Where do locals actually go for aperitivo in London?

London doesn't have a deeply rooted aperitivo culture the way Milan or Turin do, so "where locals go" really means where Italian expats and drink-literate Londoners have built the closest equivalent. Café Murano's bar in Covent Garden does a proper Venetian-style spritz hour with decent cicchetti. Quo Vadis in Soho runs an early-evening bar program worth sitting at. For something more deliberately Italian, Petersham Nurseries in Richmond or their Covent Garden site does aperitivo-adjacent evenings with good Campari pours. Lyaness at Sea Containers and Swift in Soho attract the crowd that cares about what's in the glass without performing about it. The honest answer is that most London drinkers gravitate toward natural wine bars like P. Franco in Clapton or Sager + Wilde in Hackney around 6 p.m., which functions as the local aperitivo ritual even if nobody calls it that. Avoid the tourist-facing Aperol Spritz menus near Borough Market entirely.

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