KEITH BARKER-MAIN Drinks London Dry... preferably Tanqueray 10

Sebright Arms, Bethnal Green

2012-02-10T02:29:00.000-08:00

Once attached to a Victorian music hall, more recently left abandoned, boarded up, this typical East End inn faced the same fate as so many pubs: oblivion. Despite a petition raised by local residents, it looked set to become another victim of the fatal combination of greedy pubcos, swingeing taxes, Labour's smoking ban, ridiculously cheap loss-leader supermarket alcohol and Simon Cowell’s Saturday opium for the masses that has decimated our stock of boozers. Cue the savvy inn-trepreneurs behind the Horse Bar, Waterloo: riding to the rescue, they've saved the Sebright from Demolition Man, reinventing it as somewhere quite special to boot. Its lovely tiled and wood panelled saloons may be unchanged since Cockney sparra Babs Windsor last had her nappy changed, but the crowd is decidedly ‘now’: Bethnal bushy-beards and Lauren Laverne-alikes soundtracked by name-to-drop DJs - Mark from Rae & Christian good enough for ya? Less up-its-own-harris than hip Shoxditch gaffs, friendly, button-cute staff pull pukka pints from London microbrewers Sambrook’s, Brodie’s, Meantime, Redemption et al and wines start at recessionista-friendly prices. Old school fun runs to jumble sales, stand-up comedians, a ‘working mens club’ complete with meat raffle (how very Hilda Ogden!) and live gigs in the basement. Top scran is currently provided by peripatetic burger barons, Lucky Chip, whose decadent patties are meaty magnificence. Talking of meat magnificent, current Hollywood hottie via Michael Fassbender is in the house tonight. 'Shame he's fully clothed,' reckons my date. Worth crossing town for, even in tonight's snowy blizzard, I'm miffed this ain’t my local. As for the Sebright's local locals, a manager tells me they're not overly thrilled about the noise emanating from their newly buzzing, rescued local. Start a petition!

31-35 Coate St E2 7729 0937www.sebrightarms.co.uk

The Collection, South Kensington

2012-02-07T13:38:00.000-08:00

The Collection holds special memories for me. In my dim and distant yoot, way BF (before Facebook), it was THE place to get off your face on free Krug. It wasn't a bar per se, rather Thatcher-baiting 80's iconoclast Katharine Hamnett's flagship shop as conceived by Lordly architect Norman Foster. Held there, the designer's parties are the stuff of legend. Accessed via a long catwalk, what fun we had pretending to be lovers/ models du jour Nik Kamen and Bond girl Talisa Soto while strutting its length with well, Nik Kamen, Talisa Soto and every other catwalk queen and hip young face as seen in The Face. Step forward Tom Dixon, then a member of white soul boy band Funkapolitan and most recently charged with redesigning the very same split-level Patrick Bateman-esque NYC warehousey space. Now in its second incarnation as a restaurant/ cocktail lounge, its new owners have chosen to retain the identity of its failed predecessor... #notsurewhy. The fashion pack have long since fled South Ken, ceding it to scions of Eurotrash and silver spoon English idiots whose trust funds can afford its stucco villas. What the Made in Chelsea/ Monte Carlo set get is Dixon's postmodern monochromatic scheme punctuated by teal flashes that keeps the focus on the bar, a long metallic sweep. It’s a handsome prospect. So too, well-balanced cocktails inspired by Chelsea’s heyday - from Quant in the 1960s, to the tail end of Malcolm and Vivienne's various incarnations of their wonky-floored World's End cutting edge clothing emporium, variously known as Sex, Seditionaries and Let It Rock. Hence, mixes and muddles such as Ciao Tina Chow (named after the late model/ socialite/ Warholista wife of restaurateur to the stars, Mr. Chow), God Save McQueen (José Cuervo, cardamom, vanilla and pomegranate juice) and the ‘Ferry addictive’ L’Oeuf Is The Drug, a ‘glamrocktail’ that flips cognac, quince, caramel and egg white (£9.95). What inspired mind came up with such evocative names? I'd love to meet him. Bottle service from £150 is the thing as the room morphs into a late-night club and there’s champagne from under £10 a flute. Tapas from £4, include garlic and chilli squid, halloumi avocado and truffle, merguez, and cured beef with tomato bread. Service is sweet verging on giddy, and the under-lit undulating catwalk entrance is still there, even if the names that once walked it are strutting their stuff elsewhere.
264 Brompton Road SW3 7225 1212 www.the-collection.co.uk

See Nik Kamen's finest 30 seconds here: http://tinyurl.com/6sog7f

Bread Street Kitchen Bar, The City

2012-02-03T07:45:00.000-08:00

If the shouty chef is your bag, you can buy into the brand for a tenner at this compact street level bar, the portal to Gordon Ramsay's City juggernaut upstairs. To Russell Sage Studio’s witty design for the main act - a fantasy art nouveau brasserie that’s somewhere between Caro and Jeunet’s Delicatessen and Amélie Poulain - are added pommel and vault horses (presumably borrowed from Dumbdown Abbey's gymnasium) as seating/ amuses yeux. Watching one determined wee boulder in a too-tight short black skirt squiffily attempt to hoik herself up on to just such an item while retaining her dignity, is the best laugh I've had today since hearing Fred the Shred's title was 'toast.' Martinis such as the signature Grey Goose cinnamon-infused Bread Street (shaken with hazelnuts, grapes, apple and lime) - about right at £9 or thereabouts - and the house take on mojito (muddle with pears) are conjured up by efficient, rather than particularly effusive, staff. On the coldest night of the year, many will be happy to encounter hot toddy and BSK Blaze (raisin-infused whiskey, pineapples, apples, pears and coconut liqueuer flamed with cinnamon). A good range of 30 wines by the glass from £4.50 includes fine claret and top notch Burgundy at £25 plus for Square Mile dealers. A disappointingly terse bar snacks menu offers three different toppings on pizzetta, meatballs in tomato sauce and cured meats. In the absence of any cheffy effin' and blindin' coming from the kitchens, we conclude Big Sweary is not in da house, tonight. Maybe the gallant one has ridden to the rescue of yet another roadkill-serving kitsch inn's kitchen in Kentucky? How does he manage it all?

10 Bread Street EC4M 9AB www.breadstreetkitchen.com

from my review at www.squaremeal.co.uk

Zahra, Clapham

2012-02-03T03:16:00.000-08:00

Stress is the cocktail’s biggest ally. Wound up because K&C towed my car, and £265 poorer, I’m grateful someone else is paying for my nerve-de-jangling drinks tab tonight. I’m propping up a handsome bar at Zahra, a vast Turkocco bunker (as in Istanbul meets Marrakech) lurking beneath the latest outpost of Middle-Eastern resto/deli Del’Aziz’s burgeoning Ottoman empire. Here en masse, the lack of signage hasn’t foiled Cla’am’s flush 20/30-something Zara classes for whom Zahra’s clandestine casbah is tailor-made. Designed by the no-less luridly dressed Shaun Clarkson, its garish folkloric wallpapers, fabrics and beaded curtains (to screen off more intimate recesses) turn a potentially cold concrete bunker into a gay lounge. That’s ‘gay’ as in Sybil Thorndike’s day, I should add, lest nearby Lavender Hill’s LGBT mob gets over-excited. What excites me more, is on-the-money mixology - notably, the Hennessy cognac, cigar syrup and chartreause (sic) combo that is Del’ight. Del’icious too, despite the mental image conjured up by its bonkers description. ‘Think Sarkozy with the cigar’? Non, merci... on so many levels! Two Moneypenny cocktails (gin, cucumber, elderflower and ginger) to the good, my chum is still tense. When I dare to mock, saying the stress of casting models for a living doesn’t really compare with defusing mines in Afghanistan, huffy fashionisto flounces off. Thankfully, everyone else seems totally 'chillaxed'.

55 - 57 The Pavement, SW4 www.zahrabar.co.uk

Fire Your Imagination: London's best winter pubs

2012-02-03T01:59:00.000-08:00

Are the short days and cold evenings of winter reasons to be depressed? On the contrary, says Keith Barker-Main, as he sups cask-conditioned real ales in front of roaring fires. Check out his brilliant baker’s dozen.

The Bull and Last

Next to Hampstead Heath, this deservedly popular pub and kitchen (pictured, top right) punts a more modern take on trad. Giles Coren is a fan and you’ll likely spot other familiar TV faces, too. Isn’t that Miquita Oliver in the corner? Hog the fire, drink Mad Goose and Black Sheep Ale, and order bar snacks or lunch. More Dazed & Confused than Daily Mirror readers, this is not for the cloth-cap fraternity… unless Burberry or Margiela happen to be selling them this season.

The Bricklayer’s Arms

For beer bellies, this old survivor is not a good pub; it’s a great pub that’s akin to a permanent beer festival. Head here from Putney Bridge, after a stroll along the Thames towpath, for Skinner’s Cornish Knocker, Stonehenge Great Bustard, Goddards Fuggle-Dee-Dum, Phoenix Thirsty Moon, Salopian Peccadillo and other intriguing stuff you’ve likely never heard of. A horseshoe bar, two open fires and pleasant staff help cement the Brickie’s reputation.

The Crown

Just off N1’s main drag lies this cute, friendly corner boozer for locals – which in 21st-century Islington means Guardian journalists, authors, TV comedians and Labour policy wonks. Order modern Brit pub grub, Fuller’s ales and guest beers such as ESB, Red Fox or Gales Seafarers ale. Stare into the embers as you plan your next novel, gag or initiative to wrong-foot Mr Cameron.

The Dove

For riverside romance, olde Hammersmythe is hard to beat. Lovers Nell Gwynne and Charles II, as well as Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, were drawn to the Wendy house-proportioned, oak-beamed Dove. Other past patrons include Graham Greene, Ingrid Bergman, Ernest Hemingway and Boris Karloff. Check out the smallest snug in England, a tight squeeze that redefines the word ‘cosy’. Local boys Fuller’s provide the pints, and roasts are big on Sundays. A sign of the times, perhaps, but aren’t gas-powered ‘coal’ fires a tad disappointing?

The Grapes

Dating back to 1720, in its time it has served pirates, highwaymen and politicians – spot the difference! American artist and past patron James Whistler, who lived in the East End in the 1850s, would instantly recognise it in all its preserved dark, woody glory and we hope new owner, Sir Ian McKellen, won’t change a thing. Landlord and Marston’s Pedigree lead the draughts, while any draught coming in from the river outside won’t bother those near the fire. Good for a shoal of fish dishes, it prides itself on being a pub for grown-ups. No chance of a latter-day Dickens singing from a tabletop as the novelist did here as a child.

The Gun

It’s well worth negotiating the confusing Docklands sprawl for The Gun (pictured, left; free taxis are laid on from Canary Wharf). Once Admiral Lord Nelson’s local tavern – his house was next door – Tom and Ed Martin’s baby is now home to modern British pub grub at its best. Pop in for a pint of Adnams bitter or Dark Star Partridge by the log fire and you’ll inevitably end up begging for a table for lunch or dinner.

The Holly Bush

Does NW3’s altitude account for the number of great pubs with open fires in this postcode? Perhaps it’s always several degrees colder up north. Order Seafarers, Butcombe Bitter, Harvey’s Sussex or London Pride at the pride of Hampstead village, a cluttered, wood-beamed charmer that was once stables, according to the old boy on the next table. There’s a good range of pub staples and prices that won’t frighten the horses.

The Southampton Arms

Stripped back to something resembling its original low-rent, Victorian interior, this fab, no-frills ale and cider house proposes a dozen-and-a-half hand pulls served in dimple pots. Expect amber nectar from Tottenham microbrewery Redemption and Sambrooks of Battersea, and it’s good to find ale from indie breweries further afield, too. Try deep-filled baps, Scotch eggs and pork pies. Crackling? That’ll be the fire.

The Jerusalem Tavern

Have the band strike up ‘Jerusalem’ in celebration of this rickety, quaint tavern straight out of Harry Potter (see right). Don’t tell your tourist chum that it’s only been a pub since the 1990s. Its pared, faux-Georgian interior looks and feels more authentic than many genuinely old pubs and the ex-shop frontage, at least, dates back to 1810. It’s owned by Suffolk brewer St Peter’s, whose Golden Ale is the thing to drink while you enjoy bangers by the Bob Cratchit-style fire.

The Spaniards Inn

Dating from the 15th century, this spooky, rambling pile (pictured, left) is steeped in history: Keats, Byron and Shelley were regulars; Dick Turpin is said to have lived here; and it appears in The Pickwick Papers. What the Dickens are you waiting for? After a bracing winter walk on Hampstead Heath warm yourself in front of a log fire with a pint of Landlord while they clean up your pooch in London’s only doggy wash.

The Star Tavern

You’ll find no music, TV or the annoying ‘yah, yah, yahs’ of the Made in Chelsea set here. This Belgravia belter is good for quiet chat, a pint of Pride and an open fire. The cosy, conspiratorial vibe is perhaps why, in 1963, the pub’s upstairs dining room – still in use today – was allegedly chosen by a bunch of villains planning the Great Train Robbery. Current patrons are more likely to have made their fortune flogging posh handbags (Anya Hindmarch is a fan).

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese

Whisper the word ‘fire’ here, for this authentically olde shambles was rebuilt in 1667 after being destroyed in the Great Fire of London. Once favoured by Mark Twain, Lord Alfred Tennyson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the writers would be stumped for words to behold ladies – traditionally barred – supping by the hearth today. Samuel Smith’s ales may not be everyone’s choice, but if it’s dark, dingy, Dickensian atmosphere you’re after, Sweeney Todd’s local has it by the (blood) bucket-load.

This feature was published in the autumn 2011 edition of Square Meal Lifestyle.

2011 London's Best New Bars (or not)

2012-01-27T07:20:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's almost Spring 2012 already and you've been impatiently asking (well, all seven of you anyway) for my list of London loves/loathes 2011. Sorry guys, I've been a) fighting off the January lurgy b) attempting to file my tax return c) busy checking out this year's early crop of contenders and d) against all expectations, been captivated by Celebrity Big Brother and its mesmersingly awful, Borgia-esque twins, the Playboy Piranhas. Apologies for such tardiness but this is what my two brain cells remember of last year.

Bar of the year: ZTH http://tinyurl.com/672h67d

Picture perfect: Gilbert Scott http://tinyurl.com/3v4q5ak

Sexiest swallows: Happiness Forgets http://tinyurl.com/6hlaaq7

Coolest cocktail menu: St James Bar, SW1 (review pending)

Most ridiculous decor: Amaranto http://tinyurl.com/65rrxjo

Most fun with your clothes on: Drink Shop and Dance http://tinyurl.com/6tz8pvj

Most disppointing: BOB http://tinyurl.com/4xtr8pp

Best alfresco: Vista http://tinyurl.com/6256yve

One to watch: Lucky Pig http://tinyurl.com/7gvs4ag

Great happy hour deals: DM2 http://tinyurl.com/c6hvfo7

Burgers and cocktails: nope, not THAT one. I preferred this http://tinyurl.com/7tt97kf

Best local: get ye Up The Junction http://tinyurl.com/3ze7utz

Best for beer bellies: Craft Beer Co http://tinyurl.com/3qxtay8

Funkiest pop-up: Dishoom Chowpatty Beach http://tinyurl.com/5wgzz2b

Most Mad Men-tastic: Salvatore's at The Playboy http://tinyurl.com/3gjdb7e

The one I feel I should love but somehow don't: TWSWS http://tinyurl.com/6he37my

Never again! (Not even if you slipped me Fred The Shred's bonus): Piccadilly Minger http://tinyurl.com/3kgmjg2

Yes, I know some of these are technically late 2010 openings. 2 many bars 2 little time. I am working on cloning myself in 2012.

