocktail bar

  A basement bar with no menu, where you describe a mood and the drink gets built to match, all played through a sound system pieced from old Tannoy and JBL parts.

Hackney Road

• Blinds

  Wine bar

  A natural wine bar and shop in a former blinds shop, understated and very likeable.

Hackney Wick

• Barge East

  European

  A century-old Dutch barge moored on the River Lea in Hackney Wick, with a garden and from-scratch cooking that outshines the novelty.

• Bola Beach Tennis

  Sports Club

  A Brazilian-inspired beach tennis club in Hackney Wick overlooking the London Stadium, founded by two Rio natives. The game combines tennis with beach volleyball elements, played barefoot on soft sand with no walls or complicated tactics. Coaches get beginners rallying within minutes, and Sunset Socials on Friday to Sunday offer two-hour sessions with coaching, match play and BYOB.

• Community Sauna Baths

  Wood-fired sauna

  Wood-fired saunas and cold plunges across five London sites, with free tea round a brazier and cult events from queer poetry to sound baths.

• Grow

  Canalside bar / music space

  An artist-built, repurposed-factory bar on the canal, with brunch, a Thursday house band led by a Mercury-nominated bassist, and homemade Hackney Spiced Rum.

• Hon's BBQ

  Asian

  Man Hon Luk's canalside Chinese-Texan barbecue in Hackney Wick, smoke-heavy and joyfully cross-cultural. A permanent home for a genuine one-off.

• Inis

  European

  An Irish-influenced Hackney Wick bistro doing proper from-scratch, hyper-seasonal cooking. A small room that takes itself seriously, lightly.

• London Centre for Book Arts

  Bookbinding studio

  An artist-led studio for letterpress, binding and reprographics: rigorous, tactile, design-literate workshops for anyone who loves the aesthetics of physical media.

• V&A East Storehouse

  Museum store

  The museum turned inside out, where the back rooms are the whole point and you can ask to hold the collection.

Haggerston

• A Bar with Shapes for a Name

  Cocktail bar

  Remy Savage's Bauhaus-minimal cocktail room on Kingsland Road, no bottles on show, a tight menu of classics and originals built from blind tastings. Cleverer than it lets on, and cheap for the quality.

• Bone

  European

  Twenty seats, one set menu, £40 for three courses. The centre of it is beef short rib cooked for eight hours, with unlimited frites alongside. Bring your own wine, £7 a head corkage.

• Burley Fisher Books

  Bookshop

  The proper East London indie. Small-press energy, regulars who know each other.

• Jiāonest

  Asian

  A candlelit Haggerston basement doing precise, chilli-deep Chongqing cooking.

• Logma Lates

  Middle Eastern

  An 18-seat Iranian-Iraqi supper club by night from a Haggerston cafe that already pulls queues by day. Wednesdays, book ahead.

• Planque

  European

  A cathedral-ceilinged railway arch off a Hackney mews, run as a restaurant and a wine cellar at once. Come for the list first and the food second, and expect the room to assume you want to talk about it.

Homerton

• Cine Real

  Film club

  A film club that will only project 16mm, running out of the Castle Cinema in Homerton. You watch the reel change and hear the projector, which is the entire point.

• La Camionera

  European

  A lesbian bar with Spanish bar-food energy, natural wine and a room someone clearly cared about. Cool without reaching for the rainbow-neon cliché.

• The Castle Cinema

  Cinema

  A restored, community-saved cinema above the shops in Homerton, with armchair seating, a chilled bar-café and a programme that mixes indie with the odd blockbuster. Worth coming just to sit in the lobby bar.

Hoxton

• Banya No.1

  Russian bathhouse

  London's original Russian banya, down in a Hoxton basement: birch-venik thrashings, scalding steam and an ice plunge, then tea and dumplings. The real ritual, and Time Out's best spa in London.

