The Cellar

You descend into City Road and suddenly you're in someone's exceptionally well-stocked living room. The Cellar has that rare quality of feeling both polished and genuinely unpretentious—exposed brick, moody lighting, the works—but without any of that try-hard energy you get elsewhere in town. The bartenders actually know what they're doing, whether you're after a properly made Old Fashioned or just a decent pint of something local. It's the sort of place where groups of mates pile in on a Friday night and spontaneous conversations happen at the bar.