The 20 best things to do in Shoreditch

Margot Henderson’s awfully well known hidden treasure is a dinky, discreet restaurant located in the bike shed of a former school. Inside, things are prettily low-key, with white walls and jugs of flowers on the tables; on warm days, snap up the sought-after spaces in the allotment-yard. The short daily menu deals in simple seasonal fare such as grilled sardines and tomato, braised rabbit with potato and anchovy or onglet with caponata. This is heart-and-soul dining.

One of London’s most well-known and nicest-looking markets, Columbia Road overflows with bucketfuls of beautiful flowers every Sunday. From 8am-3pm, market traders line the narrow street selling flowers, houseplants, herbs, bulbs and shrubs.

It’s worth shopping around, don’t be afraid to barter and prepare for it to get very busy. The market is popular with locals and tourists and, during the midday rush, is rammed with people elbowing their way to that perfect pot plant. If you can’t bear crowds or just want to guarantee the pick of the crop, arrive when the market opens.

When you’ve bought your blooms, head behind the stalls and down side streets to find fantastic cafés, independent restaurants, delis, shops, antique dealers, vintage stalls and small galleries, many of which follow the market’s opening hours. Pop into Jones Dairy Cafe for organic and local produce, treat yourself to some jazz records at Idle Moments or sink a locally brewed pint at The Nelson’s.

Dennis Severs’ House is a time capsule attraction which immerses visitors in a unique form of theatre. Part museum, part art piece, the ten rooms of this original Huguenot house have been decked out to recreate snapshots of life in Spitalfields between 1724 and 1914. An escorted tour through the compelling ‘still-life drama’, as its eccentric American creator Dennis Severs put it, takes you through the cellar, kitchen, dining room, smoking room and upstairs to the bedrooms.

With the hearth smoking, the smell of candles burning lingering and objects scattered around apparently haphazardly, it feels as though the inhabitants had deserted the rooms only moments before. It’s a real immersive experience, plunging you straight into the past. 

There are a range of tours to pick from, including self-guided silent tours, informal tours which are best for children, tours guided by actors and one-off behind-the-scenes tours revealing the hidden secrets of the place. 

James Lowe was once a pop-up partner of Isaac McHale, and, like at McHale’s Clove Club, the no-choice, set dinner menu at Lowe’s cutting-edge solo restaurant goes big on foraged, oft-forgotten finds (dulse, verbena, ransoms), unusual cuts (monkfish liver, mutton breast) and very British ingredients (Jersey oysters, game, Neal’s Yard cheese). Lowe has worked under Fergus Henderson, and it shows: the clinical all-white dining room shares St John’s minimalism, while the beautifully presented dishes are dazzling yet restrained.

You can’t miss Village Underground thanks to the four brightly coloured, graffiti-covered tube carriages perched on its roof. The decommissioned Jubilee line carriages and accompanying shipping containers were installed on top of the warehouse venue in 2007 in response to the need for affordable artists’ studios in central London. Now housing around 30 creatives working in a range of disciplines, its previous tenants include the likes of immersive theatre company Punchdrunk and LGBTQ+ nightlife collective Sink the Pink. A renovated Victorian warehouse space below has become one of Shoreditch’s most popular gigging and clubbing venues, and plays host to a varied programme of exhibitions, concerts, theatre and live art year-round. 

Opened by one of the world’s most celebrated mixologists, Alex Kratena, with partner Monica Berg, a force on Scandinavia’s drinking scene, Tayēr + Elementary is a grey and pine space, minimal in style yet maximal in its ergonomics (by God, the seats are comfortable).

At the front is Elementary, an all-day hangout with high benches and stools plus really, really fun drinks. I returned a week later and was granted access to the bar. Although it’s industrial-looking, the layout and the warm reception gives the impression of drinking in somebody’s home (you know, that nerdy friend who plays French hip hop and leaves sous vide vac-packs out on the sideboard?). There’s no back bar. Instead, the team use their own liqueur range – Muyu – among other pre-batched items and a few bottles cleverly stashed within the workspace.

To add to the cheffy approach, cocktails on the menu didn’t have names. A drink using Muyu jasmine liqueur was a perfumey aperitif, and its delicate notes rolled around my palate for about as long as that first ciggy you tried hiding from mum and dad. One containing maple, walnut, cognac and sherry was like a sweet, woody Manhattan, and its flavour changed on each sip. Push your way in – if you have to – to revolutionary Tayēr. Although a slushy at Elementary (a Sex on the Beach was churning on our second visit) is just as exciting a way to drink. 

