Ridley Road Market Bar

The most fun place to dance with great music and great slushy cocktails! Plus the cloak room is free which is the best on a cold night out

In my Top 10 for sure!! It's about good times on the dance floor, letting your hair down, holiday/house party kinda vibes – and open late. Worth checking their IG for what's on when, as it does cater for a wide variety of genres on rotation including Dance, Disco, DNB, Euro-pop, Garage, Rockabilly, Soul and Live performances… Recommend drink: Gin & Blood Orange Real nights for all people. Independent. Love it.

Good vibes going on here with mainly 20s-40s age group. Beers and cocktails, great Mojitos 😉! It gets packed on the weekends, so if you don't mind major shoulder rubbing, you will love it here. Only bad point I'd say is the location of the toilets, you have to squeeze your way through the busy dance floor everytime. Good points - No entrance fee, smoking area outside

Great place to let your hair down, enjoy the atmosphere. Play good music.

Always plays the best music and has a reasonable mix of fun cocktails and ‘trendy’ beers. Has a kitsch vibe - imagine your nan returning from a holiday to Miami in 1982 and dedicating her shed to a tropical chill out room. Slice girls pizza is delicious and although it often gets busy you’ll deffo feel like it’s ‘your little place’. I love it here.

Disappointingly I'm leaving a negative review of this place. I wanted to go because it's unique to have a place like this in a location with so much (potentially unknown) history. There was a very long queue at 11:45pm with thorough security. For what? I do not know... After going inside after waiting for about 20 minutes, the music wasn't fun, there was a very long queue at the bar, and it was just very boring... We left after one drink. If you want to be around people who are pretending they're having a good time, this place is for you.

Fun on Friday nights. Can get v busy and music can be mixed but overral I’ve always had good evenings here. Staff are friendly

Really good spot for a late night drink, very busy and stays open late - had a great time here. The bar staff stored our bags behind the bar which was a handy touch. Very trendy crowd throughout. Only negative I would say is that the toilet situation is quite poor, it’s shared facilities and there are no urinals here, bouncer on the toilet door making sure that no men push through.

What a bonkers venue. You feel as if you're the only socialisers in the city, seeing as the market stalls are all around the outside and it's the only establishment with any life in it, seemingly for miles. Really good party atmosphere, even if on the night we were in the tunes were nothing special. It's surely far more sedate during the day but at night it made for a great port of call.

Ok.... kind of LOVE this place!! Perhaps there is something about a DJ wearing pajamas playing old 70s mixed jams while sitting at a picnic table munching on Slice Girls pizza and sipping on cheap (and strong) ginger mojitos. I'm not sure how to make this a more winning combination!! We got there around 8pm and it was perfectly NOT busy yet! I heard this place gets really crowded with some crazy dancers, which I will partake in at a later date. But for this particular visit after navigating through the sea-smelly fish market, I was happy to have discovered this place!!

This place is strange and interesting and cool. Drinks are cheap, they had what looked like tasty and exciting food on a grill outside, and the clientele was some sort of pan-countercultural shitshow. The general aesthetic is that of a tropically themed quinceanera in a cafeteria. The DJ's were playing early 2000's mainstream hip hop and the response was positive, though I couldn't tell who was trying to be ironic and who wasn't. I dug it anyway. The place is low-key and pretty small and everybody there seemed pretty friendly and some form of proudly not-normal. I think it is the kind of place where you could end up in a triad relationship between a crossdresser and a retro cowboy. I do mean that in a good way.

Okay, yea, no. I don't mind hipsters and normally I can't even identify them so they have to be pointed out to me. However, here, you become completely inoculated to them as they fill this place to the brim with their ironic 'I-don't-want-to-dance-but-I-do' moves and their 'unimpressed-with-everything-but-naturally-more-discerning-than-you' looks. I realize that is extremely grumpy of me. I actually got friendly with a group towards the end, making up slightly for my initial sour mood. I think the main problem was that it was too crowded and everyone was really young. I was with my group of 22/23 year old friends and we looked like the oldest people there which was depressing in several ways. The decor has clearly had a concussion and has forgotten whether it is a disco a tropical party or a retro-diner. There is a disco ball overhanding a checkered tile floor with neon mini-sofas and a Hawaiian luau entrance/front. I think they are going for an 80's dingy-chic look but it's not my scene. It might be night out gold for someone else though, I suppose. The beverages were wine, Red Stripe, or 3 standard cocktails from a pitcher, I believe. The music was like late 90s/early '00s and it was loud and all came from the back of the place. There was no place to sit, even at the cafeteria style area in the front. Also, the dance floor was too small for a club and out of place for a bar. The saving graces? There is food outside which looked good. And the license keeps it open late so if you really need a drink in Dalston past 11ish, you might buy something. Maybe.

This is a relatively new bar/events space opened in Dalston. They serve cans of Red stripe, some cocktails & wine. Food can be purchased from the different stall owners outside the bar and can be eaten inside. They have a late licence too with different DJ's playing.

Sure the queue is long, the crowd is sort of painful, and the Red Stripes go for £4 a pop, but I bloody love Market Bar. The place looks like a 90s temporary classroom with a touch of what is best described as 'disco tropicana' thrown in for good measure. When the music is good, it's oh so good - think classics like Ja Rule and Ashanti (I think they're being ironic here, I'm really not) - other times its obscure jazz et al but the dance floor is always sweaty. Even better are the pina coladas that use REAL pineapple, albeit a negligible alcohol content. My only complaint is the wait time to get in and the somewhat overzealous doormen.

You know Club Tropicana, by Wham! ? Yes, of course you do. Well, Ridley Road Market Bar is pretty much the real world incarnation of this song, except the drinks aren't free, and there are less people wearing swimwear. It's kind of 80s, slightly camp when it comes to atmosphere and clientele, and definitely tropical in terms of decor. And Club Tropicana is exactly the kind of track you can expect to hear there. Music emanates from the back of the room, which has the feel of a privately hired disco, complete with standing PA speakers and a dancefloor that people seemed a bit scared to venture onto until they had had a lot to drink. Funky retro music playing, late twenties-early thirties alternative young professionals nattering, and mojitos being sipped. Outside there are bbqs serving up a variety of food, which I can't comment on. Drinks are quite cheap. If you consider yourself anywhere from moderately- to very-'Dalston' you will probably like this place.

This place is in the most random location & feels like somebody did up a shack to be a beach bar. Often they play afro-beat or reggae (except on weekend nights when they start playing boring mainstream stuff). Even so it's fun to dance & the crowd is always up for a boogie. Drinks are cheap and fun. I've been here on a Saturday and there was no queue outside, easy to get drinks, & easy to move around even though it was crowded. I love it because it's unexpected and fun.

I had a lovely coffee in the friendly market bar where I ate my delicious meatball sandwich. Very friendly owner, Luca, created an amazing sandwich on ciabatta, with smoked mozarella and three different sauces. You can choose polenta instead and there is also a choice of vegetarian meatballs. Very good value.

Love this place and apparently everyone else has learned about it because it has become PACKED on a Friday night compared to when I first came here. The meatballs out in front are cheap and perfect food to start your drinking adventures with. Their cocktails looks great, but we stuck with a bottle of wine when we were there and it was perfect with the meatballs. Music is great, atmosphere very friendly. Could easily spent a long night here.

Been a couple of times now and had a really good time. Good atmosphere. Fabulous and friendly staff, generally a good crowd. Cheap cans and tequila shots. All round good fun. Only knocked a star off because the music isn't always the absolute best, but it suppose that's just personal preference anyway. Oh, and also the lack of cloakroom?