The ten best pubs of the year

BISHOP'S FINGER
9-10 West Smithfield, EC1 (020 7248 2341)
With Smithfield Market on the right and Bart's Hospital on the left, this handsome Victorian pub is enjoying golden years, admired for its looks, its real ales and its exceptional food. It now has an open kitchen at the end of the bar counter from which fresh grilled sardines and panbaked skate emerge. There's a wine list on every polished table starting with a house champagne at £19.95 a bottle.

THE FLEETWOOD
36 Wilson Street, EC2 (020 7247 2242)
Is this a glimpse of the pub of the future? The Fleetwood sits, sleek and minimalist, at the bottom of one of the great glass and steel canyons of the new City of London, cool, confident and air-conditioned. Happily what it sells is the same. Fuller's ESB, London Pride, Chiswick bitter.

THE HOGSHEAD
5 Lisle Street, WC2 (020 7437 3335)
This splendidly sited building - the one with the huge stepped gable that looks down Leicester Street into Leicester Square - was built as St John's Hospital. Now it has made a good pub with all the Hogshead virtues: lots of everything, six regular beers, six guest ales, a long wine list with 10 whites and 10 reds sold by the glass.

THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR
95 Chancery Lane, WC2 (020 7831
The Union Bank of London's branch in Chancery Lane has made a spectacular pub. The banking hall has become a vast bar, there is a variety of handsome smaller bars upstairs and noble loos where the vaults were. This being Wetherspoons, there are acres of no smoking space and no music of any kind.

O'CONOR DON
88 Marylebone Lane, W1 (020 7935 9311)
The O'Conor Don hasn't occupied its corner of Marylebone Lane for long but it is already established as one of the best Irish pubs in London. With its big high windows and smiling cheery staff, this is a most welcoming place. The Irish stew, to be eaten either in the bar or the restaurant upstairs, is wonderful.

THE OLD DISPENSARY
19a Leman Street, E1 (020 7702 1406)
You will never guess why this splendid new public house is called the Old Dispensary. It is because it is an old dispensary. It was built in the grandest possible style by public subscription in 1858 for the treatment of the poor. Now it has been transformed into this excellent pub, a soaring bar, everything in it polished and gleaming, circular skylights, a spacious gallery and a comfortable no-smoking room.

THE OLD SPOTTED DOG
212 Upton Lane, E7 (020 8472 1794)
The Old Spotted Dog comes as quite a surprise - this beautiful old country pub in butch West Ham! The builders' yards and council flats weren't there when the Spotted Dog was a pup and Henry Vlll kept his hunting dogs there. It is now the only thing for miles around that Henry would recognise. The friendly Tudor gables and white weatherboarding are much the same, as are the beams and settles inside. There have been additions, of course, among them a restaurant among the rafters and a big conservatory.

THE SALT HOUSE
63 Abbey Road, NW8 (020 7328 6626)
Abbey Road is famous for its pedestrian crossing, the one the Beatles walked over in 1969. At no 63 is this fine corner pub. The Beatles would have known it as the Belgrave Arms, but I bet it is a lot nicer now. It became the Salt House quite recently and is now known for its quite exceptional food. This is a pub where even the sandwiches have class.

SETTLE INN
186 Battersea Bridge Road, SW11 (020 7228 0395)
For more than 100 years this nice pub was the Rising Sun, but changing it to the Settle Inn hasn't harmed it in the least. The place looks young again and twice its size and there has been a revolution in the kitchen. The menu, chalked up daily, shows that this pub, like so many others, hasswitched to the holiday food of the Mediterranean. Will this be the olde pubbe fayre of the new millennium?

VINO VERITAS
44 Elizabeth Street, SW1 (020 7730 5437)
When Eaton Square and its grand neighbours were going up in the l830s, the army of builders needed places to drink, so they built some. This one was the Joiners Arms. Time passed and the pub improved its social standing by becoming the Prince of Wales. Six years or so ago it felt it could do better still and became London's first pub for 2,000 years to have a Latin name. The back bar of the Vino Veritas is now lined with bottles of wine and indeed the wine does well, but so does the beer, and by and large it remains the pleasant Georgian pub the joiners knew.