LOVE LOVE LOVE ZTH (above) Picture: Square Meal

London Cocktail Club, Shaftesbury Avenue

2012-01-27T05:57:00.000-08:00

Camouflaging jovial JJ Goodman’s culinary shortcomings, cherubic charm and killer cocktails with an apparent in-built ability to anaesthetise any doubting critics, saw the blond likely lad emerge as the unlikely winner of Raymond Blanc’s The Restaurant in 2009. His prize? A partnership with the chef that spawned not a restaurant per se (praise be!) but The London Cocktail Club, a rocking dive bar on Goodge Street. Building on its success, JJ has just launched son of LCC1 in WC1. In a dark, vibey den that’s a little rough around the edges, the pose is Jack Sparrow versus Captain Pugwash’s crew in a Tiger Bay tattoo parlour. Punk up in vintage Westwood pirate threads and lay into Army & Navy, one of several Seaman Staines-friendly tots, tipples and grogs served in tin mugs. Nelson’s Blood - champagne, port and lemon - hits you between the eyes while, going off-theme, LCC’s signature bacon & egg (white) martini, like Marmite, divides opinion. Me? I’d sooner spend £8 on a sweet Manhattan - even one garnished with an actual sweet (a wretched Haribo blob replacing the proscribed maraschino cherry) and too heavy on bitters to technically qualify as ‘sweet.’ Other gripes: no silverskin onions for a Gibson; utensils steeping in dirty water-filled pot plonked under our noses; an Irish barman’s iPod self-indulgence (a 30-minute Van Morrison medley). There's already a buzz about the place and I’ll grow to love the place, I expect, warts and all but as ever, JJ, the devil is in the details.

224A Shaftesbury Avenue WC2 7580 1960 www.londoncocktailclub.co.uk

Circa, Soho

2012-01-26T05:35:00.000-08:00

There was a time - twixt Yazz and Yazoo - when every second new watering hole that opened was a gay bar. Now, such launches are as rare as a hair on a gym-buffed Kylie worshiper's waxed back sack and crack. Bucking the trend, is Circa whose presence in what was formerly Jrink - a name so naff, it deserved to go bust - I had missed. Note to self: must get out more - limiting it to six nights a week has left me so out of the fruit loop. Nailing the myth that 'benders' are innately more stylish than 'breeders' - terms borrowed from a gay hairdresser of my acquaintance, may I add, before the green ink brigade starts accusing me of homophobia - Circa's curious design is more Justin and Colin than David Collins. Was signing off on a mood board that apparently included 60’s discotheque, Downton Abbey, Miami Vice ‘style’ bar and folksy Greenwich Village tavern really such a good idea? Circa's mish-mashy-meh interior echoes its diverse range of punters: PC slaves; S&M slaves in M&S suiting; slaves to fashion as dictated by mypartnerDavidFurnish, TOWIE Harry clones, caustic Lauren Harries tribute acts and Superdry guys fresh from the gym, pre-loading on shots ahead of some action. Bar staff, friendly enough souls unlike at various rival gay holes I could mention (drop the attitude, girlfriend!) have possibly been picked more for their torsos than any ability to mix a top drawer Vieux Carré (cocktails are available). The boyz do their best, doling out draught Kro’, wines from £11 and bubbles from around £20 until 1 am - by which time, any sausage in serious need of some schlong, will have long since logged onto Gaydar - the reason gay bars seem to be losing their pulling power of yore, I suspect.
62 Frith St. W1 7734 6826 www.circasoho.com

(find more reviews at www.squaremeal.co.uk)

Printers & Stationers, Bethnal Green

2012-01-25T07:20:00.000-08:00

Don’t be fooled by the name, you'll find no photocopying paper or Pritt sticks for sale here. But if your mouth feels like you just licked a stack of gummed envelopes, there’s plenty to wet your whistle at the bijou bar at this cute wine and food shop set in a converted Victorian workshop off Columbia Road market. Marché aux puces styling, St Germain beatnik soundtrack, dinky city garden and retro packaging on comestibles last seen in a 1950s épicerie somewhere south of Saint Omer are lovely, but nous sommes ici pour vos vins, Jean-Pierre, innit? A regularly re-stocked selection of reasonably priced goodies, mostly from small independent growers, reflect the owner’s French roots. Pay corkage (£9) on any of the bottles’ retail price tags (there’s plenty to like at around a tenner) or enjoy a limited selection offered by the glass. Sip organic vins de pays, full-bodied Burgundy, a Beajoulais with belles jambes or, perhaps, Cahors with couilles over a plate of charcuterie or cheese with crusty artisan breads. Cidre, bloody Mary, croques and sandwiches complete the Clochemerle vibe.

21a Ezra Road E2 7RH 7729 9496 www.printersandstationers.co.uk See web for limited opening times

For more of my reviews go to www.squaremeal.co.uk

BrewDog, Camden

2012-01-20T01:58:00.000-08:00

Mr. Salmond will be delighted: English pounds are flying over the counter in droves, lining the tills of a new pub selling Scots ales to Sassenachs. Bolstering the Caledonian economy, this reconfigured Camden boozer is a first foray south of Hadrian’s Wall for Aberdeenshire indie craft beer maestros, BrewDog. Its pared down interior, all post-punk hard-edged industrial, doesn’t suggest the sort of posh boy establishment where Scotland’s First Minister need fear running into his nemesis, the pro-Unionist, Old Etonian, British PM. ‘Trashy Blonde; Hardcore; Punk IPA; Nanny State: this isn't the sort of place for nice Notting Hill people like us, SamCam, darling.’ Despite the daft lads-on-the-lash names, these brews are no dogs. Draught ales, including curios such as a wasabi stout, are available in small sampling measures and enthusiastic staff soon hook me up with sophisticated, complex and rewarding stuff, not least celestial red, 5am Saint (£3.95). Tonight, Sink The Bismark - possibly the world’s strongest beer at an insane 41% abv (as strong as whisky) - is off, so I sink Tactical Nuclear Penguin instead. Intense, dense, smoky, treacly stout: it tastes like barbecue sauce laced with whisky and asphalt. Bizarre. At 32% abv, it could also nuke a hungry predatory killer whale . Smart tactic indeed, Pingu!

113 Bayham St NW1 7284 0453 www.brewdog.com

Kinbaku, Soho

2012-01-19T11:51:00.000-08:00

Whenever I’ve worked in Japan over the years, I’ve always found its idyosyncratic mix of starchy respectability and out-there sexual practices as compelling as its ‘what the fuck?’ food menus. I’m hopeful that the upstairs cocktail bar at sushi mini-chain Ukai’s Poland Street premises will turn out to be an education. For, as themes go, Kinbaku - a Japanese SM bondage technique based on knotted jute rope once used to restrain prisoners - intrigues me more than the currently ubiquitous ‘Prohibition-era speakeasy’ concept. Alas, on inspection, the scene is about as vanilla as Ben & Jerry: that’s ice cream, not a dreary suburban gay couple. Risqué fetishistic behaviour? The only thing vibrating in here, are hi-fi speakers pumping out 'meh' house. Still, there’s a sexy enough saké/ shochu list to push your boundaries plus Sapporo and Asahi, wines from £16.50 and house bubbles (Jacquart) at £8 a flute. A similar sum bags cocktails from masterly mixologists. Try saké san (Tanqueray, Kuboto Senju saké, lemon and minty shiso leaf liqueur, sweetened); apple and lychee martini or a plum mojito. I should also add that the Ginger Sling is a drink, not a contraption that facilitates transforming a suspended redhead into your own personal glove puppet for your mutual pleasure.

58 Poland Street W1 7734 1444 www.kinbaku.me.uk

The Euston Cider Tap, Euston

2012-01-19T08:36:00.000-08:00

Such has been the success of craft beer pimps The Euston Tap, they've turned the second of the grand gate-houses to the original Euston Station (sadly long-demolished) into its beery bar's cider-shifting twin sister. Cider used to suffer a bit of an image problem in this country: on the one hand, mixed with lager in a snakebite, it was seen as wreck-the-hoose-juice fit only for students and NEETS; on the other - supped by smug fogeys in blue and white striped matelot tops the tedious gits had bought on gÎte holidays in Brittany - it was considered mimsy middle class. Then the marketing men - and a great Zombies track - cleverly persuaded peeps to mix the stuff (the not very good stuff, I say) with ice. Sales soared and cider became the apple of our eyes. Hell, even Gwynnie Paltrow named her kid Cox's Pippin or some such nonsense and the drink replaced Stella as the top guzzle for the larger London lesbian. Priced from just over £3, choose here from fifteen traditionally-fermented draught ciders and perrys representing over 100 artisanal growers in the UK, Ireland and further afield. Are you hard enough for American ‘hard’ ciders? A staggering range of bottles runs into the hundreds and there’s Calvados too which, Norman wisdom has it, will help you live to be 100. That's good to know, because In much of Normandy, you'd die of boredom unless you were permanently pissed. Try Upper House Farm, Horgans from Alcester, farm-pressed Somerset Orchard Pig and Original Sin from New York State. The bar's presence is announced by hay bales outside. Who knew the Wurzels would ever become the height of urban sophistication?

East Lodge, 188 Euston Road NW1 2EF 020 3137 8837 www.eustontap.com

Read more London bar reviews at www.squaremeal.co.uk

Chino Latino, Vauxhall

2012-01-13T02:32:00.000-08:00

'Chino Latino' might sound like a shonky salsa band on Shanghai’s Got Talent, but it's the name of the Park Plaza Riverside's Latin bar/ Asian restaurant, a joint that has somehow escaped my attention until tonight. I'm at a loose end and its PR has invited me along to try the £50 tasting menu - so, why not? The nine-course pig-out is better than anticipated: 'Pan-Asian' too often equals 'con-fusion'. Facing an extreme eating challenge of sadistic Japanese game show proportions, I soon regret snarfing kilos of salty nibbles over pre-dinner drinks at the bar. Set in a low-lit nightclubby lounge that would have looked on-the-money circa The Chemical Brothers’ Block Rockin’ Beats, this could be a handy hook-up ahead of a night on Vauxhall'’s gay dancefloors. Perhaps it’s time for the chemical brothers that frequent such dens to ditch illegal cocktails in favour of less hardcore disco jollies before they wake up one day and find It’'s All Gone Pear Shaped, the name, as it happens, of a Chivas and butterscotch concoction sold here. To each his own, I say. I bring this up only because one disco bunny I knew, mixed so many Class ABandC's, he ended up being sectioned, convinced he was Cindy Crawford, only filthy and smelly - too scared to turn on any taps, lest little green men emerge and cut him open in an attempt to discover the physiology of perfect humanoid beauty (he's still not fully recovered 15 years on, I hear). At £9, Educated Gringo - a bourbon and port muddle - might not be liquid ecstasy but it's good enough for me in terms of getting that warm, fuzzy glow. Despite doubts about combining creamy saké, Beefeater 24, plum wine and Asahi lager, I’m loved-up with a Geisha. Among the wines, a ballsy Mexican shiraz promises ‘a spicy mouthful'. ‘Like 4 am in a Vauxhall back room’ quips my date.

18 Albert Embankment SE1 7769 2500 www.chinolatino.eu

Flûte, Fitzrovia

2012-01-06T00:56:00.000-08:00

Austere times or not, in London's champagne bars, expensive French bubbles’ bubble shows no sign of bursting. But if posturing Parisian politicos continue goading les rosbifs, a mass boycott could be sarky Napoleon Sarko’s economic Waterloo. New Fitzrovia lounge Flûte rides the bubbles bandwagon, offering numerous familiars - M and C, P-J and L-P and co - alongside less ubiquitous but good-to-find houses, many by the glass. Depending on your wallet, order Chartogne-Taillet (Switch), Deutz 2005 (Visa), or 2002 Bollinger old vines (at £1,000, your sugar daddy’s Amex). ‘Award-winning’ Flûte gaffs already exist in Manhattan and off les Champs-Elysées. No awards for Flûte London’s twin gaffes: flat decor and a less-than-sparkling soundtrack. New York? Paris? I’m getting (olde) York wine bar circa Bonnie Tyler’s Lost in France. Drinks industry high-flier date is unimpressed. Why call somewhere ‘Flûte’ then ruin pricy Ruinart blanc de blancs by serving it in cheap, flimsy flutes fit to hold nasty spumante at a tacky bridezilla's low-scoring reception on Sky Living’s Four Weddings? To eat, there’s caviar, ‘Helsinki spring rolls’ (huh?) and chocolate cake on a disparate list I'm not desperate to try. Flûte’s friendly French franchisee - a retired semi-pro tennis player with no previous form in running bars, we're told - reckons his insightful Polish barman can create a bespoke cocktail that will reflect my character. A sour? No: after some light probing, he rustles up what I will christen a Gdansk Harbour martini. Our itemised bill, however, describes his £12 fizzy bourbon and Grand Marnier-based brute as a ‘Lady Killer’. As in Jack Tweed or Jack the Ripper? Either way, fail!

4 Gt Portland St W1 www.flutebar.com

Primo, Waterloo

2011-12-31T03:25:00.000-08:00

Stuck in traffic jams on the roads that circumvented it, I often pondered how such an ugly concrete carbuncle could ever have been allowed to be built on the roundabout at the southern end of Westminster Bridge. A couple of years ago, this Soviet-style monstrosity was razed, only to replaced by something resembling one of Westminster Council's pop-up pissoirs. In urgent need of a slash, I pop into in said building, aka the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge London - well, why else would you visit a mid-market chain hotel or a branch of McDonalds? Themed oriental-intercontinentale, in all its shiny-sleek glory, it could be a new airport terminal in Seoul or Guangzhou. Guests are encouraged to marvel at the view of Big Ben - note to tourists: the view as you exit Westminster Underground station is the photo op you want - but it's the hotel's Tokyopolitan-style bar, Primo, that will impress blasé Londoners. Who knew this even existed? Split into two distinct lounges, the larger - all low-lit, low-slung, blocky black and white 60’s moderne - is where to score wine from £19, house champagne (£47), Eurasian bites (frittata, meatballs on ciabatta, chicken satay) and cakes from Primo's patisserie counter. But it’s the dramatic black and red live music lounge with its nightly jazz, swing, crooners and samba acts that seals the deal. Asian-slanted cocktails match this space for drama: try Cavallo (rum, passionfruit umeshu and peach bitters) or Nashi Eyes (rum, nashi pear, peach liqeur, guava juice and oolong tea). Not Primo on my list of destination hotel bars, perhaps, but still well worth crossing Westminster Bridge for.

