Slug & Lettuce - Preston

You know that stretch of Church Street where it gets properly busy on Friday nights? This is where you'll find the Slug doing what it does best - serving up cocktails that are frankly better than they have any right to be from a chain. The weekend crowd spills out onto the pavement, and inside it's all dark wood and exposed brick that somehow works despite feeling a bit try-hard. The cocktail menu's solid - proper classics done well rather than Instagram nonsense, and the staff actually know their way around a shaker. Saturday mornings they do brunch which draws a surprisingly civilised crowd, a world away from the Friday night chaos. It's not groundbreaking, but when you want reliable drinks in the town centre without paying through the nose, this delivers.