• Cremer

  Bakery and canteen

  A daytime bakery-canteen from the Space Talk listening-bar team, Corner Shop energy with a bit more polish.

• Lowcountry

  Cocktail bar

  A subterranean whisky-and-cocktail bar beneath Counter 71, inspired by the American South.

• Moko Made

  Asian

  A small Japanese cafe in Hoxton with earthy matcha and honeyed pastries, quiet and considered. A gentle daytime spot for tea and a book.

• Museum of the Home

  Museum

  The old Geffrye almshouses in Hoxton, free: a walk through middle-class front rooms from 1600 to a 1998 Shoreditch flat, plus period gardens out back. A quiet, lovely hour.

London Fields

• Auguste

  European

  Abruzzo on the old Papi site: flame-grilled arrosticini skewers, low-intervention wine, and clowns on every wall. Order the lot.

• Bambi

  European

  James Dye of Frank's named this London Fields wine bar after his great-grandmother, not the deer. Vinyl plays every night, and at weekends the tables get pushed back for dancing until 1am.

• Cafe Kowloon

  Asian

  A clubby Hong Kong diner behind Wonton Charlie's, with Budgie Montoya in the kitchen.

• e5 Bakehouse

  Bakery & café

  An East London institution in the railway arches at London Fields. Long-proved sourdough, proper pastries and vegetable-forward lunches, served to a permanent crowd of locals and laptops.

• Elliot's Hackney

  European

  The Hackney sibling of the Borough original, doing wood-fired pizza, cheese puffs and natural wine to take away or stay.

• Kichiya

  Asian

  A Japanese-French pastry shop: matcha, black sesame, souffle-cheesecake energy.

• Rooftop Saunas, Hackney

  Rooftop sauna

  Sauna cabins and cold plunge barrels on a London Fields rooftop, above a drinking den with Netil Market round the corner. The understated take on contrast therapy, with a view.

• Running Late Coffee

  Specialty coffee

  A hatch, a bench and a new guest roaster on batch filter every month.

• Wingnut Wines

  Wine bar

  Small but mighty, zero snobbery and a list that punches miles above the shed it pours from.

• Yuki Bar

  Asian

  A 20-seat arch from an ex-Noma and P Franco sommelier.

Lower Clapton

• Høst Wine Bar

  Wine bar

  A tiny Chatsworth Road bar pouring Italian wine that never sits still, with charcuterie to match. Stays open late at the weekend.

• Lodestar Coffee

  Rotating-roaster coffee

  A small, properly run Clapton coffee shop where the guest roaster changes every week and someone actually wants to talk to you about it.

• Mambow

  Asian

  Malaysian food with proper heat and personality, and a room people want to sit in.

Mentmore Terrace

• Look Left by YUGU

  Asian

  Matcha by day easing into natural wine by night, with Korean design finds hidden below.

Newington Green

• Primeur

  Natural wine bistro

  A former garage turned candlelit room. Daily-changing list, communal tables, the kind of place regulars are possessive of.

Old Street

• Tramps Bar

  A former gallery space behind the City Road McDonald's, run by artist Peter Doig and gallerist Parinaz Mogadassi. The white cube room has four tables, giant speakers that once belonged to Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider, and a weekly changing menu of martinis and aperitivos. Former River Café chef Harry McKenzie cooks a daily changing menu.

Shepherdess Walk

• William IV

  Pub

  A lovingly restored Georgian pub with a dining room that earns its keep.

Shoreditch

• &Soul The Sanctuary

  Social bathhouse

  A 40-seat Aufguss sauna, a cold plunge and an alcohol-free elixir bar in a converted Brick Lane textile warehouse. The social-bathhouse trend done with real design credibility.

• Altamura Bakehouse

  European

  A Hackney Road bakehouse doing Pugliese bread and focaccia properly, and doing it well enough to plan a Saturday around.

• Appalachia

  North American

  Southern US soul food from an ex-Smoking Goat chef in Shoreditch: smoked eel, jalapeno deviled eggs, fire and smoke.

