Bar snacks, like our pubs, have moved upmarket. Gone are the bowls of peanuts on the bar and packets of smoky bacon crisps. Now any pub worth its salt serves homemade pork scratchings or pork pies with piccalilli to wash down with a pint of ale. Retro snacks are in vogue. Head to the Hind’s Head in Bray for scotch quail eggs (£2.25) or devils on horseback (£1.50). If sandwiches are more your thing, the Fox and Anchor offers fat slices of grilled Welsh rarebit (£4.95). For another blast from the past, try a pot of pickled whelks (£1.75) from Gordon Ramsay's pub The Narrow. The Pig’s Ear in Chelsea offers a more sophisticated twist on the bar snack: order a plate of canapés with your drink and you’ll get a choice of morsels such as rillettes of duck, red onion marmalade and cornichons or, if you're in the mood for something sweet, baby banoffee tartlets with vanilla cream (£10.95 for 8 pieces).
While gastropubs may be going retro, London’s hottest nightspots are embracing world cuisines in their bar menus. Floridita serves crisp pork skins (£1.50) and pao de queijo, aka Brazilian cheese bread (£1.50) alongside classy Cuban cocktails. If dim sum is more your style, head to Ling Ling@Hakkasan where you can enjoy the exquisite Eastern-themed cocktails at the same time. The achingly cool Milk & Honey, which holds the top spot for Appeal in the Zagat London Nightlife Survey, turns Japanese with salted edamame (£3). Mexican street food snacks make the perfect accompaniment to hibiscus margaritas at Wahaca, and sherry tastes even better than when eaten with the tapas at Fino. Whatever style you go for, with bar snacks like these the drinks themselves are set to be nudged out of the limelight.
– Eleanor Smallwood