The upstairs dining room at The Devonshire is the kind of place we could spend a whole afternoon, perusing a handwritten menu of comforting British classics—lamb hotpot, creamed leeks, sticky toffee pudding. Come for one of London’s best pints of Guinness, some of the city’s best British food, and to mop up leftover gravy with duck fat chips. If you don’t manage to book the dining room, the downstairs bar of this Soho spot is a charming, crowded place.

Few London pubs are as well known as The French House in Soho: this place is a classic and the food very much follows suit. While the downstairs of this drinking institution is still kept to mostly that, if you walk up the creaking stairs you’ll find a red-walled, yellow-lit dining room. This place is made for consumption. Specifically terrine, steak, coffee mousse, and, of course, wine. You’ll be leaning over the table and stage whispering conversations before you know it.

For a pub named after a giant predatory bird, this old school Farringdon pub is actually pretty laid back. It’s got a dark green front, dark split leather, and a simple dining room with lots of mismatched wooden chairs. This place serves some truly excellent dishes, and whether you come for lunch or dinner, you need to get involved in their steak sandwich. It’s basically a whole meal between bread and is completely worth £13.50.

The George is a delicious and decadent take on a pub. The downstairs bar is Fitzrovia’s usual mix of slurring suits and those trying to ignore the slurring suits, while the upstairs dining room is a hideout for anyone looking to part ways with a stupendous amount of cash for scampi, steak, sausages and mash, and the like. All of it is perfectly debaucherous. If a certain kind of British excess gets you going, then The George isn’t just extravagant. It’s extremely enjoyable.

After their storming success in the kitchen at the Compton Arms, the fellas from Four Legs have their own pub in the shape of The Plimsoll in Finsbury Park. What was once an Irish boozer that let Guinness rightfully rest with Arsenal on the projector is now the kind of pub that lets Guinness rightfully rest while serving a whole lemon sole from the kitchen. Make sure you book ahead if you want dinner in the week because the popularity of their famous cheeseburger hasn’t waned at all.

The Compton Arms is a little boozer off Upper Street that used to be frequented by Arsenal fans and is now frequented by Arsenal fans, as well as those seeking very good food. The weekly changing small plates menu, served by current chef residency Belly, is generally very enjoyable—be it a whole dressed crab or pork chop with apple sauce and chilli oil. Book ahead whatever you do, especially if you want a seat in the garden.

If you’re looking for a great, reasonably priced wine list from a pub then St John’s Tavern should be close to the top of your list. But if you’re looking for damn near perfect Sunday roast then this Archway spot should be right at the top of your list. You’ll also find oysters, pickled cockles, and potted shrimp on the menu in the spacious and woody dining room at the back of the pub. As well as a changing seasonal menu, they serve solid plates of food for dinner from Monday to Saturday.

The Clarence is another gastropub from a lineage of excellent London gastropubs. Older siblings the Anchor & Hope and the Canton Arms are two of the most consistently delicious pubs around that still maintain a feeling of comforting pub-ishness. There’s no danger of seeing a mini shopping trolley full of chips here. The Clarence is their latest venture that somehow feels like it’s been making fried pumpkin, roast brill, and slow-cooked lamb shoulder with dauphinoise forever and ever.

The Drapers Arms is an Islington stalwart, down a residential street, that’s suitable for drinking, dining, and drowning your sorrows. The food is classic, comforting stuff. Baked camembert, sardines on toast, pies, chops, and the like. It’s stuff you might make at home if you could be arsed, but even then it would never be as good as this. Whether you’re pitching on a stool at the bar for pints and snacks, or you’ve booked a table on a Sunday, this is a pub that will always stay in your mind.

The Baring has the feel of a serious restaurant that just so happens to be in a polished pub space, but come here in between service and you can sink a few jars at a clean-cut bar full of fellow Islingtonites. Really though, you should be booking a table for lunch or dinner, as the food has the potential to be excellent. The menu spans cloud-like ricotta gnudi to crispy chips with garlic mayonnaise.

If someone asked us to describe The Marksman in one word, we’d say “Dickens”. This old school Shoreditch spot has been around since Queen Victoria, has a proper mahogany bar, those little scallop lampshades that went out of fashion in the 1950s, and a more modern dining room upstairs. These days you’ll find food like salt lemon surf clams, some of the best savoury pies in London, and their excellent beef and barley buns.