• Autograph (Rivington Place)

  Art Gallery

  A free gallery in Shoreditch showing photography and film by artists exploring race and identity. Founded in Brixton in 1988 as the Association of Black Photographers, it now operates two expansive gallery spaces at Rivington Place. The building is fully wheelchair accessible.

• Bistro Freddie

  European

  A burgundy little Shoreditch corner doing British produce with a French accent, white tablecloths and a candlelit Parisian hum.

• Black Rock

  Whisky bar

  A whisky bar built around an 18ft, 185-year-old oak trunk that ages cocktails through taps at its end. 300-plus whiskies sorted by flavour, not region. UK's Best Specialist Bar four years running.

• Bun House Disco

  Asian

  Fluffy bao and creative cocktails in an 1980s Hong Kong fever dream, from the Bun House team.

• Charista

  Asian

  The home chai a few old men still guard, served to the rest of us. No alcohol, no pork, just date-molasses tea and kati rolls.

• Chiave

  Music-first cocktail bar

  A split-personality bar with one foot in a polite cocktail room and one in an underground club. Come for the drink, stay for the speakers.

• Close-Up

  Cinema & film archive

  Less a cinema than a film club, archive and reading room, with a tiny screening room and a bar of sofas. Deep, serious programming for people who properly love film. Come early and linger over the library and a glass of wine.

• Cycene

  European

  Theo Clench's candlelit six-table room in Shoreditch's Blue Mountain School, a Michelin star within months. An intimate, culty fine-dining sanctum.

• Dallas Burger

  North American

  Lisbon's Dallas lands in Shoreditch with 100 percent grass-fed patties, old-fashioned and well made.

• Dopi

  Asian

  A Korean restaurant on Bethnal Green Road where you order from touchscreens at bright, sparse tables. The tteokbokki arrives in a silver pot with a pleasant tingle and bobbing rice cakes among fish cake. This is drinking food done well.

• Duchy

  European

  If you miss Leroy, this is a no-brainer. Same room, same vinyl, great wine.

• Kaso Rooftop Bar and Kitchen

  A seventh-floor rooftop bar atop One Hundred Shoreditch hotel with panoramic views over East London. Chef Ilknur Celik runs an Eastern Mediterranean menu of hot and cold mezze, including charred aubergine on tahini sauce. DJs play Friday and Saturday nights from 9pm.

• Lagana

  European

  Sunken, playful and seriously good Greek, with flatbreads worth the trip alone.

• Legado

  European

  Spanish cooking well beyond tapas, built around two Segovian ovens and a chef who already knows how to win stars.

• Libreria

  Bookshop

  A deliberately disorienting bookshop: phone-free, with the genre sections done away with so you wander.

• Little Fires

  Cocktail bar

  A moody Oaxacan mezcal bar with drinks from a World 50 Best team.

• Los Mochis London City

  Mexican restaurant

  A 14,000 square foot Mexican-Japanese fusion restaurant on the ninth floor of 100 Liverpool Street, with a 3,000 square foot terrace overlooking The Shard and St Paul's. The menu runs from truffle guacamole on crispy rice to 15 types of kushiyaki skewers and build-your-own tacos with Wagyu tomahawk or whole roasted king crab. This is the bigger sibling to the original Los Mochis in Notting Hill, from the restaurateur behind Viajante87.

• Lounge Bohemia

  Cocktail bar

  A Czech-inspired, 1960s-style cocktail lounge beneath a Shoreditch kebab shop.

• Mitsu

  Asian

  A glossy robata izakaya on the old Nobu site, where the cooking lives up to the setting.

• Noisy Oyster

  European

  A chrome martini bar in seafood-bistro clothing, from the Firebird team.

• One Club Row

  European

  Paris-meets-NYC bistro with immaculate service and a crowd having a better night than you.