Park Plaza Westminster Bridge London, 200 Westminster Bridge Road SE1 7620 7282

www.primobar.co.uk

Drink Shop and Dance, King's Cross

2011-12-23T02:33:00.000-08:00

Drink Shop and Dance? Sounds like a plan for the next fortnight! Get into the Christmas spirit - in this case, Mother’s Ruin - at this new dive from the eminently doable Drink Shop and Do. The juvenile delinquents behind this King’s Cross charmer, accessed via the sweetest sweetie shop East of Willie Wonka, have a 'dirty little secret', a dinky playpen for similarly insane insomniacs. From its launch in 2010, I took to childhood friends Coralie and Kristie’s original kooky alt social club/ tea rooms (located in a former Victorian bordello directly above this latest venture) from the off. I've even managed to show my face within on several occasions since. Given the number of nightspots I have to reccie for those I manage to pimp myself out to, this fact speaks volumes. Now that there’s gin and joined-up disco dancing to a mashy mental soundtrack until late down below, here’s to many more funny, slurry-blurry N1 nights to come. Set in a simple grey bunker - although, given the girls’ magpie tendencies, I expect that to soon change - the DJ bar's presence is announced by a large garish neon sign which, I hazily recall, says 'Sex Dwarf For Hire' or something equally louche and intriguing. What The Butler Saw-style peep-holes drilled into walls hint at the space’s past as a seedy shop aimed at dirty mac owners. Note to younger readers: that doesn't mean someone who needs to wipe off smears on their iBook's screen, although, that said.................

As for 'Drink': they'll fluff you with Fifty Pounds martinis, drip feed you Zuidam Genever gimlets through a gimp mask, tease you with a Tanqueray Hanky Panky and handcuff you to 209 or Death’s Door, two Yankee swingers worth knowing. If it's something even more recherché you crave, wrap your laughing gear around the barman's Crown Jewels. No longer widely available since Beefeater discontinued it; at £13 a pop, this super super-premium gin always guarantees a happy finish.

9 Caledonian Road, N1 9DX 3343 9138 http://tinyurl.com/7rxl6bw

image : the dofc.com

The Met Bar, Mayfair

2011-12-22T08:50:00.000-08:00

At the time of this bar's original launch, New Labour's PRs were spinning Things Can Only Get Better. When Cherie was photographed looking dog rough at her front door on that momentous May morn, she looked pretty much like those prone to partying all night at the Met, the Mayfair hotel's private bar that quickly became one of the default late night hang-outs for the Cosmo-swilling fashion and muso cheerleaders of Saint Tony's Cool Nu-Britannia. Once, harder to crash than a Windsor's 21st birthday bash - is 'comedy terrorist' Aaron Baarshack, still locked up in The Tower, does anyone know? - The Met's brief reign was long over by the time Lehman Bros and the ensuing crash finally buried phoney Tony's successor's 'no more boom and bust' hubris in an avalanche of quantitative easing. Nineties party fixtures Meg Mathews, Fran Cutler and Ms Moss had taken their hubble bubble toil and trouble to steamier cauldrons, or in Kate's case, morphed into Gillian Taylforth and got married. Cue a rethink/ total refurb for the Met, which reopened this autumn. A sign of how 'over' it was, I'd twice walked past it before finally bothering to look in on the place. All black lava bar and bright banoffee and butterscotch swish, the old room is now open to non-members. 'Exclusive'? That's more The Box and The Rose, these days isn't it? Homage to its brief moment in the limelight, perhaps, Storm in a Tea Cup (Tanqueray, Aperol, orgéat, cacao and lime) is served to 32 B cups in a ...go on, guess!.... with a side of Turkish delight. Root Down (a Chase vodka mule) comes with beetroot purée; so that's one of your 5-a-day sorted right there. There’s wine from £27 and Glaswegian lager, St. Mungo. Small plates include kedgeree cakes and ham hock terrine with beet and pickled walnut salad. A daytime menu runs to posh fish and chips and Allen’s of Mayfair wild boar sausages and mustard mash. Glossy, polished and smart, somehow it feels like its soul was sold alongwith its old red interior, auctioned off for charity, on eBay. File under 'seemed like a good idea at the time' A bit like Meg's ex, Noel, and his Manc monobrow brother's band, I suppose.

1 Park Lane W1 7447 1000

http://www.metropolitan.london.como.bz/eat-and-drink/met-bar

The Half Moon, Putney

2011-12-22T02:12:00.000-08:00

Aeons ago, I reluctantly schlepped down the District Line to witness an obscure new Country & Western act play a scruffy old Putney alehouse. In its small barn-like live music lounge, a high cheek-boned 1950s be-quiffed creature presently ambled out to total silence. Picked out by the beam of a solitary spotlight, in kick-ass cowboy boots, canary yellow yee-haw waistcoat and garish petrol blue dirndl skirt accessorised with plastic farm animals, was this Oklahoma's answer to Morrissey in drag, I wondered? Falling to the floor, laying flat on her back, and without any instrumental backing, the curious vision proceeded to out-Patsy Patsy Cline with a sublime pitch-perfect rendition of Willie Nelson's Crazy - the most-played song of all time on US jukeboxes, should the question ever come up in a pub quiz. From that hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck-raising moment on, I have admired K D Lang and retained a soft spot for a boozer that, since launching in 1963, has hosted everyone from The Stones and The Who to Kate Bush, Elvis Costello and The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. Its future was under threat, but thanks to new backers, Geronimo Inns, the venue should now even outlast the career of one set of previous Half Moon minstrels. Fronted by the smug Irish git in the tinted glasses, I'm talking about that unfathomably popular band that unites all people of good taste - as in 'Hurrah! U2 can't stand them?' Fast forward to 2011, the atmospheric live gig room's bijou stage hosts an eclectic mix of Joe strummers, nightly. But if you're a prog rock or psych folk avoider, the saloon bar functions as a separate space, so no need to ask for ear plugs with your pint of local microbrewer Sambrook’s finest. The fading boozer has been subjected to Geronimo's signature scalping. The group's Slightly overstuffed, quirky vision of trad pub nouveau - with a gallery of signed portraits of familiar faces that have played Putney - will chime with the area’s Cath Kidston classes for whom, back-to-basics comfort food: cured meats and pickles, eggs and bacon, fish and chips and apple pie and custard at high street prices. In terms of rock'n'roll attitude, the new Half Moon may be more Mick Hucknall now than Mick Jagger then, but at least the old place hasn't been converted into fancy flats.

93 Lower Richmond Road SW15 1EU 8780 9383 www.halfmoon.co.uk

The Lucky Pig, Fitzrovia

2011-12-16T03:03:00.000-08:00

Last time I visited this Fitzrovia basement, a lesbian Northern Soul night was in full swing within. It seems that concept was just too niche; hence the premises’ reinvention as metrosexual cocktail bar. That said, Lucky Pig's owners should invite the old DJ back. A strap-on figure of a woman in the same mould as ballsy blues-y Big Mama Thornton (see http://tinyurl.com/yqmx4v ), she'd synch seamlessly with an attractive space got up as a Scott Joplin-era Louisiana juke joint. Moreover, her Wigan Casino vintage vinyl would be a vast improvement on the Pig’s jarring soundtrack, the only duff note tonight. Hed Kandi house doesn't work in such a sultry sepia tint space. This aside, we’re happy as pigs in clover: Clover Club, Aviation, Whiskey Daisy, Silk Stocking and Martinez. Period-correct cocktails served by Bonnie dames - that’s as in hoodlum Clyde’s sidekick, not comely Clydesiders - are a cut above your average swill. From a reasonably-priced list, modernités such as Apples & Pears - a Grey Goose Poire coupe topped with more froth than a Mississippi showboat dancing girl's frilly petticoats - are also worth a butcher’s. Set behind scarlet velvet curtains, intimate cellar booths encourage a bit of the old ‘ooh la la’ -or opium taking, had killjoy westminster Council not banned it - and there’s Mercier at £42 to keep you in the Pinky and Perky. I’d be telling a slight porky if I said this new trough was my absolute favourite opening of the year, but he who drinks here is a lucky pig indeed.

5 Clipstone St W1 7436 0035 http://theluckypig.co.uk

The Fourth Wall, London (Somewhere in)

2011-12-09T04:50:00.000-08:00

‘Tried the cocktails yet? Best in London!’ shouts a blonde sylph, dirty-dancing on a high bar stool to a full-on DJ soundtrack. I hope to, courtesy of a chiselled English bartender, Ralph-Lauren-model-material for sure. He’s studiously stirring a Miller’s martini when, ‘Thwack!’; egged on by a similarly wild and suspiciously bright-eyed Pete Doherty tribute in a naff pork pie hat, Blondie’s OTT gyrations send her crashing against the makeshift bar, and my much anticipated drink crashing to the floor. Model barman shrugs sanguinely and starts again, while I fantasise about having done to the bouncing bimbo what Jeremy Clarkson envisaged as a fate for striking public sector workers. This then, is midnight at The Fourth Wall - the name refers to the imaginary wall through which theatre audiences observe the action onstage. The pop-upl is an ad-hoc shebang where jinx are high and martinis - when we finally get ‘em - correctly dry. Tonight, the party is in a secret location down a dark, dank tunnel behind an unmarked door off Brick Lane. The room is a full-scale, flat-pack replica of its creator's Fitzrovia gaff Bourne and Hollingsworth, gussied up as somebody's Peckham parlour circa Neville Chamberlain. After a two-week residency in situ, the weekends-only wingding is folded away and driven off to a new clandestine location. To find out where this bar-in-a-box will materialise next, visit its website and follow instructions. Blondie’s claim for the cocktails -decent enough at seven quid - is slightly fanciful but she and fellow (Fourth) Wall pork pie Pete aside, this itinerant sweatbox cooks on full gas www.whereisthefourthwall.com

Archer Street, Soho

2011-12-02T02:22:00.000-08:00

One visit is usually all I need to rate a new bar Snog, Marry or Avoid. Thanks to universally improving standards, in 2011, I’ve done more snogging than TOWIE’s Mark Wright. Marry? I’m polygamous, currently happily shacked up with ZTH, The Gilbert Scott and Happiness Forgets. Avoid? Well, a gentleman doesn’t spill. Oh, very well - The Piccadilly Institute was a bit of a munter. What to make of Archer Street, tired old gay hole Barcode’s replacement as envisaged by the owners of the O Bar on Wardour Street? Hmm. I’m like The Bachelor’s Gavin Henson - albeit less buff but, hopefully, more articulate - unsure of my feelings towards this pretty little thing...even after three dates. Of its two lounges, I prefer the members club-y, après-ski-y basement; all cosy cubby-holes and jewel bright velvet stools at a capably tended butch bar whose Liverpudlian mixmaster in residence was happy to build us bespoke drinks on my chosen theme - Laphroaig - one evening. From the bar's usual menu, top ‘tails, chilli and passion fruit martini and Bulleit in the Afternoon (Bourbon, pomegranate juice, Lapsang Souchong syrup and cucumber), are well snoggable, even at £10.50. The street-level lounge, where champagne (Billecart-Salmon’s range) starts at a giddy £14, is sophisticated in a neo-Georgian Guildford gated complex townhouse way. Although I’ve yet to witness such a spectacle, I hear theatrical staff occasionally go all Broadway tunes and jazz hands. Eureka! Archer Street feels like somewhere John Barrowman might appear - the shiny-smiley hoofer is a deffo double-avoid in my book. I'll ring ahead to check he's not in the house ahead of date number 4.
3-4 Archer Street W1 7734 3342 www.archerstreet.co.uk

Dirty Martini, Mayfair

2011-11-25T05:17:00.000-08:00

Regular readers will know I’m a bit of a martini-Hoover, a regular Don Draper de nos jours...minus The Betty Ford Clinic season ticket, hopefully. To find a well-made martini is manna. To find a well-made one off Bond Street for a paltry sum that wouldn’t buy the fine twine handle off a designer carrier bag, is downright dangerous. But from 4 pm to 10 pm weekdays (8 pm on weekends and all day Sunday), a measly four of your English pounds - or Scottish ones for that matter, so long as the auld nation is still part of the Union - secures a dirty, verging-on-pornographic, Plymouth martini accessorised with a Kalamata olive and thyme sprig fascinator at this new W1 branch of the Covent Garden original. A similar happy hour spend gets lychee, passion fruit or chocolate martini - wuss juice for junior suits which, tonight, look to come mostly from Debenhams. Yes, Dirty Martini is a mid-market gaff but at these prices, who expects fancy schmancy David Collins interiors? Actually, I quite like the decor, chic in a kind of Carrie Bradshaw circa 2001 way, and the tricky space - think tunnel! - is intelligently utilised. What I don’t dig, are the constantly prowling high-profile black suits. Most unnerving! Is security anticipating a ruck between Tatleristas and Voguettes - both magazines share premises across the square - over whether, at £4 - a sum that buys the waifs a whole month’s groceries - Margiela or Miu Miu martini is the hip sip this season, supposing such items exist?

10c Hanover Square W1 www.dirtymartini.uk.com

Caxton Bar, Westminster

2011-11-23T06:59:00.000-08:00

Strange synergy. On the day I meet Brian Paddick, the ex-policeman turned London mayoral hopeful (read, no hope at all; he's batting for the Lib-Dems), to take part in a photo opportunity (don't ask!), I later find myself clambering over piles of coppers in SW1. That's as in plods, not loose change, you understand. The rozzers are changing out of riot gear on the pavement outside my destination, a hotel bar directly opposite New Scotland Yard. Well, at least the staff doesn't have far to look if their punters kick off and need a good coshing that isn't strictly liquid. Fisticuffs seem far from likely here, however: the well-dressed middle-aged imbibers look like the sort of people who mow their Middlesex semi-detacheds' lawns on Sundays, are kind to animals, shop at House of Fraser and model themselves on Bill Turnbull and Sian Williams. The decor - pleasant enough, and expensive-ish in warm tobacco and toffee tones, could be a set from a Penelope Keith vehicle. Cocktails from upwards of £9 are fair. From the ‘Empire’ selection, we dig ginny Earl Grey Ceylon Ice Tea; from the ‘Americas’ Three Saints (£11) with a trio of rums in the mix. Ulstermen will be miffed not to be represented under ‘Britain’- a few ideas themed on headgear, from which Welsh Hat, using vodka distilled in Cymru’s valleys, comes out on top. There's a pretty terrace for summer drinking but keep the noise down or the old Bill (and not as in newscaster Mr Turnbull) will 'ave ya. Got it?