Some pubs require tactics. Bar positioning. Table grabbing. What to order, and what not to order. The Duke of Richmond in Dalston is one of these. Although you can have a full slap-up meal in the dining room, we think it’s best used as a beer and burger place - because it’s extremely good at both. The more casual dishes, from a bernaise loaded burger to a crab and chip butty, are ideal boozing snacks and can also be ordered to their outside terrace.

Ah, The Camberwell Arms. That smell of butter in the air. That big dining room. The inevitable three pints you weren’t planning on, but oh well, you were just having such a nice time. This spot in Camberwell does have excellent food from huge pork chops to banging pasta dishes, but it still very much feels like a boozer where no one’s going to judge you for getting smashed on a Tuesday. The seasonal menu changes daily, but no matter what they’ve got, you know you’re in safe hands.

The Waterman’s Arms is a riverside pub that sits on a pretty, leafy corner of Barnes, and it does the best Sunday roast we’ve ever had—and yes, we’re including our mum’s in that. The lamb shoulder is the sharing roast to go for. It’s a feast-like centrepiece of tender, perfectly cooked meat, best eaten between alternating bites of crispy roast potatoes and braised, garlicky greens. A couple of starters should be on your table too, like a curried scallop that we think about on a weekly basis.

Anchor and Hope is a seminal gastropub in Southwark that serves some pretty amazing Mediterranean-inspired pub food. From the outdoor picnic tables, to the smoky dim lighting, this place feels like your quintessential pub just with some bonus things on the menu like three cheese and hazelnut soufflé, crab beurre blanc, and chopped octopus salad. Once you’re sufficiently full, and buzzed, go for a stroll along the south bank, and reminisce over how good that baked poppyseed cheesecake was.

At The Canton Arms, you’ll walk into a boozer that feels a little like it’s from another era. Where old boys todder in for a glass of red and a haggis toastie, and families get together in the front bar, in the back dining room, or wherever they can fit. The food is a touch European and a touch British. Put simply, it’s very nice. Think a plate of peach and stracciatella, only combined with a pint.

Crisp Pizza W6 is a pop-up inside Hammersmith pub, The Chancellors, and it does the best thin-crust, New York-style pizzas in London. On the 360 days a year when it’s too cold to sit outside, the small, dimly lit pub makes for a perfectly nice room in which to eat an excessive amount of pizza. The gravity-defying slices somehow hold a rich tomato sauce, heavy with basil, and a perfect distribution of melted mozzarella. Pre-order in advance; there are limited pies for walk-ins.

Cadogan Arms keeps the food simple and delightful. We’re talking a £17 ham, egg and chips that could easily end up being one of the top ten pub meals you ever eat, or a massive golden brown chicken kiev served with a shaved fennel salad that somehow manages to feel both reserved and slightly decadent at the same time. Elsewhere, there’s a non-stop playlist of polite rock, as befitting any SW3 walk-in boozer, and a menu of bar snacks that includes a 10/10 pork and sage scotch egg.

You might think that a pub called The Cow would specialise in beef, but you’d be wrong. This upmarket pub and dining room near Notting Hill actually specialises in seafood. One of the go-to orders here is oysters and Guinness, but you’ll also find an £89 seafood platter and fresh crab tagliolini on the menu. Although this place can be pricey, they do have a £12 dish du jour available in their saloon bar.

The old-English pub aesthetic is alive and well. Think caramel-brown leather banquettes and antique-looking tables. It’s the stuff of glossy food magazines. Well-dressed Notting Hill locals pour in after work and families book out the semi-circle booth in the dining room for weeknight meals that involve cheese-dusted mince on toast and show-stopping beef and Guinness pies.

The Harwood Arms in Fulham is about as close as you can get to being an upmarket restaurant while still being a pub. It’s on a little street that feels more Cotswolds than city. Once inside, you’ll find neutral walls, deer antlers, sophisticated furniture, and a posh 1920s bar that we absolutely cannot picture Peggy Mitchell standing behind. You can expect dishes that are a touch European but with a focus on British ingredients—like a lasagna of rabbit shoulder and an emphasis on fresh game.