The Bar With No Name

The house signature is a Prairie Oyster built on a tomato yolk, and it comes out of a laboratory on the floor above the bar.

Why go

Tony Conigliaro opened this room in 2009 and put a purpose-built lab upstairs, which at the time nobody else was doing and which is now the standard claim on every cocktail menu in the city (Difford's Guide). The ingredients are made there rather than bought. As of July 2025 that means Guinness reduction, paprika bitters, rhubarb cordial and pine-infused gin (Time Out). The Prairie Oyster has been the signature since the start: horseradish vodka, oloroso, shallots, pepper sauce and celery salt, built around a tomato yolk and finished with an oyster leaf. The room seats under forty, it is off Upper Street on a residential corner, and there is a pianist on Wednesdays and Sundays with live music on Thursdays.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the Prairie Oyster, once, because it is the drink the lab was built to make. After that, whatever the bar is currently pouring the house bitters and cordials into. The zero-percent list is worked as hard as the rest of it, down to a Blackberry Pie Bellini.
• Avoid: arriving on spec. Difford's advice stands: with under forty seats, "if trekking across London specially, you are still advised to ring ahead and reserve your spot" (ref). Also do not come for the room, which is the part the critics dock.

What locals & experts say

• Lisa Wright, Time Out London (21 July 2025), five stars out of five: "Punters come for the outstanding cocktails, some of which may push the boundaries of what can be put in a glass, but they always maintain the drinkability of the classics. Their upstairs laboratory, meanwhile, produces bespoke cocktail ingredients such as Guinness reduction, paprika bitters, rhubarb cordial and pine-infused gin." ref
• Simon Difford, Difford's Guide (7 August 2015), the category specialist, on who is actually making the drinks: "It's rare to find Tony behind the stick these days, but the very talented bar crew make consistently great drinks, delivered with equally attentive service." His verdict on the room is the dissenting line: "The underwhelming two-tone interior has something of a 1950s Italian cafe-style." ref
• On the name, Wright puts it plainly: "It may style itself as 'The Bar With No Name', but in reality, everyone knows this place by its address." Difford's supplies the paperwork: the bills come from "The Bar With No Name Ltd." ref
• No practitioner vote found. places-db/london/data/chef-votes.jsonl was searched on 1 August 2026. Conigliaro himself is in it, picking the Connaught Bar, and nobody in it picks his own room. Said rather than dressed up.

Good to know

• The name: both are current. The company is The Bar With No Name Ltd, the door has no sign, the website is the address, and the venue's own copy welcomes you to the Bar with No Name. Nothing has been renamed, so this entry carries no former_name.
• Where: 69 Colebrooke Row, on the corner of Elliott's Place, a few minutes off Upper Street. Angel tube.
• Timing: opens 5pm. Closes midnight Monday to Wednesday and Sunday, 1am Thursday, 2am Friday and Saturday.
• Booking: ring ahead. Fewer than forty seats.
• Music: house pianist Wednesdays and Sundays, live music Thursdays.
• Hygiene: the FSA records rating 5 for 69 Colebrooke Row, with all three components at 0, which is the cleanest score the scheme gives. The rating date is 26 November 2019. ref
• Michelin: not recorded either way. Our cached Michelin data covers stars only, and a bar sits outside the restaurant guide.

Jeff's take (his words)

Jeff has no note on this one. The saved-places export carries an empty Note for the row, so jeff_note stays empty and nothing here is attributed to him. The master spreadsheet's one-line description was an enrichment lead and has been replaced by the fetched facts.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

should-visit — Tony Conigliaro built a laboratory over a bar and then made the bar's whole list out of it, which is why every room in London now claims a house cordial. The signature is a Prairie Oyster with a tomato yolk in it, horseradish vodka, oloroso, an oyster leaf on top, and it has been on since 2009. What is coming out of the lab now is Guinness reduction, paprika bitters, rhubarb cordial and pine-infused gin, per Time Out's Lisa Wright, who gave it five stars in July 2025. Simon Difford is the useful corrective: the crew are consistently good and the interior is plain, so go for what is in the glass. Fewer than forty seats, so ring ahead. It sits at should-visit rather than higher because the evidence we hold is one current review and one profile from 2015, and no working bartender in our files has named it.