3 London Bars For A Chill Night

Normally as I’m experiencing something in life, the blog part of my brain is taking notes for the inevitable write-up later. But I didn’t actually intend on writing about a random date night I had in London last week. Josh and I just had a bit of a DIY bar crawl on a Friday night and I posted a couple of tweets. But some of you seemed to be keen to hear about these bars. So here I am, doing an ad-hoc post about them. Because that’s how my life works. (It also means the photos are shit so soz about that.)

It wasn’t a mad night (despite the hangover we woke up with), we just hopped between some cool bars. The kind of bars you can hear each other talk in but there’s still a great atmosphere, you know?

Am I old now?

Towards the end of our London bar crawl things get a bit hazy, but luckily these three gems were at the beginning and set the tone for a great night. Here goes…

Pimpshuei

This was actually Josh’s find, I’ll admit. He has a thing for arcade bars and we’ve tried out a few in other cities. Like Barcade in New York, Bartronica in Melbourne and Ton Ton Bar in Amsterdam. So he googled arcade bars in London and came up with Pimpshuei in Clerkenwell. And off we went.

It’s quite hard to find, I think I’d actually class this as a secret bar. It’s in some random backstreet of Clerkenwell and has no signs. Just a sandwich board with a picture of a cocktail on it, pointing to a black unmarked door… I love that shit.

Inside it’s a dimly lit underground bar and is quite small, but is oh so perfectly formed. It’s walls are covered in Kung Fu film posters and a big pull-down screen is actually showing Kung Fu films. And although Josh was after an arcade bar, I’d say this is more of a bar that happens to have a few arcade games in there – like 3 or 4 of them. But still a lot of fun.

We drank Asian beers there but they also served aptly named cocktails like ‘Bangkok Dangerous’ and ‘Sex & Zen’. If you’re after cocktails go before 8pm though to enjoy the Happy Hour!

It’s a bit random but I loves me a theme so I really enjoyed Pimpshuei. Check out the website over HERE.

The Enterprise

This one was a random find as we were walking back to civilisation from Pimpshuei. We stumbled across a very pretty looking pub in Holborn, covered in fairy lights and flowers, and just had to go in.

The Enterprise is a Victorian pub with lots of original features and beautiful decor inside. It doesn’t sound like anything special but it just had a really good vibe. The kind of vibe where people go there to catch up with mates rather than have a big night out, y’know? And the staff were really friendly and chatty which is always nice.

Plus they do prosecco with raspberries in it. I know, I’m so basic right now.

I think it’d be a real nice place to come at Christmas too, very cosy.  Anyway, I thought it was a fab little find, you can check out their website over HERE.

Planet Of The Grapes

Finally something a bit classy for me, a swanky lil wine bar on Sicilian Avenue called Planet Of The Grapes. Yeah I won’t lie, I went in because of the name. I can’t resist a pun.

But again, it was really chilled out in here, without being dull. It was kinda full of people who had gone for after-work drinks and were still just having the best time 5 hours later! So it was full of people chatting and laughing. It wasn’t cheap, I paid £20 for two large glasses of wine, but the wine itself was really delicious.

It’s actually a really nice date destination I think! Head over HERE for their website.

A mix of places! All three bars are so very different but they have their similarities – they’re all laid-back chill places to drink and all three had really lovely staff. I think that makes all the difference.

And like I said, the rest of the night was a haze of Soho bars that went from classy gay bars to Wetherspoons equivalents. So I’ll leave it there!

What do you think? Have you been to any of these bars? Any others you’d recommend for a chilled out night?

Let me know in the comments below or tweet me @HeelsInBackpack!