St Ermin’s Hotel, 2 Caxton Street SW1H 0QW 0800 652 1498 www.caxtongrill.co.uk/Caxton-Bar

Read more reviews at www.squaremeal.co.uk

Waterline, De Beauvoir Town

2011-11-18T04:11:00.000-08:00

Situated twixt N1 and E8, it’s G2-reading Islingtonians, not hirsute Haggerston hipsters, that have colonised this new indie venue. Smart move! The industrial-style ex-warehouse with its Bash Street Kids furniture and desirable Slovakian ex-armament factory lights is a handsome hangout whose towpath tables afford a fine view of the jetsam-blighted Regent’s Canal. Bathed in watery November light through double-height windows, wan faces sip draught Adnams or good Sicilian peasant plonk at £15, worried that spending double that on plummy patrician claret, a Mahon-Laville Graves, constitutes a grave social error now that austerity is the requisite accessory to be worn with their up-the-workers Carrhart clobber by Concerned of Canonbury and co. Could any cloth cap canteen better Waterline’s miniscule open kitchen for good grub at pub prices? It's doubtful. For lunch - or dinner - pig out on pigs cheeks, snoggably tender in a punchy red wine reduction; fine flaky roast cod with al dente samphire and avocado, brandy and cream sauce (£13.95); and slim boy fat puds. Adjourn to Waterline’s back room, a jazz piano lounge/ cinema where bean bags, floor cushions and drinks service encourage post-prandial lolling. A library of cult films hopefully excludes Marcello Mastrioanni and similarly suicidal foodies in 1973 death-by-overeating satire, La Grande Bouffe.

46 De Beauvoir Crescent N1 www.waterlinebar.com

Funky Asia, Shoreditch

2011-11-11T13:34:00.000-08:00

A gay display of pastel pendant lamps dangling in a picture window signals this new cocktail lounge-cum-pan-Asian diner. Inside, the theme - Shoreditch loft meets Suzie Wong - goes woefully wong in places: random jumble and horribly mismatched furnishings vie for attention with vintage retread stools that should be donated to a museum or consigned to a skip. My eye is drawn to bizarre fade-to-grey serge staff uniforms seemingly seamed up on a Singer by a London College of Fashion fresher circa similarly cod-Asian Aneka's Japanese Boy (take a trip down Memory lane here http://tinyurl.com/ca4k42 ). It's a measure of the resident, mostly Italian, mixologists' sunny nature that they haven't revolted at being forced into revolting clobber. The brave souls dispense passable cocktails at an ugly bar that, lit paraffin blue, also recalls shonky 1980s design. Still, £6.50 per cocktail is a retro detail I do dig. We try shochu and green tea-infused Shibuya and Takeshita street, a cucumber and sake vodkatini - cucumber traditionally combined with wasabi paste as a Shogun-era cure for those too bunged-up to Takeshita. Soi Cowboy, a Bulldog gin and basil martini said to be a tribute to a Bangkok red-light porn star of yore, is no fluffer at £7 while both lemongrass, lychee, sake and grapefruit combo, 798 District, and Shanghai bund have Harajuku girl appeal. There’s a fair selection of wines, lad lagers, sushi rolls and oriental street food, none of which I try. I've got other fish to have fried elsewhere and reviewers whose opinion I'm inclined to trust have roundly panned the pan-Asian grub. Alerted to the presence of a 'crazy barman called Ginger', I'm keen to encounter what sounds like a colourful character but "she" is now in the kitchen and won't come out.' Mortified to be caught in those (Steve) strange uniforms, no doubt. I'll be back to reappraise sweet FA and hopefully catch sight of the retiring Ginger. Thankfully, it's directly across the street from a regular haunt of mine, that equally heroically eccentric watering hole, The Commercial Tavern.

159 Commercial Street, E1 6BJ 7247 0072 www.funkyasia.co.uk

Check more late summer 2011 openings in the Autumn edition of Square Meal magazine.

Azulito, Soho

2011-11-10T04:17:00.000-08:00

I really dig Thomasina Miers’s Wahaca. Champion cheap Mexicano eats? The man from Del Monte, he say ‘Yes!’ Now, there’s even more reason to mosey along to the former Masterchef winner’s buzzy Soho cantina. New graffiti tags and gaudy supermercado-style kitsch aside, its folksy sky-blue basement play-pit - all Babyfoot tables and shack-y bar cobbled together from salvaged wood - looks much as before, but what to raise a sombrero to at Azulito - the re-styled den's new handle - is its beefed-up range of 100% agave tequilas. If your view of this much-maligned spirit has been jaundiced by the liver-bothering swill pimped by tacky taco joints' slammer girls, apply within! With around eighty of the finest examples collated by hot shot bar consultant Nick Strangeway, this is as good as it gets east of Guadalajara, the state capital of Jalisco whose red volcanic soil nurtures Mexico’s choicest blue agave plants. Tequila purists take theirs neat like malt whisky, but for agave virgins, I recommend Azulito’s subtle El Tesoro de Don Felipe-based bloody Maria and margaritas - classic lime, tamarind or mandarin-flavoured - by the tumbler from £5.95. Punchy fresh,, flavoursome street food - smoked herring tacos, pulled pork, fondant quesadillas, et al - acts as damage limitation, while DJs spin low rider barrio blasts until midnight. And, if you’re on a hot date, señores; remember the wisdom of Joe Nichols’s country smash - Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off.

80 Wardour Street W1 7734 0195 www.wahaca.co.uk

Boyd's Bar, Charing Cross

2011-11-08T08:40:00.000-08:00

The first time I visited Boyd's, it was a fairly lonely experience. 'Pas un chat,' as they say south of Calais. Tonight, I'm back to reccie what's new. In a major push to pull in the cocktail crowd, the place has been re-modelled, the bar and restaurant's focus now as much skewed towards what is dispensed from its silvered shakers as its kitchens. Repositioned, pushed back deeper into the airy triple-height space it inhabits, its island bar is flanked by Philippe Starck 'ghost' stools that match tonight's ghostly ambience. The place is 'Here's Johnny' Shining- empty aside from me, my two French chums and a pair of intrepid drinkers dressed in the style of the Romanian entry in the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest. Boyd's sweet new barman, himself from Romania, shows us cocktail ideas written in his very best longhand in a bound notebook. 'I'll try one of those,' I say, pointing to one of his unique creations, its Santa-themed title never likely to make it on to the Connaught's list, no matter how successful his recipe. Alas, it's not to be. 'I haven't been allowed to buy the ingredients yet.' What's Romanian for 'you naughty little tease' and 'how come'? The Frenchies contemplate the decor, all garish blocky colours, 1950s styling and jangly patterns that contrive to clash with the palatial venue’s height-of-Empire caramel-tone marble grandeur. They pull that peculiarly French face that can best be approximated by a Brit by placing dog poo under one's nez. What cocktails (from £8) we do get - fruity rummy slings and Tanqueray 10 dry martini - are perfectly sinkable and generously poured. The French faces are back on as the Parisians are introduced to the concept of 'British tapas' served on slates at 2 for £7.90. Crab macaroni gratin, smoked haddock scotch egg, pork rillettes with savoury croutons and eggs mimosa are how I imagine food might have been in business comradski class on Tarom, the Bucharest-based state airline, around the same time the Romanian punters stumbled through their Sandie Shaw oom-pah-pah tribute to an underwhelmed watching world. Guys, I dearly want to give Boyd's douze points, but on this performance, quatre...tops.

8 Northumberland Avenue WC2N 5BY
7808 3344 www.boydsbrasserie.co.uk/

Based on a review for www,squaremeal.co.uk

Shaker & Company, Euston

2011-11-03T03:18:00.000-07:00

In Euston, The Times They Are A-Changing. Replacing Bob Dylan-themed flop Positively 4th Street, is Adam Freeth’s Shaker & Company. That’s Shaker as in high-end consultant mixologists to the likes of Tatler, Cartier Polo and excellent Shoreditch lounge, Nightjar, not cheapo MDF kitchen units in the style of an abstemious American sect. America’s Deep South is the theme at Freeth’s maiden venture - a butch, woody, Woodrow Wilson-era tavern, minus the Prohibition. At tonight’s launch, liquor flows like it’s December 5th 1933 (the day Prohibition was repealed) and although Brother Griswald (Johnny Walker Black, 'blue' Chartreuse and ‘Christmas cake reduction’) and Breakfast with Obama (tequila, ginger and grapefruit liqueur, bitters, honey lime, sea salt and watercress) are well executed, they’re also overly contrived. Tricksiness is a current bar land willy-waving tendency I can live without: classic cocktails become classics for a reason. Happily, Tanqueray dry martini, my must-pass liquid litmus test, is not flunked. Expect a different theme at a dimly-lit conspiratorial downstairs den that will play host to a different cocktail base each month; tonight’s hero pour, Bénédictine, appearing alongside Aperol, stone fruit, bitters and lemon in another slightly over-ambitious cocktail, Tanqueray gin flip, Potato Sack Sour. All-in-all, Freeth's vision gets the thumbs up and although its hinterland location might be an issue for some, honest pricing will not. Shake out the minor shortcomings, as in funk up the flava on jambalaya, veggie gumbo and hush puppies; soul food that needs to be less Joss Stone more Sly & The Family Stone, and London just got itself a swell new sauce saloon.

19 Hampstead Road, NW1 7060 6877 www.shakerandcompany.co.uk

Palm Beach Casino, Mayfair

2011-10-30T12:27:00.000-07:00

Like my local dry-cleaners, casinos are best avoided if you don’t want to risk losing your shirt. The only chips I should ever handle are fried. As as nightcap opportunities, however, casinos clean up: their bartenders still shaking long after others have shut up shop. At the new DJ lounge at the Palm Beach Casino, ‘one of Mayfair’s most glamourous gaming spots’, they’ll mix you a martini until 5 am. Take a punt on lemongrass, espresso agave, chilli tarragon and pomegranate, toffee apple or even a Shropshire blue cheese martini: served with fresh dates, not the smartest call if you’re hoping to get fresh with a date. My gamble - Lime Marmalade Gimlet, badass liquid breakfast at £11 - pays off and, if Smokey Old Fashioned and a crafty fag sounds like you, there’s a heated snout-out terrace-cum-Wendy House. £24 is cheap for Chablis by any West End standards and, if luck be a lady tonight, as Sky Masterson sings it, there’s Ace of Spades rosé at a bank-breaking £711 a bottle. The casino itself, divine art deco crystal palm chandeliers aside, could be a beige Home Counties hotel circa early Lorraine Chase. On which note, the lovely lady herself, wafted here, not from Luton Airport, but Camberwell. And no, she doesn’t order Campari and lemonade.

30 Berkeley St W1 7493 6585 www.thepalmbeach.co.uk

Electric Social, Brixton

2011-10-20T03:56:00.000-07:00

On Electric Social’s unremarkable terrace, drinkers enjoy autumn’s last hurrah. That, and a fetching view of a wall of bins massed outside Tesco, opposite. My date suggests recycling our grub within. Salty, sloppy macaroni cheese with ham is NHS awful. At £11.80, burger and ‘triple-cooked’ chips nudge Hawksmoor prices - there, alas, any comparison ends. Aside from being cussed - who knows why? - by a shambolic old rasta bloke shuffling along Acre Lane as we arrive, our evening had started well enough thanks to chipper staff and jovial Italian Merlot at just £13.50 a bottle. We prefer Tanqueray dry martini (£7.50) to anything on Electric Social’s cocktail list. According to our waiter - channelling a slippery estate agent, keen to gloss over his bar’s gritty urban location - the likes of Cider House Rules and Black Forest Gateux (sic) are aimed at ‘a more Clapham clientele’. I'm not feeling the love for the room, but early-adopter Brixtonians seem happy enough with decor that pits clichéd Cool Britannia - Union Jack chesterfields, tear-drop chandeliers, trompe l’oeil bookcases, pop art mural etc - against clunky tables and a wood-panelled sunken den possibly salvaged from a 1950s magistrates' court. We’re told nightly ‘mash-ups’ such as Kung Fu Disco, held in a club lounge above, 'aren't necessarily aimed at the riddim rider massive'. Am I being taken for a Coldplay-lovin’ Clapham casual? I crubbed away my yoot in steamy Railton Road shebeens, I'll have you know.

40 Acre Lane, SW2 3588 1111www.electricsocial.com

Laylina Privée, Knightsbridge

2011-10-14T14:57:00.000-07:00

Beauchamp Place is a strange place. Its main function in life, so far as I can discern, is to accommodate bonkers boutiques whose glitzy gear and froufrou frocks await the approval of a Petr Petrogarch's daughter or a Nancy Dell'Olio who'll parade them in Hello! when the magazine calls to photograph them in their gracious Central London home. At the thoroughfare's heart, lies San Lorenzo, an Italian restaurant perennially popular with the sort of stars (and/ or ex-girlfriends of Rod Stewart) who were popular when Nancy was a nipper (1971, she reckons). Into this Eurotrash timewarp mix, chuck paint-it-black basement bar-cum-nightclub Laylina Privée. Its look - dig the fish tank - reminds me of the sort of dive girls in hot pants would lure punters into in Cattolica, circa early Easyjet, with the promise of a free bottle of what would transpire to be gut rot fizz. Nasti Spewmante indeed! But this is no clip joint. No siree! Laylina P sets its (Chanel) cap at a niche, riche clientele. That will be the Sunseeker set - as in habitués of high-end floating gin palaces (of one’s own or daddy’s), not the Falaraki massive. Why stoop to entry-level champagne (Moët) at £75 when there's Krug at £965 per magnum to be had? Spirits by the bottle (obviously) range from £100 for Hennessey to a cool £550 for Chivas 25-year-old. 25-year-old willowy blondes in spray-on dresses, out hunting in pairs, might try lychee martini, tropic breeze or Layalina delight (Bulleit, Southern Comfort, Cointreau, peach purée and lemon). Busting moves to Beyoncé, I imagine their heads dream of attracting the attention of the sort of chap who will whisk them back to his Candy Brother penthouse pad opposite Harvey Nics for Krug, cocaine and carpet burns and treat them to a Beauchamp breakfast at Maroush Juice and a new frock come the morning.

