Down the area steps: Fitzrovia's cocktail dens, north of Oxford Street

A quarter that drinks downstairs

Fitzrovia is the grid of Georgian and Victorian streets squeezed between Oxford Street, Great Portland Street, Tottenham Court Road and the Euston Road, and a good share of its nightlife happens one storey below the pavement. The terraces were built with lower ground floors for kitchens and coal, reached by narrow area steps behind iron railings. When offices and studios took over the upper floors, the cellars were left for anyone who wanted thick walls, low ceilings and no windows. Bar owners wanted exactly that.

The drinking habit is older than the cocktails. Between the wars, painters and poets made the quarter their own. Dylan Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara at the Wheatsheaf on Rathbone Place in 1936, and the Fitzroy Tavern on Charlotte Street drew so many writers that the name Fitzrovia, which caught on in print in the 1940s, is usually traced back to its bar. Above everything rises the BT Tower, opened in the 1960s as the Post Office Tower and sold by BT in 2024 to a hotel group with plans to turn it into a hotel. On a night out it is the best compass in W1: whichever staircase you climb out of, the tower tells you which way is north.

Reading a door that does not want to be found

A serious basement bar advertises itself with the lightest touch: a small brass plate, one lamp over a doorway, a host with a tablet at the top of a staircase. Some ask you to ring a bell. Most hold a handful of tables for reservations and keep the counter for walk-ins, and on Fridays and Saturdays the walk-in space has gone by nine. A table for two in your own name turns the stairs into a welcome rather than a queue.

Two practical points spare the night a clumsy start. Mobile signal often fades halfway down the steps, so a message sent from inside may never land. Agree to meet at street level, by the door or at the nearest corner, and go down together. And basement stairs are steep and narrow; tell Clementine where the night is heading, and your companion picks heels that can manage them.

Four rooms worth the stairs, and one worth the detour

Bars in this quarter open, change hands and close more often than restaurants, so read the names below as a starting shelf rather than a promise, and check before you set out. Each sits a few minutes on foot from Tottenham Court Road or Goodge Street.

Ordering when the menu is too dark to read

The lighting in these rooms is kind on purpose: candles, shaded lamps, a glow along the back bar. It flatters every face and forgives a menu nobody can quite make out. Do not squint at it. Name a spirit you like and a mood, bright or brooding, short or long, and let the bartender build something around it. The best bartenders in Fitzrovia would rather have that conversation than hear an order recited from memory.

Sit at the counter if you want the performance: shaking, smoke, a garnish placed with tweezers. Take a booth or a corner if you want to talk. Ask for water with the first round and something to eat with the second. Most basement bars keep a short list of small plates, and a cocktail night lasts longer, and ends better, with food in it.

Two rooms and a short walk between them

The golden rule for a cocktail night is two rooms, three at the very most. Every move costs twenty minutes of coats, stairs and settling in, and the best stretch of any bar is its second half hour, once the room has warmed up around you. A route that works most weeknights: a drink at the Mandrake at eight, a few minutes' walk to Charlotte Street for dinner, then a last glass below Hanway Place once the kitchen crowd has gone. The whole circuit stays within sight of the BT Tower, and Oxford Circus is a ten-minute stroll for the cab home.

For the dinner in the middle, our Charlotte Street dinner note sorts the restaurant row by mood. For the whole night as one plan, the night out companion page shows how most guests fit rooms and a table into a single booking.

Lengths, and what each one buys

Every figure here comes straight from the rates ladder, and her journey to the first door is already inside it.

Companions who know the back bar

Jasmin is the one to bring when the menu is unreadable, because she will not need it: two questions about your taste and she has your order. Michelle collects off-menu drinks the way other people collect postcards, and asks every bartender what they are working on this month. Tina is happiest in a room with a record playing and leaves Hanway Street humming whatever the jukebox chose. Molly starts late and finishes later; for a night that begins after ten, she is the natural call.

All four sit in our brunettes edit, and Jasmin and Tina also appear under petite. Send Clementine the first bar, the time and your hotel; the booking page sets out the one confirmation step that comes next.