• Plates

  European

  The only plant-based kitchen in the UK with a Michelin star, and it wears it lightly. Kirk Haworth cooks vegetables with classical French technique in a small, warm, earth-toned room off Old Street.

• Pomme Bakery

  European

  A solo baker doing her own recipes from scratch, still half a secret. The almond croissant is worth the trek to Hoxton.

• Project 44

  Coffee shop

  A reliable Shoreditch coffee and sandwich stop, Dusty Knuckle bread and faultless wifi.

• Rochelle Canteen

  European

  A former bike shed behind an unmarked blue door and a small buzzer, opening to a greenhouse dining room. St John-inspired British cooking, the long lunch, the creatives' secret.

• Singburi

  Asian

  The cult Leytonstone Thai, reborn bigger in Shoreditch: a daily-changing, big-flavoured menu over an open kitchen.

• Sohaila

  Middle Eastern

  Fat Macy's social enterprise turned Shoreditch dining room. Levantine mezze meets natural wine, with a purpose behind the plate that does not announce itself.

• SONG Art & Craft

  Glass & metal craft workshop

  A proper maker's studio, not a paint-and-prosecco gimmick. You leave with a thing you actually made.

• Tatar Bunar

  European

  Southern Ukrainian that critics fell for fast, in a room as good as the cooking. Book ahead.

• Tavern

  European

  The Restaurant St Barts team turned the old Nest into a British bistro, generous and nostalgic cooking without the tasting-menu formality.

• The Photobook Café

  Photobook café

  Coffee, toasties and a wall of photobooks you did not know you needed.

• Waltz

  Japanese cocktail bar

  A 28-seat, no-signage Japanese cocktail hideaway from an ex-Kwant bartender, rated among the best cocktail bars in Britain. The impress-a-date room.

Stoke Newington

• Cálong

  Asian

  A sharp, grown-up date restaurant up beyond Islington, Korean-inflected cooking through a French-bistro lens.

• Johnny Boy's

  Diner

  Julian Denis put Facing Heaven on the map with Sichuan chilli, and has now built a Southern Californian immigrant diner in Stoke Newington. Opened this July and already four-deep in reviews.

• Molten 1090

  Glassblowing studio

  A working Hackney hotshop where you shape molten glass at the furnace beside a resident maker. Your pieces cool in the kiln and arrive by post.

• Romeo & Giulietta

  European

  A tiny artisan gelateria with queues to Clissold Park on a hot day. Serious, creamy, low-key.

• Sonora Taquería

  Caribbean & Latin

  Sonoran-style tacos on flour tortillas pressed to order, from the Netil Market stall that graduated to its own Stoke Newington room in 2023. Still walk-in, still worth the wait.

• Sorbito

  Mezcal bar

  Mezcal poured from wine-shop dispensers onto a card you load and spend at your own pace. Each machine carries a photograph of the producer and the agave species it came from. Whatever you taste you can take home in a returnable 200ml bottle.

• Stokey Garden & Flower Store

  Florist café

  A florist and a brunch spot in one, and the garden is the whole point. Very Stokey.

• The Castle Climbing Centre

  Climbing centre

  Climbing and bouldering inside a fairytale Victorian castle that was once a water-pumping station.

• The Marquee Moon

  Pub with hi-fi basement

  A wood-panelled nook pub upstairs, a lamp-lit hi-fi lounge down.

• West Reservoir Centre

  Open-water swimming

  Open-water swimming on a reservoir in Stoke Newington, for confident swimmers and a low-key cool north London crowd. A proper swim with skyline views.

Victoria Park

• Ace Pizza

  European

  Playful London-style pizza and serious cocktails, now with a Victoria Park home.

• Pretty Decent Beer Company

  Taproom

  A canalside brewery taproom by Victoria Park, with food from Seouls of Mischief.

Victoria Park Village

• Bruno

  Natural wine

  Michael Sager's candlelit ex-stables, vinyl crackling, wine from his own cellar.