Give Up an Hour of Your Evening for a Better Pint Than You Planned On
A Grade II Fitzrovia pub with one of London's best Guinness pours downstairs and a Michelin-chef dining room and English wine bar hidden above it.
The pint arrives with a head that holds its shape for the full walk from the bar to a stool by the window, and the barman doesn't hand it over until the surge has settled twice. That is the tell. The George is one of a small handful of Fitzrovia pubs where Guinness is treated as a discipline rather than a tap pull, and the queue at the bar on a Friday moves at exactly the pace the pour demands.
The building is 18th-century, Grade II listed, sitting on Great Portland Street a few minutes from Oxford Circus. It runs under JKS Restaurants — the group behind Bao, Bibi, and The Cadogan Arms — which is the context that explains the second floor. Because upstairs is a different bar and a different room entirely: a dining space with a menu from chef James Knappett, and tucked next to it, an English wine bar with a converted mantelpiece serving as an ice trough for English sparkling. Ground floor is the pub you came in for. Upstairs is the reason to stay longer than you meant to.
A proper pint of Guinness downstairs and a Michelin-chef wine bar upstairs, in one Grade II building, priced like neither knows the other exists.
Editorial Deep
The Guinness is the anchor and it earns the reputation. Two-part pour, correct rest, a head thick enough to leave the lacing rings down the glass that tell you the barman knows what they're doing. The pint sits in the standard Fitzrovia band, but the execution is not standard — this is a pint you'd cross a couple of Tube stops for rather than settle for whatever's nearest. Order it and let the cask ales and craft taps take second billing.
The bar is dark timber worn smooth at the elbows, cut-glass panels above the counter throwing the light around, and the kind of original tiling on the floor that dates the building rather than decorates it. It reads as an 18th-century room that has been kept rather than restored. On a Friday the ground floor fills to standing by seven, the sound level climbs to the point where you're leaning in to hear, and a live band takes a corner Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings — folk, jazz, whatever's on the roster that week.
Weeknights it's the Fitzrovia after-work crowd — architects, media people, the ad agencies from Great Portland Street — three-deep at the bar by six and thinning by nine. Weekends draw a broader mix, and matchdays pull in Arsenal supporters who have adopted the room. The upstairs wine bar filters heavily for a quieter, older crowd who came for the sparkling rather than the pint. Both work. The crowd downstairs is the energy; the crowd upstairs is the calm. Pick the room that matches the night you're having.
The cocktail list is not published, so treat the Negroni as a mid-teens figure and check the menu before ordering a second. The bill is defensible for what the ground floor delivers and looks like value the moment you compare it to the Mayfair hotel bars a fifteen-minute walk south.
This is the best version of a Fitzrovia pub with a serious upstairs — a category of one, arguably, because most pubs with Michelin chefs attached lose the pub in the process and The George hasn't. Come back on a Sunday for the roast, or on a Friday when the live music kicks in and the Guinness queue moves at the ten-minute pace the pour needs. Skip it if you wanted a quiet drink at eight on a weekday and don't want to climb stairs — the ground floor at peak is not that room.
Order this
Drink this.
Guinness downstairs; Yuzu & Sesame Negroni at the bar; a glass of English sparkling at the upstairs wine bar
“The Guinness alone justifies the stop; the upstairs makes it a longer night than you planned.”
A JKS-run Fitzrovia pub that pours one of the better Guinness pints in W1 and hides a Michelin-chef dining room and English wine bar on its first floor. Come for the pint, stay for the upstairs, book ahead if you want the Knappett menu or the Gluepot private dining room. Skip if you want a quiet weeknight drink at peak — the ground floor at seven on a Friday is loud, full, and a fifteen-minute wait from bar to first sip.
The Verdict