2 Beauchamp Place SW3 7581 4296 http://www.layalinaprivee.co.uk/

based on a review for www.squaremeal.co.uk

Senkai, Mayfair

2011-10-13T03:03:00.000-07:00

The first section of a long snaking room, otherwise given over to Japanese-influenced dining, is allocated to Senkai’s lounge bar. I'm thinking 'Zen Week at Ikea' enlivened by a mural of what I take to be a Kyoto garden by way of colour. There is, disconcertingly, a back bar but no actual counter to dangle at. Still, working in Japan, I learned to expect the unexpected. But this Honshu pretender, the replacement for the late unlamented Cocoon, is owned by the peeps behind Boujiis and Bumpkin, its stance more Made In Chelsea than Chiba Prefecture. Our Eurasian cocktails are pretty impressive all round...if somewhat ambitiously priced. £14 gets Senkai Manhattan with its maraschino and whiskey jelly globule lurking unnervingly in the glass like a blood clot on a killer mission. Szechuanita (£12) - a pomegranate margarita turbo-charged with Szechuan pepper-infused syrup - is a tasty blast and mingmei martini - Whitley Neil gin, cherry heering, raspberries and organic apple juice - garnished with a red chilli sliver on a floating basil leaf (for all the world, like something in the lady garden-like as drawn by a Magna porn cartoonist) gets the yin-yang balance right. For the intrepid, parsnip cup vodka (parsnip purée, coconut, vanilla, lemon and ginger in an absinthe rinsed glass) is an inscrutable adventure. There’s half a dozen shochu, wines by the glass from £7 and Champagne from everyday Möet to red letter day Dom P rosé at £420. From a selection of pricey bar bites, try pork and Jerusalem artichoke gyoza, rock shrimp tempura with red chilli mayo (£9.50) and pepper squid. The vast room is empty all bar six other punters. 'Senkai' in Japanese might translate as 'pure land away from the world.' Tonight, it's a land the world has pure failed to locate. 'People are all out on terraces enjoying the Indian summer,' sighs one hopeful, smiley staffer by way of an apology. This begs the question; will Senkai be as sunk as a leaky junk with no clientele to speak of from May to September? 65 Regent Street, W1 7494 7600 http://www.senkairestaurant.com/

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Powder Keg Diplomacy, Wandsworth

2011-10-13T02:21:00.000-07:00

Powder Keg Diplomacy: the name conjures up a governor keeping a troublesome colony in check. Sporadic summer rioting aside, are St John's Hill natives really so volatile? New from SW4’s Lost Society/ Lost Angel boys, two south London bars I dig, there’s a distinct 1900’s revisited feel to their new sister; no more so, than in a handsome wrought iron-framed Edwardian conservatory-cum-dining room. Flatteringly lit, with wind-up gramophone speakers suspended upside-down as witty trumpet lily lampshades, it's lined in period-correct frondy kentia palms. Cutting the mustard in their Phileas Fogg attire, our waiters might be out of a Hovis ad, or staff from Downton Abbey moonlighting in the Big Smoke. Mirroring a trend at other fine bars such as Worship Street Whistling Shop and ZTH, accomplished mixology served in vintage stemware also references a time when Britannia ruled the waves and a gin and milk was yours for a penny three farthings, guv. Fine East India and Empire cocktails, and whiskey and gunpowder green tea-based Chatham Artillery Punch are the sort of superior libations the Earl of Grantham could be quaffing if he’d only bin stuffed shirt Carson for a more clued-up flunky. Good too, is the autumnal Granddad's Allotment - your five a day in a glass plus a slug of hooch for being such a good boy. Powder Keg D is also strong on British cask ales (Oakham Citra/ Innis and Gunn Oaked et al), stout and porter, 'colonial' beers and wines from £17. Delve into some good stickies such as a Canadian 'ice' dessert wine made from frozen-on-the-vine grapes. Well-judged nosh covers anything from ‘tiffin’ (game pie/ kedgeree/ Scotch egg with hollandaise) to Mrs. Beaton-style blow-outs (pork belly, celeriac mash and savoury dumplings/ roasted venison parsnip puree and stout sauce/ pan-fried gurnard, capers, cockles and spinach mash). Prices heed the bar's station in life (that'll be Clapham Junction) and for pudding, I’m urged to try a ginger three-way. Supply your own punchline!

147 St.John’s Hill SW11 7450 6457 http://powderkegdiplomacy.co.uk/

Bar 45 at CUT, Mayfair

2011-10-06T03:08:00.000-07:00

I’m predisposed to like anywhere that serves martinis until the wee small hours. You’ll get a fine one as late as 3 am at Bar 45, the watering hole above Wolfgang Puck’s starry Mayfair steakhouse CUT. This smart mezzanine screams (new) ‘moolah!’ All tasteful, tonal toffee leathery luxe and American Psycho staff (as in Patrick Bateman-esque suits, not dangerous New York nutters), this foxy faux art deco den feels like the sort of VIP late night lounge wherein a Vuittoned-up vulgar Rooney might try to order vodka and Vimto, that or your dream cross-Channel ferry access-by-swipe-card Club Lounge; strictly off-limits to sad shellsuit-clad day-trippers trailing twenty crates of cut-price Kronenbourg in their wake. Sharp intake of breath: Aviation Violette (however well-executed) at £16.50? Hello hedge fund high rollers! Similarly expensive is (Duke, Duke, Duke) Duke of Earl - a reference to a sour’s Earl Grey tea-infused Tanqueray base, not the Gene Chandler soul number - and the Hibiki Japanese whiskey and Aperol-based Rolling Fog Over Mount Fuji. If you’re rolling your eyes at the thought of blowing the cost of a flight to Faro on one fogging drink, Bar 45 ain’t for you. Perhaps early adopters Brangelina, Kate ‘Get The London Look’ Moss and Tom - ‘a grand for a pair of loafers like the ones my Dad donated to Oxfam?’- Ford imagine civilians routinely blow such loose change on Grey Goose martinis ‘dahn’ the Dog and Dosshouse? I wager Bar 45’s gilded guests even wipe their bling bahookeys on Balenciaga bog roll...if such quilted luxury exists.

45 Park Lane, W1 7493 4545 www.45parklane.com

St. Ali, Clerkenwell

2011-10-04T12:55:00.000-07:00

The initial hit, the toasty feelgood aroma of coffee beans, fresh ground in a gargantuan mill, lifts the senses the minute you fall into this daytime cafe/ canteen/ wine bar a few doors down from Giant Robot at what was once a proto-Clerkenwell bar before it bit the Dust. I'm also liking its casual pine and brick refectory-style pose and a feature living garden wall. Easy-drinking pocket-money-priced wines include frisky summer berry Californian merlot (£16), spunky Aussie pinot grigio and, from by the glass offer of ten, a patrician rioja crianza at £7.10 a pop. Packing a punch at 7.3% ABV, Southwark-brewed Kernel IPA is one of various ales to try. Gwynnie Paltrow-friendly cereals and fruit-based items are part of an impressive build-your-own all-day brekkie offer that includes kippers, French toast and corn fritters with eggs, spinach, halloumi and kasundi. Fresh grilled sardines, caramelised sweet potato tart with herb salad and rib-eye toasted sourdough sandwich with aïoli (£12.50) are part of the lunchtime offer for peripatetic iPads, tablets, MacBook Pros and old school types with their noses buried in The Guardian. In Clerkenwell, that's standard issue.
27 Clerkenwell Rd EC1 http://stali.co.uk/uk/

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The Cow, Stratford

2011-09-29T04:08:00.000-07:00

Root canal work; Ryanair; Jennifer Aniston films: some of life’s possibilities I’d rather avoid. Ditto indoor shopping centres like the teeming new Mother of them (m)all, Westfield Stratford. Brandroid heaven to many, to me it's the seventh circle of Hell. There's a Westfield within ten minutes of my home: number of times visited? Two, and only then because I was press-ganged into it. On a Saturday afternoon in Stratford, jostled into submission by JLS and Jordan clones, I concede defeat after just twenty minutes and seek sanctuary at The Cow. Was this pub and kitchen named after a fake baked female in Uggs outside who demands of her truculent toddler what ‘his ‘f***ing problem’ is? Erm, being dragged screaming round Westfield by a hatchet-faced horror from an episode of Shameless? Like much else here, the Cow is part of a large chain: in this case, Geronimo Inns’ portfolio of nearly thirty. I quite like some of their venues - The Surprise in Chelsea,for example - but this baby - Desperate Dan’s gaff as imagined by a Swedish flatpack merchant - surprises for all the wrong reasons. Geronimo’s usually watertight operation is skewered by inane service and an inept kitchen: some advertised items are missing; replaced, in the case of sourdough, by a stale toasted roll. Plates are delivered to the wrong tables; my omelette reminds me of a charter flight to Alicante's rubbery breakfast offer: should I continue? Fortunately, sweetheart managers Lara and Leslie take charge, gamely attempting (but ultimately still failing) to rectify their charges’ howlers. A substitute medium rare cheese burger is sent out overdone and with bacon but no cheese but by now I'm past caring and would eat a scabby dog, never mind charred cow. To be fair, Lara does alter the bill to reflect our poor, protracted lunch experience - did I mention the 45 minute wait for a table? It’s early days and hopefully, The Cow will improve. As it stands, its draught Redemption Pale Ale and Sharp’s Cornish Coaster aren't enough to draw me back to Westfield East any time soon. If you - for some inexplicable reason - find yourself in this new retail nirvana, check out my idea of a good pub out E20 way, The King Edward VII on nearby Stratford Broadway.

Westfield, Stratford City E20 8291 8644http://www.geronimo-inns.co.uk/the-cow-westfield-stratford-city

Pix, Soho

2011-09-22T01:30:00.000-07:00

As well as the bit about getting paid to neck free cocktails, a chunk of my schizophrenic CV details long champagne-fuelled paid-for days spent hanging out with guys in their pants. Well, that’s the rag trade for you, sweetie. But for every Scott Maslen, Charley Speed and Vernon Kay, male models that graduated from the Keith Barker-Main Academy of Catwalk Shufflers to TV, there are ninety-seven others 'resting', tending bar or slinging hash in two-bit gin joints. Two of their number high five me at Pix, new in W1. 'We worked together in Milan?' says Greg. No offence hon, but I've become so fashion-showed out over the years, the only member of that mental industry I still recognise on sight is bobbed-breadstick-in- Balenciaga Anna Wintour; and only then because I have a photo of Ms Faceache Frigidaire pinned to my dart board. Thing is, I’m here for the mojitos and pinxtos, the Basques’ take on tapas, not the talent. My pal, however, is more interested in the dishes behind the counter than on it; particularly when I tell her that, as with most male models, contrary to folklore, they’re straight so far as I can recall. Eye candy aside, branch número dos de Pix - their Notting Hill gig has closed but the Covent Garden operation remains open - is a useful Soho fall-back. It may not be quite up there with the likes of Salt Yard and Fino a few blocks north, but with two dozen Spanish wines including organic Campo Verdejo sauvignon at £19.50, Cava from £5, dirty martinis (£9.50), a cosy interior and groovy rare groove i-Podery (Lonnie Liston-Smith, Ronnie Laws, Brother to Brother, Jean Carn - yay!) what’s not to dig? A less than model selection of sherries with neither available by the glass, maybe? What’s that about, amigos?

16 Bateman Street W1 7937 0377 http://www.pix-bar.com/

Sky Lounge at Nido, Spittalfields

2011-09-15T02:35:00.000-07:00

Observed through panoramic windows from the 32nd floor, incoming aircraft looming towards us are a disquieting prospect on this the tenth anniversary of 9/11. I've been security checked and whisked up to the top of of Spittalfields’s gleaming new ‘Nido’ tower, one of numerous less than impressive erections the poor old City has been stiffed with lately. Decanted into a suite of rooms with a view, my attack of jelly leg syndrome is compounded by a door flapping open in the breeze to reveal a thin grille, the only thing keeping me from becoming abstract art on Petticoat Lane’s pavement miles below. This then, is Sky Lounge E1 - as opposed to the similarly unimaginatively-named eyrie at the nearby Mint Hotel - a boxy, stark white duplex whose vista of the City and ‘burbs beyond is undeniably impressive. Conceived in pre-Lehman Brothers days as a fabulous penthouse for some bonus happy banker; unsold, it ‘s been identified by an eagle-eyed promoter as a perfect pop-up bar opportunity. That it will only trade on Tuesday to Friday evenings until April 2012, helps explain the cheapo David Brent office interior punctuated by the occasional white stool, potted plant and tacky ‘art.’ Luxurious and pretty, it’s not. But when there’s Pommery at £9.50 and flat stuff from £5.75 to be had, am I complaining? Of course I am. A tenner for a mojito is a tad too elevated, nice view or not and in the absence of sushi, sashimi and other menu items not present, we get olives and breadsticks. Still, this is as close as you’ll get to the Twin Towers’ Windows on the World in east London, more my idea of a sky lounge to write home about. As I leave, the lift attendant, an inquisitive chap of Slavic origin, asks me how much I think such a penthouse might fetch. 'Dunno. £4 million?' I guesstimate. 'English people are nuts,' he observes, not unreasonably.

Nido Spittalfields, 32nd Floor, 9 Frying Pan Alley, E1. 3137 3938

http://www.kaiuk.com/Sky_Lounge.html

Bunga Bunga, Battersea

2011-09-08T03:49:00.000-07:00

If you’re not mates with Charlie Gilkes and Duncan Stirling, owners of Bart’s bar and Maggie’s club, you’re just not Made in Chelsea. I join the show’s cast, along with Beatrice and Eugenie (sans Fergie/ sans hats, sadly) and Pippa Posterior's pin-up bro' James Middleton, slumming it on the Tijuana side of Battersea Bridge at the chaps’ new baby, Bunga Bunga. Described, not unreasonably, as ‘an Englishman’s Italian bar, pizzeria and karaoke’, its lurid O Sole Mio interior, festooned in holiday souvenir kitsch, is hammier than Parma. While tonight’s launch lacks the putanesca spread reportedly laid on thick at bona fide Berlusconi bashes, we’re treated to a right royal Carry On Up The Coliseum. A plumed centurion spins cheesy pop while ‘gondoliers’ frantically struggle to keep up with the cut-glass accents' insatiable thirst for Campari, Martini, Aperol and prosecco-laced Roman rinses . Cocktails to share (from £28) come in Fiat 500 and Leaning Tower of Pisa tiki mugs or are served, Cosa Nostra capo stylee, in a horse’s head - not your genuine Shergar, obviously. Masterstroke! Weighty X-Factor warbler Wagner - thankfully not in a toga - is to be our cabaret. His version of Livin' La Vida Loca sends the room into 'yah' orgiastic rapture. Obviously totally unfairly accused in the infamous Cash for Questions scandal of being being a bit too Bung-ho, Bunga guest Neil Hamilton and his formidable 'friend of Charlie's' missus add to the surreal social Caesar salad. ‘We’re off to Pizza Express,’ brays Signora Battleaxe posing like a one-trick show pony for a loitering pap out front. Judging by the thin crust minis I manage to grab, wrong move, Christine! Islington lefties would happily pay Rentokil to exterminate the punters herein, but Bunga B is not aimed at Guardianistas, its capodimonte set squarely at a SW3, 10 & 7 clientele. Gauging by the bar's early doors popularity and its hooray fan base - Harry Windsor has been in da house, should yo be tilting at a title - it looks like the guys’ gamble will (Pom)peii off (groan!)