Housed in a set of Grade I-listed eighteenth-century almshouses and formerly known as the Geffrye Museum after their patron, the merchant and slave trader Sir Robert Geffrye, this lovely little Hoxton museum has offered a vivid physical history of English home interiors for more than a century. 

Inside, you’ll find displays featuring original furniture, paintings, textiles and decorative arts. The museum’s permanent ‘Rooms Through Time’ exhibits display a sequence of typical middle-class living rooms based on real London homes dating from 1600 to the present. There’s a Victorian parlour set up to host a séance, a drawing room from 1915 decorated in the Arts & Crafts style, a parlour from the 1790s, and a loft-style Shoreditch apartment owned by a gay couple in 1998. It’s an oddly interesting way to take in domestic history, with any number of intriguing details to catch your eye, from a bell jar of stuffed birds to a particular decorative flourish on a chair.

The museum also hosts temporary exhibitions and art installations, and stages daily guided tours, as well as an eclectic events programme encompassing family fun days, film screenings, craft markets, creative workshops and performances.

The Clove Club wears its numerous accolades lightly, with none of the bluff and bluster of other highfalutin establishments. With two Michelin stars to its name (the first awarded in 2014, the second in 2022), the multi-course tasting menu spans the tastiest, prettiest and most seasonal stuff from across the British Isles. Bashing out more hits than ABBA, the food is furiously fish-heavy, with the likes of sardine sashimi, scallops in dashi, and grilled tuna belly. And don't forget to visit the memorable Victorian loo.

The East End scored yet another hot gallery in 2009 in the shape of Raven Row. The rather wealthy Alex Sainsbury (yes, the supermarket) took over two adjoining houses dating from 1690, splashed around a lot of white paint (with the help of architects 6a) and presented an inaugural exhibition by New York pop artist Ray Johnson. Raven Row's design now works as an exciting fusion of old and new and, pitched as an experimental, improvisatory space, should prove a worthy addition to this arty London hub.

This subterranean cocktail bar is held in very high standing – which is ironic, considering they don’t actually allow anyone to stand around and make the place look untidy. You enter via an unassuming door close to Old Street roundabout before descending a set of stairs to a dusky, low-lit speakeasy replete with olive-green green leather, dark panelling and flickering candles. You’ll feel like you’ve time-warped back to Prohibition-era America. And when the atmosphere’s this naughty, why not indulge in a punchy cocktail or two? There’s regular live music – usually jazz, with an emphasis on the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s – and a snack menu that includes smoked almonds and salted pretzels, which will only make you thirstier. So, book ahead, take your seat and settle in.

Bistro Freddie is a London rarity: a knowingly ‘cool’ vibehouse that doesn’t make you want to dash your brains out on the edge of an understated white table. Nothing leaves the kitchen underpowered in the wallop department, including glistening, glowing rhombuses of ‘house sausage’, served with punchy (and homemade) brown sauce. Try also snails on top of pillowy flatbread, sprinkled with nubbins of crispy chicken skin, bobbing in tarragon butter. From the same stable as the nearby – and just as lovely – Crispin.

Up the spiral staircase from the bustling downstairs bar, the dining room at this 250-odd-year-old corner premises is a good-looking, cosy space. They do all-day roasts on a Sunday and the rest of the week it's British/European cuisine, with the likes of Dorset crab crumpet with pickled peaches and lime, sirloin of beef with aubergine, asparagus, beef fat potatoes and bordelaise sauce on offer. For pudding you'll find a seasonally changing soufflé. They were awarded Newcomer of the Year in the Estrella Damn Top 50 Gastropubs of 2022. 

Shoreditch’s independent cultural centre houses three cinema screens alongside exhibition and performance spaces and a cafe/bar. Run as a charity, it's a vibrant arts hub and any given week could see it hosting an assortment of music gigs, theatre shows, art exhibitions, themed festivals and all manner of workshops. 

Families are well catered for with weekly parent and baby cinema screenings of the latest films, a family cinema club with affordable tickets and the fortnightly Wiggly Jigglers active play session for under-twos. Local residents with a Tower Hamlets Libraries or Ideas Store card get discounted entry to cinema screenings.

A hotel bar can be a staid and stuffy thing. The Seed Library, thankfully, has none of that awkwardness or exclusivity. Instead, this basement adjunct to One Hundred Shoreditch is a relaxed, impressively low-lit and supremely welcoming space. 

