Ten actually good places to meet friends in central London

Your friend lives in Ealing. You live in Crystal Palace. As Avril Lavigne once said: Can I make it any more obvious? 

One of the city’s great strengths might be its endless variety of neighbourhoods stretching out in all directions across more than 600 square miles, but that also means it’s often most convenient to meet up with friends in the very centre.

But here we run into another problem. That nice new restaurant you saw Jay Rayner review? Booked until February, or requires a £20 forfeit per head if anyone doesn’t show up (and you know one of your friends — THAT one — is quite likely to flake). The pub renowned for its perfectly poured pints? Stuffed to the rafters with tourists and finance bros and content creators.

On those occasions, it pays to have a few options in your back pocket. Somewhere about which you can say, “I know a place”. Here, our writers weigh in on where to go.

Andrew’s picks

The Lyric — Soho (after a visit to the Prince Charles Cinema)

I’ve tried my best to like Soho. I really have. Years of being told about its history of being London’s exciting seedy heart as well as the geographic necessity of meeting there gave me a form of Stockholm syndrome. The kind of fugue state where you wander around talking about how it’s actually fine to spend £8.50 on a pint of Amstel in De Hems. The reason that delusion is so hard to break is that there are a lot of things I, and most Londoners, cannot sacrifice doing in this part of town. Chief among them for me is London’s best cinema, the Prince Charles (recently saved from eviction). Once the screen dims, and you emerge back into the open air, you’re stuck on the edge of Soho trying to find somewhere to go afterwards.

Like death and taxes, Soho is inevitable. It’s in realising that fact that I was able to unearth the gem that is the Lyric, a small Victorian boozer perched right where Soho borders Piccadilly Circus. You’d assume given the location that, like the nearby Devonshire, it would be perennially rammed and you’d be forced to drink in a tight crowd outside. But somehow nestled as it is on a tiny side street it manages to avoid (some of) the crowds. And is marginally more affordable while doing so. Soho has a lot of good pubs in theory, but which in practice are so busy you struggle to see inside — and the Lyric, somehow, isn’t like that.

Scootercaffe — Waterloo

As a man normally very cynical of the entire nebulous stretch of the city we call Central London, I had quite a shameful realisation recently: I think I genuinely like Waterloo. It was something about walking along Lower March and The Cut — which have been subject to the sort of council beautification effort that usually strips the organic soul of a place — and realising that hadn’t happened here. There are dozens of small independent bars and cafes that are good. And not like, good for somewhere in zone one vaguely near my office or train station good. Like actually, genuinely good. Scootercaffe is one of them. The Italian cafe, that turns into an intimate bar in the evening serving £10 cocktails, bottles of wine and continental beers, feels distinctly un-Londonlike in the best possible way.

The Crown and Cushion — Waterloo