Pizza Express Live Holborn

Head down the stairs from the High Holborn Pizza Express and you've landed in one of central London's proper music venues—the kind where you actually get up close to the band rather than squinting at a distant stage. It's got that basement bar energy: intimate, a bit buzzy, full of people who've genuinely turned up for the music rather than just the Instagram moment. You can grab a pizza and a drink upstairs, then descend into the gig downstairs. The programming's genuinely solid—jazz, funk, indie, comedy—and because it's not massive, you're never fighting through crowds to see what's happening on stage.