Megastar mixologist Ryan Chetiyawardana – aka Mr Lyan – is behind the Seed Library’s menu, which sees him returning to the area a decade after opening his first bar, White Lyan, on Hoxton Street. His drinks offering is short, but well considered, as you would expect from a man dripping with booze-world awards and who is also behind the much-lauded Lyaness on the South Bank. There are eight cocktails on offer – not including the £300 Ballermaker, a somewhat intimidating concoction of prestige champers Krug Grande Cuvée Brut NV with lemon drops and rooster potatoes. We plumped instead for the more reasonably priced Cream Margarita and Chive Daiquiri, both fresh and extremely clean-tasting concoctions. Heavy, overly boozy drinks aren’t the deal here; even the Scorched Whiskey Sour and Cassis Leaf Manhattan were light and refreshing. 

The indie music label Rough Trade – perhaps most famous for signing the Smiths in the early 1980s – set up this 5,000sq ft (465sq m) record store, café and gig space in the noughties when the death of music shops in the face of internet price-cutting was widely accepted as inevitable. The store boasts a large vinyl collection, books and merchandise.

But it also welcomes live performers of pretty much every persuasion to their purpose-built stage, with standing room in front sensibly factored into the planning. Sets are shorter than a regular gig and there can be long queues for bigger named acts, but then, who wouldn't queue to see free sets from the diverse likes of Blur, Marianne Faithful and Vampire Weekend?

Landlady Sandra Esquilant, regular Tracey Emin and Lady Di are given equal profile on the walls of this traditional Truman boozer, a hangout for the arty crowd and Shoreditch flotsam and jetsam. A sign proclaiming ‘Stand Still and Rot’ is another interesting touch, but your eyes will be most drawn to the penny-chew-coloured jukebox featuring images of the Statue of Liberty. On our latest visit, the CD pages were left open at ‘Chas & Dave’s Street Party’ and Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way, The Best of’ which seemed to characterise the place nicely.

Running in bright red on the walls are the beer names of yesteryear (Eagle Ale, Eagle Stout, and so on); these days it’s Adnams and Leffe on draught, and affordable, well-kept wines.

This tiny cocktail bar has a motto, which actually reads more like admissions criteria: “Great Cocktails, No Wallies.” As a Time Out reader, you’ll obviously pass the test – which just as well, considering they can only squeeze around 50 people into the place at any given time, and it’s standing-room only. As a result, you’d best advised to book (well) ahead. Even then, you’ll need to be eagle-eyed to spot the flight of stairs, just off Hoxton Square, that leads to the subterranean spot. Once you’ve managed to bag a seat, you’ll be rewarded with world-class cocktails in a refreshingly no-frills environment of exposed brickwork and tastefully muted colours. Great cocktails, no messin’, you might say.

If you know your tenderloins from your tallow, then this is church. The elevator pitch would be that Manteca is a blend of Trullo/Padella’s eye for ‘proper’, hand-rolled fresh pasta and St John’s cleaver-happy commitment to nose-to-tail minimal waste. If the cut exists, Manteca will find a way to serve it to you and their pasta is right up there with the best in London. The perfect place for a special night out for the discerning flesh-eater in your life.

Miraculously, this supremely unpretentious little boozer continues to thrive just off Brick Lane, its modest charms seemingly not appealing to the whinnying fashionistas of Shoreditch or the suited-and-booted city curry hunters. The lively mixed crowd in here includes an old guard of regulars, the odd bewildered tourist and some thirtysomething art and music types relieved to find their East End bolthole still as welcoming as ever, while behind the tiny bar, a surprising number of unflappable staff dispense beautifully kept ales without treading on each other's toes.

The beer selection is unlikely to be exotic, keeping to familiar British ales from Fuller’s, Truman and some smaller breweries. A little shabby around the edges perhaps - 'A pub with carpet? How quaint' - but this is a London drinker with character rather than an image.

Zapote serves punchy meat and elegant seafood dishes from the mind of Yahir Gonzalez, who after a decade has jumped from the Spanish kitchen at Regent Street’s flash Aqua Nueva to cook the cuisine of his native Mexico. It’s something he does extremely well, serving up duck quesadillas with a gooey smoked chipotle jelly, scallop ceviche, beef tartare taco with roasted bone marrow and charred octopus. The ‘save room for dessert’ trope is total a cliche, but at Zapote you would be a fool not to, especially if the pistachio doughnut with morello cherry jam is on