37 Battersea Bridge Rd SW11http://www.bungabunga-london.com/

Roux at the Pembury, Westminster

2011-09-01T05:33:00.000-07:00

When their lengthy recess is not being interrupted by revolting peasants, our overlords are off poncing around villas in Chiantishire, building duck houses or doing whatever MPs do in summer. Where they’re not, tonight, is at the new upstairs bar at Michel Roux Jnr’s restaurant opposite the Foreign Office. We drink alone, attentively ministered to by Liam, a Mark Ronson manqué in sharp black Mod whistle teamed, oddly, with bmibaby-blue socks. Liam shakes sexy swallows from a list gratingly entitled ‘hors d’œuvres, plats principaux and désert.’ For around the cost of a bath plug and a two XXX movie rentals, how about a ‘hang the calories!’ fit for our former Home Secretary, Jacqui? That'll be Bristol Million: Cuervo blanco tequila, spiced syrup, lime, banana and chocolate truffles at £9.25. Me, I’m more of a William’s Tipple man (a Tanqueray 10, ginseng and bitters martini) served with pork scratching popcorn (£2), char-grilled mini chorizo and feta-stuffed peppers. I recall Metro's Marina O'Loughlin in a review of Roux describing its new bar as 'personality-free.' She's not wrong. Nor, does it impress my date, a designer routinely consulted by smart money out to open starry watering holes. We agree that top ‘tails deserve better than a palette of deep vein thrombosis tones, lumpen seating groups, flat lighting, naff vases, stereo Ikea-esque paper floor lamps and tacky globe drinks cabinets. Is it an attempt at postmodern irony, or just rubbish taste? If Margaret Beckett did interior design…. or, come to that, David Blunkett. Either way, nice drinks; shame about the Shire Counties MP drawing room chic. But readers must judge for themselves. To which end, a pic.

Roux at the Pembury, RICS Great George Street, SW1P 3AD 7334 3737

http://rouxatparliamentsquare.co.uk/

Salvatore's at The Playboy Club, Mayfair

2011-08-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

As with Hai Karate, cream shag pile rugs and gold Ford Capris - that's a car not cropped lamé trousers by designer Tom, the sort of chap whom I suspect may own a pair for pool-side lounging - the idea of attending The Playboy Club appeals to me in a post-modern kind of way. I'm to be admitted, exceptionally, as a guest: I have more pressing need of the £1,200 annual membership and £1,000 joining fee that is otherwise required to enter its portals. Best 1977 vintage Halston tux dry-cleaned and pressed, I'm joined by the fashion stylist. She is similarly eager to investigate, having not even been born when the old London Playboy Club folded. It's been thirty years since the bunnies disappeared from Mayfair but now they're back, much to the annoyance of those camped outside when we rock up. We're harangued by a raggedy assortment of dreich Germaine Greer-y Greenham Common wimmen opposed to this venture. What's the grumpy old cows real beef ? Underneath the shouty sloganeering, I'm sensing low self-esteem issues. How else to explain going out dressed as Olive from On The Buses? Short on sisterly solidarity, the date claims the saggy haggy bra-burners could use a little help from Playtex. Negotiating their ring of ire, dodging flour bombs and sweaty fake Birkenstocks hurled in our direction, we make it into Hef's new London HQ. The bunnies I talk to see their new employment as a smart career move. Exploited bimbos? Empowered, savvy young women, more like. As for the 'degrading' costumes: flatteringly-cut boned satin looks positively coy compared to what is worn by today's average Saturday night city centre slapper. We get the grand tour. There's a sterile white casino, hilariously 1970’s-style night-club, a grooming zone (as in moisturiser not Gary Glitteresque impropriety) and a charmless makeshift-looking dining area that offers, inter alia, wagyu burger at £42. As if! I'm way more interested in the bar, obviously. That'll be Salvatore’s, as in overseen by Signor Calabrese. Late of the late 50 St James, he's a sharp shaker for any aspiring Don Draper de nos jours to know. Yes, it's a cliché but this lounge really could be straight out of Mad Men. For rich Arab scions, ostentatious oligarchs, dictators-in-exile and people who can afford to wipe their privileged posteriors on $100 bills, it boasts a wall of extremely rare spirits. A glass of Macallan Lalique 57-years-old will lighten your bank balance by £2,000 while vintage cocktails such as White Lady, built on Gordon’s gin and Cointreau bottled in the 1930s, are slightly more affordable at £350. Rein in your inner off-duty Formula 1 driver and settle for Garlic Affair (Courvoisier, apricot brandy, lemon juice, garlic and ginger beer), modestly priced (by Playboy standards) at £16. Not so modest, Salvatore claims to make ‘the best martini in the world - ours, served by an Immodesty Blaize clone who has perfected the famous bunny dip. As we leave, the cranky crones are still ranting outside. 'Go do something useful...like picketing a brothel where trafficked 14-year-old Albanians are handcuffed to bedsteads' yells the stylist as another barrage of flour bombs rains down on us.

14 Old Park Lane , W1K 1 ND 7491 8586 www.playboyclublondon.com/

Carnival Bars 2011, Notting Hill

2011-08-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

If you're going to Carnival, good luck! Can't say I'll see you there but check out these if you're stuck for an idea.

The Shop, the funky new Queen’s Park bijou bar-cum-erm, shop (all its artworks and furniture are for sale) has rum punch, Red Stripe and a sunshine mix on its decks in a twelve hour session from 2 pm on Sunday. Tickets, £5, are available on the door. http://tinyurl.com/3lr7vem From 3pm - 2am on both Sunday and Monday, The Mason’s Arms, Kensal Rise with its three terraces, hosts the foodie pub’s annual Snowbombing party. This year, Monkey Mafia, Jon Carter, Cut la Roc, The 2 Bears and Plump DJs are all in the mix. Tickets (£15) on door or at early-bird prices from http://snowbombingcarnival.fatsoma.com/ The Mason's sister pub, The Metropolitan next to Westbourne P ark Tube, has a similarly lively line-up each day www.themetropolitanw11.co.uk Million Dollar Mojitos, art installations, London’s ‘most hyped’ up-and-coming artists, dub, reggae and hip hop are promised at Le Scratch’s ‘pop-up rave’ at boho baroque mansion, Beach Blanket Babylon on Monday from 7 pm to 1 am; (£5) or via guest list at www.beachblanket.co.uk while each Holiday weekend night features a road block at Paradise by way of Kensal Green: www.theparadise.co.uk Sunday’s session (noon - 3 am, tickets £15) includes live performances fro Ms Dynamite, Ayah Marar and Clapham legends, Stereo MCs.

Dalston Junction Room, Dalston

2011-08-26T09:33:00.000-07:00

Tube meltdown survivors, we finally arrive - sweaty, prickly, hungry. Very hungry. Menu quickly eyeballed, we order. 'The kitchen closes at 9 pm.' says bar honcho. It is 9.03 and 14 seconds according to my not always Rolex-reliable retro timepiece. Honcho is not for turning. It's a fine welcome to this social space/ art gallery at the heart of Dalston, that most happening of 'hoods where hoodies have rioted over less. 'A dry martini?' smiles tag-along guinea pig, hopefully. ‘We don’t really make those. And, it wouldn’t be any good, anyway.' says Honest of Hackney. But there's strawberry mojito, orange caipirovska, Dalston bramble and rum’n’Ting, if that's your ting. (It's not). G Pig goes for Chilean sauvignon blanc. I sulk into a beer - never a good look. The place's look is salvage chic. That's the room and the punters by the way. This is what I imagine bars must have looked like circa Demis Roussos in Commie Albania, the only nation that ever found Norman Wisdom remotely funny. On an adjacent table, his doppelganger, a sallow beanpole in too short comedy trousers and boiled wool jacket, discusses what I take to be the latest underground ukulele band. Norm looks like the sort of cove who'd play such an instrument. I head downstairs to reccie a recently opened dance bar - Josef Fritzl's ideal discotheque? Suddenly, a door opens and a plate of hot food is wafted under my nose en route to a table upstairs. It is 9.19 pm. I swear its recipients - locals I'm guessing - weren't there at 9 pm. Maybe they phoned their order in ahead?

578 Kingsland Road E8 4AH 7241 5755

The Gilbert Scott, St Pancras

2011-08-25T03:34:00.000-07:00

After a reccie when it first launches, I like to properly test drive any new bar after a couple of months; time enough for any fine tuning. The beguiling bar at The Gilbert Scott, Marcus Wareing’s ‘British brasserie’ located in the refurbished Pre-Raphaelite fantasy château de St Pancras, purrs along like a top of the range Jaguar on cruise control. It helps that it inhabits one of London’s most magical rooms, as ravishing as a Rossetti redhead bathed in a seductively shimmery golden glow. Seamless service delivers top drawer drinks: my date could be falling for Pot Poire (pear-flavoured Grey Goose, Earl Grey tea, lavender, lemon and bitters), so she necks three, just to be sure. Currently worth investigating on an ‘evolving’ list, are ginny joys 1873 (£9) and Queen Mother’s Cocktail: Bombay Sapphire, Bénédictine, rhubarb, lemon, Champagne and a slug of the old dear’s favourite, Dubbonet (sic). Me being me, I’ll inevitably find fault somewhere. At this level, if I call for a Tanqueray Gibson, I don’t expect|: ‘Oh, we don’t have any cocktail onions.’ Also, the acoustics can be deeply 'Wareing': I mistake an over-sauced blonde baggage’s incessant giggling for a yappy bored chihuahua. End of gripe. If you’re at St Pancras, bodyswerve its bigger Booking Hall Bar and travel first class with Marcus.

St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, Euston Rd NW1 7278 3888 http://www.thegilbertscott.co.uk/

Grubser's, The City

2011-08-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

I know, I know: who came up with that hula of a name? It might sound klassy und kultiviert in Stuttgart or Luzern but in London? I'm just not feeling it. Thankfully, fastidious staff at this concrete City box down from Monument station are anything but a gang of Grubsers. Here, the mission statement is to turn ‘each guest into a king.’ So long as it's not Charles I or Louis XVI, bei mir bist du schön bubbas - although I'll happily let my head be taken clean off by a sharp martini or six. Staying on a royal tip, Union Jack covered thrones are central to the split-level lounge’s Cool Britannia-by-numbers pose. Less clichéd, is its premise: fondue and cocktails to relax poor drones forced to work in ‘a world where thoughts and actions are determined by the institutional imperative.’ Bet they were thinking exactly that as they clock watched their way to 5.29 and 59 seconds. Try your luck with a royal gentleman (a fruity Jack Daniel’s and Chambord cooler) , bubbly Pink Heather or Tony Bennett (gin, cassis, triple sec and lemon) from a 50-strong list at £8.50 and dip into a deep caquelon - every wedding list should demand one, darling - of cheese, chocolate, brandy and walnut or salmon fondue. Cocktails and fondue for two - cha cha cha - cost £35 and daily deals help keep costs real. With wines from £17.75, this is a welcome City addition if you're up for a bit of cheesy behaviour. Invite Swiss Tony.

22 Fish Street Hill, EC3R 6DB 7283 1213 http://grubserslounge.com/

The Door, The City

2011-08-20T08:55:00.000-07:00

City types could use some good news, what with Bloomberg warning of bears on the prowl. . Well, here's some. You'll pay less than than the price of Turnbull & Asser double cuff for a cocktail, champagne and oysters at the elegant curved bar at recently remodelled surf and turf restaurant, The Door, sister to a similar operation on Cornhill. Unlike its animated but acoustically clattery neighbour, the Grand Cafe at the Royal Exchange opposite, you won't have to shout like a panicky trader in meltdown mode to make yourself heard above the hubbub either. A short cocktail list - priced from £8.50 - punts martinez, pear and rosemary martini, the trader (tequila, cinnamon, ginger and orange bitters) and Cornhill fruit cup, a turbo-charged take on Pimm's. A request for a French 75 elicits a less than confident response from our bemused bar man, so perhaps stick to the list’s two champagne cocktails. At £16, the imaginatively presented special offer of a flute of house Le Mesnil Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs champagne (normally £10.50) and half a dozen plump briny bi-valves that includes fine Essex Blackwater wild oysters is a City deal to jump on. That's a buy order.

33 Cornhill, EC3 7929 1378http://www.thedoor-group.com/

The Boxers Bar, Finsbury

2011-08-18T03:59:00.000-07:00

Despite once owning red Lonsdale boots - knockout, teamed with bleached jeans circa Soft Cell's Tainted Love - I’m not big into boxing. So passionate about pugilism is mine host Dave Smith, he’s opened The Boxers Bar, an air-conditioned Finsbury cellar dedicated to the sport. Tonight, I’m his only punter but the place fills up for fisticuffs beamed live from Vegas or New York through until 7 am, our time, on big fight weekends. On such occasions, it’s rammed with beefy, butch, bloodthirsty blokes necking £40 Möet and shouting ‘jolly nice jab and nifty footwork, Amir, old chap!’ or whatever alpha males exclaim at such times out of sheer excitement. Dave pulls me a pint of Stella - ironic, given the lager’s unfortunate nickname - and reminisces. He used to box but had to give it up. ‘Knocked senseless?’ ‘Nah! Blown up on a tour of duty in Northern Ireland.’ As a promoter, he’s made friends with the fraternity. Joe (Calzaghe) and Nigel (Benn) have dropped in, apparently. About half the size of a boxing ring, the tiny tap room is decked out in mid-20th Century standard dive bar mufti. Most of the lurid boxerabilia on display is for sale: Smokin Joe Frazier and Mohammed Ali’s signed gloves mounted and framed? That’ll be £3,000. Also on display - a neat louche touch, this - is a rogues gallery of East End villains. The Krays aside, I'm stumped. Dave fills me in, so to speak. Food can be ordered from Alexanders, a chippie upstairs: £9.50 gets a fish supper; battered cod, natch!

9 Christopher Street EC2A 2BS 7247 4580 http://tinyurl.com/3v59b2g

Craft Beer Co, Clerkenwell

2011-08-11T02:33:00.000-07:00

In groups of four they arrive, all sweaty anticipation: paunchy geeks with ratty grey ponytails, who look like they spend daylight hours in darkened rooms playing Dragon Age 2 and listening to prog rock. Latter day pilgrims, they’ve come to worship at a new temple of Dionysus, Clerkenwell’s Craft Beer Co. ‘Look, Dora! They’ve got Magic Rock Dark Arts’ gasps a Hobbit to his Hogwarthian Miriam Margoyles-ish missus, herself a practitioner of the dark arts, I’d wager. Dora coos fondly over countless spouts spewing Cotleigh Seahawk, Redemption Hotspur and other ales I’ll presently come to know. Bottles of Cigar City Humidor, Blithering Idiot, Smuttynose Porter and Gorbals Affyerheid (or did I hallucinate that?) are pressed on me by simpatico staff out to make converts to their beery cause. I'm given Clerkenwell Lager , 'brewed for us by a sort of wandering Danish gypsy.' And a definite cut above Carlsberg too, I say. ‘Try this beauty’ urges a Merlin look-alike proffering me a sample phial of Dresden stout. ‘It tastes like smoky bacon.’ And it does; the 85p saved on a packet of crisps, I’ll put towards a pork and black pudding ‘hand raised’ pie. The range of craft ales, allegedly the biggest in Britain, is astonishing. So too, a selection of premium bourbon and Scotland's finest. I canter on dutifully, beer-blinkered to those appealing distractions. Who knew ale could be so expensive? At £25, does Horny Devil throw in a free lap-dance? Seriously though, I'd urge you to make strides for this fantastic reconfigured corner boozer... and be sure to wear an elasticated waistband if the amber stuff floats your bloat.

