In the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson is told of his prospective roommate after he meets a friend at the Criterion, "I was standing at the Criterion Bar, when some one tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I recognized young Stamford, who had been a dresser under me at Barts."

A plaque commemorating this event was placed there in 1953.

The Criterion Bar is one of only two establishments permitted to serve liquor in G.K. Chesterton's 1914 novel, The Flying Inn.

The British opium addict Grosely recalls yearning for the Criterion Bar in W. Somerset Maugham's short story "Mirage" from On a Chinese Screen (1922), where it represents the London of his youth, far from the squalid life he now leads in Haiphong.

In P G Wodehouse's short story Indian Summer of an Uncle (1930) Bertie Wooster's Uncle George is unexpectedly reunited with an old flame whom he met when she was a waitress at the Criterion.
In the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson is told of his prospective roommate after he meets a friend at the Criterion, "I was standing at the Criterion Bar, when some one tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I recognized young Stamford, who had been a dresser under me at Barts."
A plaque commemorating this event was placed there in 1953.
The Criterion Bar is one of only two establishments permitted to serve liquor in G.K. Chesterton's 1914 novel, The Flying Inn.
The British opium addict Grosely recalls yearning for the Criterion Bar in W. Somerset Maugham's short story "Mirage" from On a Chinese Screen (1922), where it represents the London of his youth, far from the squalid life he now leads in Haiphong.
In P G Wodehouse's short story Indian Summer of an Uncle (1930) Bertie Wooster's Uncle George is unexpectedly reunited with an old flame whom he met when she was a waitress at the Criterion.
Criterion Restaurant