The Lowback, Canary Wharf

Last Updated on November 13, 2025

Cocktails, Docklands-style at the Lowback

The Lowback is a brand new cocktail bar in Canary Wharf that shares a floating pavilion with its big brother Hawksmoor. This glamorous water-level venue combines excellent drinks and food in an atmospheric setting. 

The Lowback can be found in Docklands’ latest neighbourhood – Wood Wharf – located seconds from the back exit of Canary Wharf station. It also features a recently opened outdoor terrace suspended over the water which will no doubt prove popular in the summer.

The Lowback has a touch of style and atmosphere that can feel lacking on the Canary Wharf hospitality scene.  There’s a nine-metre-long bar, a dark green marble floor, polished timber ceiling and a view over the water.
You can prop up the bar, of course, or do what we did and sink into the deep blue-green velvet upholstery of the circular booths. As the sun went down outside a pleasingly moody gloom descended on the bar. 

Cocktails are taken very seriously indeed at the Lowback and the experienced and enthusiastic team are keen to help you make the right choices. My companion chose the Pink Gibson Martini, a concoction of Boatyard vodka, Audemus Umami Gin, Aperitivo co. dry vermouth and pink pickled onions. This deliciously savoury cocktail turned out to be the perfect drink for a pickled onion fanatic like my friend, who quickly declared “An alcoholic pickled onion, perfect!”. Our waiter confessed the drink’s nickname is Monster Munch.

The Martini menu features five suggested concoctions but the bar staff here are happy to make whatever you want.

I picked from the Landmarks list, which features five of Hawksmoor’s old favourites plus one newcomer – the appropriately named Lowback. The menu describes the latter as a “seafarer’s gimlet embracing a little piña colada fun under the Japanese sun”. I couldn’t resist. Made from Plymouth gin, lime leaf, coconut and yuzu, this was sweet but not too sweet, citrussy and delicious. Plus the lime leaf was playfully attached to the glass with a miniature clothes’ peg.

The food menu is divided into a selection of Hawksmoor grass-fed steaks plus a list of burgers that includes the Big Matt imported from the restaurant’s New York branch. There are lots of dishes too that are exclusive to the Lowback. We decided to sample some dishes from the well-balanced list of small plates and sharing dishes. We loved the Ash-Baked beetroots with pickled fennel, horseradish and hazelnuts. At the Lowback, the beets are cooked on coals every morning before the meats go on. Several colours of earthy beetroot were partnered with crunchy caramelised hazelnuts. The slight sourness of the pickled fennel and heat of the horseradish were good foils to the sweet beets and nuts.

My companion went into something of a rapture over the Lowback’s take on Fried Chicken before I’d even taken a mouthful. She was right, it was very good indeed. The bone-in herb-fed chicken is fried and then rested to keep it juicy on the inside and crunchy on the outside. The accompanying hot, sour and spicy kimchi slaw was a revelation and a great match for the chicken. There is definitely a lot of fermenting and pickling going on in the Lowback kitchen, giving a lot of strong contrasting flavours to their food.

Our third shared plate was the Langoustine scampi with tartare sauce and lemon. This is an extremely grand version of a pub classic that can sometimes be a doughy disappointment. Not here – the Lowback’s version featured light, well-seasoned batter, plump langoustines, crispy fried parsley and good tartare sauce.

My companion chose from the Landmarks menu for her second cocktail and picked the Reformed Pornstar. Our waiter described it to us as featuring all of the best bits of a pornstar martini without the “showiness”. A mix of Absolut vodka, Pineapple, passionfruit, jasmine and champagne, this was a lovely refreshing drink without the hint of boiled sweet that sometimes plagues the “unreformed” version. My companion was also very taken with the large hand-carved ice cube.

I got one too in my second drink, the Sour Cherry Negroni. I had wanted to try one of the Lowback’s bottled cocktails that can be ordered by the bottle or glass. The menu promises that these “have all gently been comingling in the bottle, resulting in luxuriously smooth sipping”. The “comingling” of Tanqueray gin, Campari, Martini Rubino and sour cherry made for a deep, complex cocktail.

The Lowback is an ideal place to roll into after work for a few drinks. You’re quite likely to find yourself still there hours later and eating and drinking your way through the menu. Very much recommended.