Nightjar (Shoreditch)

Nightjar is a Shoreditch basement bar with space for private events of up to 90 guests, and its defining move is treating live music as a nightly centrepiece beside elaborate cocktails. The room runs music from 9pm, with jazz, swing, blues and funk at the core. Expect a close-range, seated listen: this is a compact late-evening room for catching skilled players in a cabaret-like setting, with the drinks programme sharing equal billing.

A jazz-bar idea, brought to City Road

Roisin Stimpson and Edmund Weil opened Nightjar in Shoreditch in 2010 after conceiving the project at a jazz concert: a bar designed to give that music an appropriate setting. Before launch, Drinks International reported a planned November 19, 2010 opening on City Road, with singers and musicians programmed into a 20th-century cabaret atmosphere. The founding proposition was unusually clear for a cocktail bar: vintage drinks, seated service and live performance formed one experience. In 2022, the pair carried the format to Nightjar Carnaby, describing that expansion as a chance to apply a decade of learning from the Old Street original. Shoreditch marked its 15th anniversary in 2025 with a menu that traced its drinks from 2010 onward, a useful measure of how firmly the original concept has held its shape.

The room today

Nightjar books top jazz, swing and blues musicians from across the UK, with late sets on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays alongside two earlier sets. Table bookings are recommended; live-music cover charges are added to the bill and paid directly to the performers. Downstairs, soft lighting, candlelit tables and banquette seating create a focused, intimate layout, while the venue says everything sits on one level once inside. Choose it for vintage jazz, rhythm and blues, New Orleans flavours and Latin-leaning late sessions, plus a polished cocktail-bar pace instead of a conventional standing gig.