82 Leather Lane EC1 7430 1123 http://www.facebook.com/thecraftbeerco

Eleanor's, Charing Cross

2011-08-04T04:24:00.000-07:00

Aeons ago, too 'loved-up' to sit out the taxi ride home, I dragged an angel met in Heaven (a night-club then doubling as Sodom according to the tabloids) round to Charing Cross station’s hellish hotel. Depressing? Checking into Zurich’s Dignitas clinic would have been more life-affirming. But what’s this? The gloomy Victorian morgue has been reborn with the Guoman group as midwife? Up a regal candle-lit staircase, down complex, moody perfumed corridors we waft in search of the pile’s unsigned bar (take a satnav) until, lo, Eleanor’s: the new lounge’s lame name, a reference to Edward I’s Queen commemorated in the elaborate stone (Charing) cross outside. Against my expectations, Eleanor is a looker. Her smart taupe and Rioja-tone threads reflect her signature drink. Winking at us from a large Kilner jar, it’s presented with some ceremony by the politest bona fide Monégasque I’ve ever met (admittedly, these are few in number), the principality being mostly populated by vile, tax-dodging grand prix pricks and non-native bling. He expounds the properties of Castilian sangria (Eleanor’s speciality) in a kind of posho Franglais ‘Avez-vous ever been to a Harvester before?’ way. Sweet! Rather than burst his bubble, my date keeps schtum about a decade spent in Barcelona. Cracking cocktails include Cajun Martini - a hottie at £11.95. So tempting, and generous, are Monsieur Monaco’s meaty platters (£14.95), we later skip dinner. On the downside, Queen El’s current courtiers are not the coolest. Oust them! The dame deserves a sexier crowd.

Charing Cross Hotel, The Strand, WC2 0871 376 9012 http://tinyurl.com/42gncyr

The Drift, City

2011-07-28T03:59:00.000-07:00

Costa; Nando's; Gallo blush wine; Hotel Chocolat; CK One; Hollyoaks; Barratt Homes: I bet the clientele at The Drift, a mahooosive new bar/diner in the ginormous new plate glass slab of real estate that is Heron Tower, buys into them all. As with those brands, the aspirational lifestyle peddled by The Drift - and its successful City sisters The Folly and The Anthologist - isn’t aimed at this maverick old soak. My mid-20’s fashion-forward date ain’t wearing it either. Her assessment? ‘Thinks it’s Paul Smith. Feels like Ted Baker.’ Miaow! Tonight, the joint is jumping: above the hard-edged duplex space’s echoey airport terminal-like cacophony, I bark my order from a list that includes Crème Brulée Martini, Lime and Coriander Splendito (no, me neither) and bog standard Smirnoff-laced Homemade Ginger Lemonade, pricey at £8.95. Our drinks are how I imagine Tesco Finest cocktails might taste if such things existed. A table of demob-happy suits and suitesses - the next series of The Apprentice cast at a stroke? - are loving it. So too, an injection-moulded Joey Essex girl in a too short prom dress, too high tramp platforms and a 'why?' white sailor's cap - who rates the place ‘reem.’ A positive, I believe. I totally get The Drift’s drift but my date hates its contrived quirkiness - battered old trunks filled with random period crockery, pearls and God knows what else isn't stylish; it's tat, guys. Above the shrieking drunk girls, the music is also grating on the date's lugs. ‘That’s Plan B,’ I say. ‘Yeh? What’s yours?’ she hisses. ‘Jubjub on Rivington Street?’ We exit, her too sweet daiquiri left barely half drunk. Her thunderous face turns all sunshiny again.

Heron Tower, 110 Bishopsgate, EC2

Absinthe Bar at BB&G, Knighstbridge

2011-07-21T06:21:00.000-07:00

Distilled from wormwood and brutally alcoholic, absinthe was banned in 1914 by a French government fearful for its citoyens’ health and sanity - shortly before it shipped them off them to die or go mad in the trenches. Artists, rakes and roués coveted the spirit - it tastes like neat Pernod mixed with Night Nurse - for its trippy qualities while in Belle Époque bordellos, ugly old creeps favoured it for loosening up recalcitrant filles de joie: hence the maxim ‘absinthe makes the tart grow fonder.’ Newly legalised in France and never banned in Britain, it's enjoying a renaissance, at least in the eyes of ‘London’s first absinthe bar’ which hopes to convert Generation Aftershock to this antique, alternative head-bender. An early encounter with the stuff led me to wake up in a Gorbals high-rise, in bed with a German shepherd - as in big dug, not the Deutsche equivalent of Big Doug - and zero recall. Tonight , I’m hoping for a similarly dark decadent adventure but Brompton Bar and Grill’s basement lounge is less Serge Gainsbourg debauched, more Christine Lagarde buttoned-up chic. A list of just three cocktails (why no Sazerac or Remember the Maine?) hardly invites a Rimbaud gets wrecked in Rouen sesh. Hoping for a glimpse of la fée verte - the poetic French see green fairies; we see pink Dumbos - I persevere and work my way through all three cocktails: a daiquiri, summat else I didn't care for, and Death in the Afternoon - good Champagne spoiled by its wormwood slug. ‘Look! It’s (Moulin Rouge’s fée verte) Kylie Minogue,’ slurs my date, an absinthe virgin, indicating a miniscule Knightsbridge matron with a Botox-frozen dial. He’s only had two shots. Absinthe is not for lightweights.

Brompton Bar & Grill, 243 Brompton Rd SW3 7589 8005

www.bromptonbarandgrill.com

Planet of the Grapes, City

2011-07-14T05:34:00.000-07:00

By a fluke of nature, I discover a new City wine cellar. Leaving the launch party at Madison, we're suddenly engulfed in a monsoon that's whipped in from nowhere. Stranded on taxi-free City streets, my date spots a sign for somewhere called Planet of the Grapes. I’m sceptical: sounds like the wine bar equivalent of Curl Up and Dye or Tan-a-Reef. Will there be Blue Nun, Black Tower and pink Lambrini? As the alternative is sodden duds clinging to my contours - Nigella in her burkini not the look I go for - I'll risk it. And..happy boy am I! Naffissimo name aside, these guys take their vino seriously. The deal? Pick any bottle off well-stocked shelves and pay £10 corkage on top of retail. £18 bags ballsy Chilean Merlot, but trade up and snog big sexy buggers on the cheap. Intense Californian old vines Mourvedre, complex Kiwi Syrahs and pudding-y top notch Tokaji, a hot Hungarian to know. At £35, Olivier Leflaive’s Saint Aubin 1er cru Dents de Chien is les couilles du chien; as classy a white Burgundy as you’ll drink all summer without spending silly money. POTG turns out to be POTG: The Sequel - the original is showing at Leadenhall Market and there's a POTG retail unit in New Oxford Street too (*makes note to reccie*). Understated decor is enlivened by a gallery of ‘dead drunks’ - Hank Williams, Truman Capote, Billie Holiday and what I take to be the little singer from The Monkees. The date corrects me: It transpires it's Jack Wild (pictured above, as the Artful Dodger) years before he pegged it . The departed boozers are a sobering prospect. As damage limitation, there's share platters, pork pie, mussels and steaks. Sweet staff comp us a bowl of goose fat chips with aioli and, had it not stopped raining, would’ve proffered umbrellas too, I imagine.

74-82 Queen Victoria St. EC4 7248 1892 www.planetofthegrapes.co.uk

Peacock Alley at The Waldorf Astoria, Syon Park

2011-07-07T05:06:00.000-07:00

The Duke of Northumberland’s estate is home to the new London Syon Park Waldorf Astoria. This, according to my date who knows her way around the sticks, is in somewhere called Isleworth... or was it Iowa? I forget. Perched high at the handsome art deco style bar in the hotel's ‘destination’ lounge, Peacock Alley, we agree that fine cocktails make tonight’s mini-safari to the Wild West worthwhile. Crafted with skill, using freshly picked leaves to order from the hotel herb garden, Basil Martini bears investigation. I prefer a Manhattan built on Pappy Van Winkle 10-year-old. So generous and potent are our cocktails, three will leave you all shook up, like Fay Wray up the Empire State, only in a worse state. My date’s Duchess (£14) is a strawberry accessorised pink Champagne coupe so pretty, the Duchess’s sister, P Middy, might wear it to the Royal Enclosure at Ascot. ‘Chapeau!’ - as they say - to its maker, a young Frenchwoman who also introduces me to Brewers Feast (Bulleit bourbon, eau de vie and ale syrup). It’s a sensation. As for the Waldorf A itself, the sensation I feel is disbelief. Housed in an ugly brick barn, it suggests a battery farm or a retail park on the outskirts of Utrecht. Staff introduce us to a courtyard garden laid with an ancient bonsai tree, Moroccan lanterns, Thai gubbins and the sort of 'noir' cane furniture found on a million Home Counties patios. What this has to do with Capability Brown, in whose honour the hotel restaurant - nice enough dinner, dull guests, vanilla room - is named, beats me. As for the hotel's public areas and Peacock Alley itself, their pick’n’mix interiors are not for the chicken. More design dodo than peacock, here’s queasy colour clash, putrid patterns, garish gee-gaws, gaudy chinoiserie, ghastly silver and white thrones, gibbering Andy Warhol quotations as art, trompe l’oeil bookcases and butterflies in a glass tank (Oh no! ‘They died’). Need a venue for a big fat gipsy wedding? Hit the A4 westbound!

London Syon Park Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Syon Park, Middlesex TW7 6AZ 020 7870 7777

www.londonsyonpark.com

Vista, Trafalgar Square

2011-06-30T03:17:00.000-07:00

Ideally, midsummer evenings should be spent lolling on loungers in lush Babylonian roof gardens. In my fantasy Cleopatra world, Nubian slaves fan courtiers with palm fronds, Champagne flows from Nebuchadnezzars and I’m chiselled, bronzed, Mark Anthony - as in Cleo’s bit of Roman rumpy-pumpy, not J-Lo’s scrawny fella. At Vista, the newly enlarged, upgraded, alfresco bar atop the Trafalgar Hilton, the reality is markedly different. As an unseasonably warm spring turns, inevitably, to wet winter in the Shetlands, I could use several of said islands’ woolly pullies. Too cold to hold Midnight at Vista - tonight’s launch party vodkatinis co-ordinating perfectly with my Grey Goose-pimpled flesh - I glower, pit bull-like, at anyone who dares approach the patio heater I’m hogging. Vista boasts stunning views of Trafalgar Square. A less fine prospect, is tonight’s er, warm-up act for Beverley Knight, the main entertainment for the assembled bliggers (bloggers/ liggers). Whose bright idea involved hiring ‘exotic’ (read: tacky) podium ‘dancers’ (read: can’t move for toffee) in swimsuits, heels and floppy hat combos circa Miss Pontins Prestatyn 1972? The charidee bash is supported by a fake tan company but. among the Z-list assembly, TOWIE's Sam Feirs and Harry Shuuut-up-Derbridge’s glows are more Ropez than St.Tropez. To fully appreciate this chic belvedere, go when the sun remembers its job description and Essex is safely holed up at Faces.

Trafalgar Hilton, 2 Spring Gardens SW1 7870 2900

www.hilton.co.uk/trafalgar

Happiness Forgets, Hoxton

2011-06-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

According to Dionne Warwick, ‘loneliness remembers what happiness forgets.’ But, did writers Bacharach and David ever imagine their song would inspire a funky East London watering hole? ‘Please don’t call it “a speakeasy.”’ Mr. Head-Shaker shakes his head, tutting that the term has been inappropriately appropriated by PRs and hacks (guilty) to describe any liquor lounge smaller than Tiger Tiger, the Haymarket meet-market that’s bigger than Bulgaria. He’s not keen on ‘dive bar’ either, although, technically, that’s what this basement snug is. OK, then: Happiness Forgets is a small cocktail bar.... with big appeal. Happy now, mister? I am: we have Head-Shaker’s undivided attention; the place as deserted as a Detroit dollar-a-daiquiri dive (oops, sorry!) that’s run out of rum. Tonight, it seems; the Happi-inn isn’t for N1’s gelled fin stick-thins, out en masse, for a spot of competitive preening in Hoxton Square. Maybe they begrudge £7 for a top drawer rinse? Their loss! Improved Gin Cocktail; Sazerac and a bone dry Martini are irreproachable. Purveying flawless classics, not farting around with faddy ‘molecular’ malarkey, is HF's mission statement. I hook up with Harry Palmer (Maker’s Mark, Suze and vermouth). Named after Len Deighton’s spy from The Ipcress File, it’s fatal for Cainers, out dangerously late on a school night. Unaware that i write for the paper, Head- Shaker tells me a PR (I know who you are) dropped in telling him that the only way his bar could be guaranteed a review in Metro, was if he hired her. Newsflash! A: it doesn't work like that. B: his bar just got a great review from me... in print...gratis!
8 Hoxton Square, N1 7613 0325

http://www.facebook.com/happinessforgets

VOC, King's Cross

2011-06-16T05:39:00.000-07:00

The initials VOC stand for The Dutch East India Company in the native tongue of those former sea traders. It’s to their times and those Oriental climes - with a little help from the crew of the good ship Purl in Marylebone - that VOC, a new punch house in King’s Cross, looks for inspiration for its recherché rinses. Small is beautiful, they say; and the diminutive VOC is certainly that. A looker too - judging by the beatific smile on the face of coquettish Filipino star waitress, Mary, whenever she contemplates him - is VOC’s Italian mix-maestro, piccolo Alex Palumbo. Like Mary, I’m similarly smitten; at least, on a professional level. Passionate about his craft, Alex bids us taste his home-made bitters, infused rums, barrel-aged grogs and arcane flavourings retrieved via a ladder that leans precariously against a lofty back bar. Unaware he’s in the presence of the drinks industry’s equivalent of the Pope (my chum), and a serial Sazerac sponge (that’ll be me), his enthusiasm is not put on for PR effect. From a deadly arsenal, he unleashes killer Bergamot Grog (£9), New Orleans classic, Vieux Carré, and the liquorice-y Brandy Cocktail served in a chalice. A tenebrous tobacco-tone parlour, VOC could be the background to a Dutch old master’s portrait: thanks to Alex’s masterly mixology, expect VOC to be mobbed by discerning (Vermeer) kats ‘ere long.

