Lincoln drinks in three distinct corners. The Brayford Pool waterfront is the modern bar strip — large chain-led places, a couple of nightclubs, and the university crowd. The Cornhill Quarter and the High Street have the more traditional town-centre pubs and an emerging clutch of cocktail bars. Up the hill, Bailgate and Steep Hill hold the smaller, more characterful inns — several genuinely medieval.
For coffee, the Stokes High Bridge Café (in the timber-framed house on the river bridge) is the city's longest-running coffee shop, and the small Steep Hill cafés between the Jew's House and Castle Square run the spectrum from old-fashioned tea rooms to third-wave roasters.