The Ned bar guide: the Nickel Bar, its live music, drinks prices and the bars kept for members

The Nickel Bar is the one most visitors mean. Its own drinks list calls it a classic American bar and the heart of the Grand Banking Hall. You sit at a marble-topped corner bar lined with high leather chairs, or on banquettes with velvet stools, and the Nickel Stage beside it carries live sets that run from jazz trios to the blues, with emerging acts on what the hotel calls New Music Mondays. Seats are for drinks, bites and music, and no booking is required.

The drinks list opens with 10 house cocktails, 9 of them priced. The Courtesan Martini, Grey Goose with mango, pineapple, pandan and Thiénot Brut Champagne, is the dearest printed, at £17.50; The 54th, Jack Daniel’s with umeshu, citrus and shiso soda, costs £16. Classic cocktails are made on request. The American shelf is the long one: the list read on 11 October 2026 prints 31 whiskeys under its Bourbon heading, from Four Roses Small Batch at £11.50 to Michter’s 20-year-old at £350, with Pappy Van Winkle 15-year-old at £85, and 10 under Rye. Draught Camden Hells, Camden Pale Ale and The Ned IPA, brewed by Camden Town Brewery, cost £8, Guinness £8.50, and halves are poured.

3 other counters serve anyone. Electric Bar & Diner is the one with screens showing live sport; its drinks list has 8 Old-Fashioneds from £16 to £20, milkshakes from £10 and an After Eight shake with vodka at £17. Millie’s Lounge describes itself as a British restaurant and bar, and its cocktails carry names such as Lindisfarne, Lakeland and Holyrood, at £16 to £17.50, with a Martini of the Month at £16.

The Parlour is the jazz and cabaret room, open Wednesday to Saturday. Dinner bookings carry a £20 entertainment cover a head, which Ned’s Club members do not pay, and from 10pm the room takes reservations for drinks alone. Next to it, in the Long Bar, the hotel has set up a Guinness bar with a menu of its own: Guinness Cheddar croquettes at £14, beef sliders with Guinness rarebit at £16, house cocktails from £16 to £17.50. The same Long Bar appears on the club’s page as a place where members work and hold meetings during the day, and neither page says at which hours a non-member is served there.

Then come the doors that stay closed without a membership. The Library Bar, a Champagne and martini bar behind a jacquard curtain on the ground floor, is for Ned’s Club and Ned Friend members. The Vault is the late bar inside the bank’s strongroom, lined with its original safety deposit boxes: 3,000 of them by the club’s page, 3,800 by the fact sheet printed on Electric’s drinks list. Diners at The Parlour are offered access to The Vault after dinner, subject to availability. The rooftop, with its pool and terraces, is open only to members and their guests, says the hotel’s FAQ, which also counts 12 bars in the building.

Guests’ accounts are about the room as much as the glass. One who came on a Saturday afternoon, writing in April 2026, was seated straight away despite the crowd and found live jazz playing. Another, in August 2026, had come for the roof terrace, found it was for members only, and was glad to stay for a drink in the hall, near the musicians. A January 2026 reviewer warned that the evenings get «quite noisy», hard for conversation and good for anyone who likes live music. A September 2026 visitor resented paying £17 for a single Bombay and tonic. A couple staying at the hotel in May 2026 sat «at the bar», without saying which of them, were handed the bill after one round and told the table was needed.

The Nickel Bar is a bar inside a busy hall. For a room built round the drink itself, the Connaught Bar in Mayfair ranks 10th in The World’s 50 Best Bars 2026 and mixes martinis from its Martini Trolley; it opens at 4pm from Monday to Saturday and operates a no-reservations policy.

Claridge’s Bar does take them, opens at noon every day and admits children only if they are staying at the hotel, and then until 6pm. Scarfes Bar at Rosewood London opens at 4pm, with a fire, the works of Gerald Scarfe and live jazz of its own.