Pick Dalston or Soho Before You Book
The Venning brothers run two bars under one name, and the choice between them shapes the whole night. Dalston is the tiny experimental original; Soho is the bigger, glossier follow-up. One is not a version of the other.
The dirty martini arrives with a small plate of three Maldon oysters, unannounced, because you ordered a martini. That is the deal at both Three Sheets sites — order the drink, get the oysters — and it tells you most of what you need to know about how Noel and Max Venning think about a bar. The martini itself is Belvedere shaken through koseret tea, olive oil, picpoul and sea salt. It reads like a stunt on paper. It drinks like the standard version has been quietly rebuilt from the inside.
The original opened on Kingsland Road in 2016, took UK Bar of the Year at the Class Awards in 2019, and landed at number 16 on the 2019 World's 50 Best Bars. Soho followed in March 2023 on Manette Street and sits at number 80 on the 2025 longlist. Same surname, same instincts, different rooms — and the choice between them is the actual decision to make before booking anything.
Dalston is the tiny experimental original and Soho is the bigger, glossier follow-up with more food and less nerve.
Editorial Deep
The menu is seasonal and rotates hard, so what you order on any given visit is not what a review will hold to. The structure is the more useful thing to know. At Dalston the list is split into three tiers — One Sheet, Two Sheets, Three Sheets — of increasing strength, which is the closest thing to a road map any cocktail bar in London gives you. Start where you want to end up, not where the menu opens.
The Kingsland Road frontage does not announce itself. You walk past it once, come back, and step into a room that is smaller than you expected — marble-topped two-tops, high stools, an exposed-brick wall running the length of the nook, and a bar counter that seats a handful more. That is the entire venue. It fits two people at a table. Not two-plus-one. Two. Bring a third and someone stands.
Dalston pulls a Kingsland Road crowd of couples on a second or third date, industry drinkers on a night off, and the occasional cocktail tourist who has done the reading. It stays quiet enough to hear the person you came with and full enough that a Saturday walk-in without a booking is a gamble. Soho picks up more theatre-and-dinner traffic and a heavier tourist share on the back of its No. 80 place on the World's 50 Best Bars in 2025. If you want the crowd to be the point, go elsewhere. If you want a crowd that leaves you alone, this is the one.
Add the three oysters that arrive with any martini or champagne order and the round is doing work most London bars charge materially more for. Soho runs higher per drink and the food menu is bigger, so the tab widens; the ratio of quality to price is still fair, just less startling.
The reason to come back is a Tuesday in Dalston with one other person, a booking at 7pm, and no plan for what happens after. Order the dirty martini first for the oysters, work through whichever tier of the menu matches the evening you want, and let the seasonal list do the choosing. What this bar is not is a group venue, a big-night anchor, or somewhere to end a stag do — the room physically will not have you. Go as a pair or don't go.
Order this
Drink this.
Dirty martini (Belvedere, koseret tea, olive oil, picpoul, sea salt) — comes with three complimentary oysters
“One of London's sharpest cocktail rooms, if you go as a pair.”
Dalston is the one to book: the three-tier menu and the martini-plus-oysters ritual make it one of the better cocktail rooms in the city. Soho is the same instincts in a bigger, glossier room with a longer food menu and less of the edge that made the original interesting. Go to Dalston with one other person on a Tuesday, order the dirty martini, and let the seasonal list run the rest of the night.
The Verdict
