Dukes London

No ice touches the martini at any stage. The glasses come out frozen, the spirits come out colder, and the whole thing is mixed at a trolley pulled up beside your table (DUKES, 50Best Discovery).

Why go

Alessandro Palazzi has run this bar since 2007, in a room that has been in St James's Place since 1908 (DUKES). The vermouth is made for the bar rather than bought in, the peel is Amalfi lemon cut long, and the glasses are the V shape that everyone else abandoned (50Best Discovery). Ian Fleming drank here.

The reason to trust it in 2026 is who picks it. Agostino Perrone, director of mixology at Connaught Bar, which placed sixth in the world last year, names Dukes when asked for the best bar in London. Jeremy King, who runs Arlington, and Claire Ptak of Violet Cakes each did the same in separate interviews within a year.

There is a second room at the same address that gets almost no attention. The Delany Drawing Room is a whisky lounge by Russell Sage Studio, named for the eighteenth-century botanist Mary Delany who lived on this street, and it runs distillery-led tastings through the year and publishes its own Whisky Almanac (DUKES).

Order this / avoid

• Order: the Dukes Martini, and watch it get made. The house vermouth is the part you cannot buy anywhere else. If whisky is the point, go next door to the Delany, where the Early Pour runs Monday to Wednesday from 3pm to 5pm at GBP 15 a drink.
• Avoid: the fortnight from 29 July to 16 August 2026, when both rooms are shut for the reception refurbishment. Shorts, sportswear and plain T-shirts, which the door refuses. Arriving after nine, since last orders are 10pm.

What locals & experts say

• Agostino Perrone, director of mixology at Connaught Bar, asked for the best bar or pub in London: "it's not a pub, it's not a bar, it is a church. Dukes. It's the [work] of Alessandro Palazzi and the team with the white jacket." ref
• Jeremy King, the restaurateur behind Arlington, asked for his best cocktail spot: "Dukes. It's the place to live out your Dorothy Parker aphorism." ref
• Claire Ptak, founder of Violet Cakes, same question, ten months later: "Dukes. Cocktail mecca. It's the best." ref
• The World's 50 Best Bars, on the other hand, does not list it. Dukes appears in 50Best's Discovery directory, which carries no ranking, and it is absent from both the 2024 and the 2025 lists. London's 2025 entries were Tayer + Elementary at 5, Connaught Bar at 6, Satan's Whiskers at 21 and Scarfes Bar at 31. Perrone runs one of those bars and still points here. ref
• No critic review found. Searched on 1 August 2026 with no bylined review of the bar reached, so the standing above rests on practitioner picks and the venue's own account of its technique.

Good to know

• Closed right now: both rooms paused on Wednesday 29 July 2026 and reopen on Monday 17 August. The hotel is rebuilding its reception and arrival.
• Where: 35 St James's Place SW1A 1NY, tucked off the street inside the hotel.
• Timing: Dukes Bar Monday to Saturday 3pm to 10pm, last orders at 10, doors at 10.30. The Delany Drawing Room Monday to Saturday 2pm to 11pm.
• Booking: walk-in only, with a wait at busy times.
• Dress code, and it is enforced: smart casual. No sportswear, shorts or T-shirts, except a short-sleeved collared polo. Over-18s only.
• Access: the hotel entrance is not wheelchair accessible while the refurbishment runs.
• Two rooms, one address: the martini bar and the whisky lounge are separate, with separate hours. Everything anyone has said about Dukes is about the martini bar.
• Hygiene: no FSA record could be found for this premises on 1 August 2026, searched by name across the register and by a one-mile sweep around the address that returned the neighbouring hotels and clubs. No rating is claimed either way.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: none. His raw saved-places export carries an empty Note against the row, which reads "DUKES LONDON" there. The master line "Alessandro Palazzi's table-side martinis; Fleming's 007 haunt" is curation text rather than his words; both halves were rechecked against the venue and 50 Best's directory before being used, and both hold.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

should-visit — Worth rearranging an evening for, once it reopens on 17 August. The whole proposition is one drink made one way: no ice touches it at any point, the glasses and the spirits come out frozen, the vermouth is made for the bar instead of bought, and Alessandro Palazzi mixes it at a trolley pulled up beside your table with a long peel of Amalfi lemon. He has run this bar since 2007 and the room has been here since 1908. The evidence that it still holds is the best kind: three working practitioners picked it in three separate interviews across ten months, and the hardest of those picks comes from Agostino Perrone, who runs the bar at the Connaught, sixth in the world in 2025, and calls Dukes a church. Set against that, no critic we can reach has reviewed it, and it sits on neither the 2024 nor the 2025 World's 50 Best Bars list that four other London bars are on. So this is a detour rather than the trip: a singular serve done superbly by people who are not moving, in a St James's hotel with a dress code, at ceremony prices, closing at half ten. Next door, The Delany Drawing Room is the whisky answer and keeps its own almanac and a distillery tasting series, and nobody has written a word about it.