2 Varnishers Yard, Regent Quarter, N1 7713 8229

The Mayor of Scaredy Cat Town, Somewhere in London

2011-06-09T02:59:00.000-07:00

By Chinese whisper, I hear of a speakeasy that goes by the unlikely name of The Mayor of Scaredy Cat Town. When I the phone number below, we’re told to turn up at a City fringe location and await further instruction. Memories of car parks off the M25 and gurning to ‘acieeed’ house at illegal raves come flooding back. Arriving at the appointed hour, we’re identified by Secret Greeter and escorted into a busy diner where all is not what it seems. My lips are sealed; but I’ll cryptically offer that the hidden entrance we’re whipped through when no one is watching, is the height of ‘cool.’ Beyond it, a ‘chill-out’ zone where Negroni and Lynchburg Leith Lemonade (the American classic laced with Scotch) are rustled up by a looker Models 1 might want to check out... if their scouts can find the place. The clandestine juke joint rocks to ballsy blues; notorious growler, Big Mama Thornton, ripping the throat out of Leiber and Stoller’s Hound Dog. No bigger than my sitting room, this deep bunker will survive nuclear Armageddon. I had hoped for unbridled debauchery and deeply dodgy behaviour but tonight’s tame collection of cockroaches look to have been rounded up at Starbucks and the lower echelons at Natwest HQ. There are some strange outfits too. Are Spam pink legs encased in bubblegum pink Lycra cycling shorts, worn under sheer tan tights with kitten heels, 'on-trend?' I consult a friend, the editor of Grazia. They are not, it transpires. If the Mayor can rope in friskier katz and more stylish moggies and make his drinks portions a bit more generous - a £7.50 Dry Martini occupies less than half the glass it's served in - he’s in business. Bidden ‘to-de-loo’, we’re escorted out via yet another secret portal. Emerging from a dustbin, Top Cat-stylee, to evade Officer Dibble, would have been an even better exit strategy.

For instructions, tel 020 7078 9633

Bassoon at The Corinthia Hotel, Charing Cross

2011-06-02T04:50:00.000-07:00

Unless you’re an oligarch’s spoilt brat or one of TOWIE's more cash-than-dash dumbos - in which case, you won’t really get the understated sophistication of Bassoon at the Corinthia - there’s a price point for cocktails above which sensible souls will not venture. When I was an apprentice lounge lizard, that ceiling was a shilling; a princely sum that secured a port and lemon and a bag of scratchings back when the Queen’s tongue-tied old man was still on the throne. Fast forward to 2011, and I’m the one left stuttering at The King’s Speech: at nigh-on twenty knicker, this champagne and Chambord fix costs a king’s ransom. It’s all relative, of course: my stylish arm candy is delighted with her Mantovani - a Hendrick’s-based concoction named after the band leader who played here in its 1930s heyday as The Metropole before providing the ethereal soundtrack to countless cremetoria. Were she paying (seamless service and candied/ savoury snacks included, or not): ‘what berk blows £16.88 on a drink?’ This, from Lola in twice-worn Louboutin spikes whose £695 cost would stock my drinks cabinet for a year. Check out Bassoon by all means - David Collins’s classy pastiche of an ambience feutrée Parisian piano lounge circa Léger - but be prepared to punish the plastic or pimp yourself out for the price of its Gimlet.

Corinthia Hotel, Whitehall Place, SW1A 2BD 7930 8181

http://www.corinthia.com/en/London/home/

Booking Office Bar, St Pancras

2011-05-26T05:44:00.000-07:00

Restored to its original 1870s splendour, Gilbert Scott’s gothic fantasy, St. Pancras, is a triumph. Occupying the cathedral-like booking hall, its new hotel bar - in the hands of Marriott - is, in parts, a visual TRAIN CRASH. Was the room stylists' inspiration an ailing Derby department store's sale brochure? From a catalogue of ugliness, I give you: bland shelving units to better display mimsy glassware as collected by OAPs in mock-Tudor bungalows; dullsville leather seating groups even Crossroads Motel mightn’t fancy; boxy metal fixtures to scar the beauteous face of the original ornate ticket office; portraits of what I take to be the cast of Downton Abbey. Hid-y-us! Staff uniforms? Hello, InterCity circa Callaghan’s Winter of Discontent! Stevie Wonder, frankly, could do better on a budget at BHS. Cocktails? Oh yes, those. Our scatty, uninformed waitress delivers creamy Soyer au Champagne, an interesting one-off never-to-be-repeaterd experience and Morning Glory, fair whisky fizz at £8. The bar champions an ambitious list of high-Victorian recipes. But will modern palates reconnect with arcane sugary punches, quaint cups and a load of old cobblers - the phrase on my lips as we escape to Marcus Wareing’s superior David Collins'designed bar at the Gilbert Scott next door. Thank God I didn't book a return ticket, is all I have to add about this missed opportunity to showcase British design brilliance.

Booking Office Bar, St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, Euston Rd London NW1 7841 3540

Equus, Whitehall

2011-05-20T06:41:00.000-07:00

Set in what was the Secret Service’s WWII HQ, we only espied two other guests when we staked out this five star hotel's new bar, Equus. The title refers to cavalrymen - as evidenced in various heroic wall-hangings of the sort you'd expect in Tory MP Sir Hangeman-Flogem's constituency surgery - as opposed to Peter Shaffer’s dark play about a deeply troubled horse bothering naked Daniel Radcliffe. A trio of 'meh' rooms includes a curious overflow space-cum-corridor with a piano that’s ‘just for show’, Comfortable enough, their post-modern decor with its military tunic scarlet accents is not particularly memorable. An affable (Canadian?) barman shakes out £12.95 cocktails. Served with....just salted nuts (At this level? Are you sure?)... several are named after past hotel guests: The Gladstone, a premier mix of Rittenhouse rye, Carpano Antica vermouth and bitters, is served Manhattan style while The George Bernard Shaw is basically a tweaked negroni with Cherry Heering preferred to sweet vermouth. Both pass muster. Patriotically, a portion of the cost of the brandy and burgundy-based Cavalry Cocktail goes to charities that support wounded soldiers. Champagne (Lanson, £60), wine from £8 per glass (Costières de Nîmes) and Harviestoun Ola Dubh are also available at a bar that might not ultimately prove to be quite the ‘stylish destination’ it reckons it should be.

The Royal Horseguards Hotel, 2 Whitehall Court, SW1A 2EJ 0845 305 8332

http://tinyurl.com/6h73pok

Based on a review for Square Meal online

Dishoom Chowpatty Beach, Waterloo

2011-05-19T05:25:00.000-07:00

Clever Covent Garden chapatis, Dishoom, have set up camp - and I do mean ‘camp’ - by the river, where their Chowpatty Beach pop-up café/ bar is set to shine until Autumn rains spoil the party. Juxtaposed with Southbank’s Brutalist blocks, their folksy homage to Mumbai-sur-mer is as garish as a 20-rupee poster of Ganesh, the elephant god revered as the Remover of Obstacles. What’s been removed in the creation of Chowpatty B, are tonnes of sand to form a cute beach-ette, and half of some municipal tip’s debris. Imaginatively recycled, it provides the witty decor in a wooden shack that shakes to 60’s Bombay beats. Cute staff sport lurid slogan t-shirts: ‘Life’s a Beach and Then You Fry’ I think I recall in the case of a smiley chef slinging spicy street snacks in our direction. Thirst quenchers include wines (disappointingly, none Indian); Kingfisher; Thums Up cola and Limca lemon soda in their iconic bottles and authentic Gola Ices such as Kala Khatta (£6) - basically, a Tanqueray slush puppy. Also popular; some rummy liquid, served in a fresh coconut, whose taste reminds me that I need to top up the windscreen washing liquid in the old Beamer. The punters seem equally keen on fruity alco-’Tipples’ as sugary sweet as Bollywood babe Anushka Sharma’s smile but, as with the films, I’m not entirely sure what all the song and dance is about. Whatever. As a hip hangout, The Beach is a blast. Check out the talent: you might just pull the next David Gandhi.

Southbank, Belvedere Rd SE1 http://tinyurl.com/3hhymwa

The Worship Street Whistling Shop, Shoreditch

2011-05-12T03:24:00.000-07:00

Marylebone’s much-admired Purl has a new gaff in Shoreditch. In what was once The Pulpit, converts to the owners’ mission for molecular mixology are already worshipping at the whimsically-titled Worship Street Whistling Shop: in Georgian times, a Whistling Shop was a euphemism for an illicit still-cum-speakeasy. Leftfield libations such as Exploded Vodka Martini and Radiation Aged Cocktail include arcana produced in a working lab, open to view; ‘chip pan bitters’ and ‘removed cream’ used to soften the juniper attack of a Black Cat gin martini, for example. Such experiments mostly pay off although virgin olive oil in my date’s lemony gin fizz is declared ‘pointless and salad dressing-y.' Adding an adult dimension to the ‘bottle v breast’ debate, baby’s formula milk appears in a (Substitute) Bosom Caresser: mixed with fine de Cognac, dry Madeira, echt grenadine and salt and pepper bitters, this better-than-Baileys balsam is suitably yummy mummy on the lash. Shades of Empire eats are provided by the bar’s catering partners, Temple and Shian, and enthusiastic staff are kitted out in suitably Downstairs duds to greet their Upstairs guests - City mouse manipulators, mostly, when I drop in. As for TWSWS’s decor, I’m signing off a different hymn sheet to its growing band of devoted disciples. Give me dirty-sexy-louche or Sinatra suave: an austere Dickensian brick bunker in cough linctus browns that’s three amputee dragoons short of Flo Nightingale’s Crimean hospital ward isn’t my idea of seductive. Nor do I fancy a poky private room to hire for up to ten. Its focal grimy bathtub suggests murderous Chamber of Horrors psycho John George Haigh who dissolved his victims’ bodies in acid in his. Perhaps this too is a crucible for more experimental cocktail outlandishness?

63 Worship St EC2 www.whistlingshop.com

ZTH, Clerkenwell

2011-05-05T05:54:00.000-07:00

Designer Russell Sage’s mise-en-scène at the inviting lounge bar at the new Zetter Townhouse Hotel is a triumph: a doolally punked-up parlour - think Miss Havisham meets Siouxsie Sioux - furnished in a raid on Steptoe and Son’s yard. Behind stereo converted Clerkenwell townhouses’ powder blue door, lies a seduction that’s only a few good-time girls short of the bawdyhouse you frequented in another life as a debauched pre-Raphaelite painter. In their natty neckerchiefs, the uniformed barmen belong in a Millais portrait; that, or on Dries Van Noten’s catwalk. Also referencing bygone times with a decidedly contemporary twist, the £8.50 house specials, courtesy of Tony (69 Colebrooke Row) Conigliaro, are cocktail alchemy to write home about. I say ‘write home’ because, once you chuck in reasonably-priced nibbles from Bruno Loubet's bistro kitchen - zingy Vietnamese squid salad, melty beef daube on mash, properly al dente pea and loveage risotto and generous charcuterie boards - and I’m tempted to make ZTH my permanent address. Top of Tony’s quaint quality quaffs are The Master At Arms, an updated rummy revenant for sophisticated sea dogs that incorporates a port reduction to mellow effect ; The Flintlock - Beefeater 24, gunpowder tea tincture, dandelion and burdock bitters and Fernet Branca; who’d have thought that lot would work well together? - and Les Fleurs Du Mal; a sherbet lemony absinthe grenade that sends my Parisian date into Baudelairean rapture, lauding London's 'fabuleux' cocktail joints. Thank fuck I chose ZTH, not TGIF!

49-50 St John’s Square EC1V 4JJ 7324 4444

www.thezettertownhouse.com

Adventure, Covent Garden

2011-04-16T04:01:00.000-07:00

A door gorilla eyes me with suspicion. I'm outside Adventure in Covent Garden. En route to a bit of a do, dressed in black tie, I'm keen to have a quick butcher's. Is the suturnine one about to warn me I'm way too chic for what was once backpacker pit, Bok, a place guaranteed to 'gie you the boak', as the say in Bo'ness and Brechin? Whatever. He makes no attempt to deter me, so preoccupied is he with his own thoughts. Pensive, miserable, Is he wondering why he ever left his reassuringly humdrum life in Dresden, Droylsden, Drabsville South Africa or some other dump whose residents dream of London's gold pavements to be stood on those very same sidewalks for whatever sum he's earning per hour? Adventure, it transpires, is a new uptown adventure for a trio of similarly-named south London bars. The basement bunker boasts two bars in a long vaulted industrial-style corridor with high banquette seating. The overall impression is one of drinking in a glorified London Underground tunnel - the Party Line, perhaps. The price of a cocktail - nigh on £10 - is about the same as for a return to Finchley Central these days, only with much better customer service thrown in: who'd have ever thought it? The place is clearly a popular post work kick-back, thanks to special deals and happy hour until 7 pm when £9.50 bags a brace of cocktails from an unexpectedly interesting list that runs to apple martini and Uncle Vanya (an Absolut vodka, crème de mure and sours mix). I'm not sure who'd want the frozen black Irish and the Malibu, chocolate, nut and creamy confection that is Umpa Lumpa. Willy Wonka’s vertically-challenged helpers are the only ones not at risk of banging their heads on Adventure’s low brick walls. Wines from £15 mean the adventure continues until midnight. Will I be hurrying back? Based on this photo of a typical cross-section of customers; what do you reckon?

20 Bedford Street WC2 07739 325180 www.adventurebar.co.uk

Adapted from a review at www.squaremeal.co.uk.

See even more like this at www.metro.co.uk

Good Godfrey's, Aldwych

2011-04-14T06:25:00.000-07:00

What dash was once cut at The Waldorf’s Palm Court, the place where London's Brilliantined rakes and derring-do dames learned to tango, was lost as the hotel, then synonymous with elegant living, faded into mediocrity and the beau monde deserted her. Part of a major makeover by Hilton, its new 1920’s-style lounge - named after former resident big band leader, Howard Godfrey - hopes to attract today’s generation of cocktail-mad young things. And, why not? Any list that includes well-executed revivals Martinez and pre-Prohibition-era pink Philadelphian, lovely Clover Club, deserves respect. Alas, house signatures underwhelm. Rosemary-anointed foamy flip, Spring Memories won’t spring to my mind in a hurry and prissy pink Refined Madam’s Tanqueray 10 is better in Waldorf-tini, a hoochie coochie that’ll show any punter a good time for £17. ‘Edible gold flake don’t come cheap, dearie!’ Served in a hip-flask, bourbon blast The Astor is a cute idea. Other ideas, such as art deco atomisers for perfumed finishing spritzes, reference rivals: The Dorchester, for example. Presided over by the capable Nelson, a Portugeezer who knows what to do with a shaker, a handsome illuminated onyx bar cuts it, but the room, all penumbral (listed) panelling, needs lighting tweaks for warmth and interest. Elsewhere, stylistic affectations such as an ivory tinkler’s straw boater (naff) and a bowler-hatted lanky doorman’s too-large uniform (Freddie ‘Parrot-Face’ Davies?) - amuse. Godfrey’s report card? Good: could be very good.

Good Godfrey’s, Waldorf Hilton, Aldwych, WC2B 4DD 7836 2400

http://tinyurl.com/66qwppa

The Piccadilly Institute, Soho

2011-04-07T03:05:00.000-07:00

Giant Lewis Carroll-esque figures greet us outside the Piccadilly Institute, a Jabberwocky among gin joints. Its Twilight world tangle of themed bars attracts impressionable souls who pee their pants over R Patz but settle for drenched-in-Lowcoste-aftershave Olly Murs-alikes in too-tight shiny tailoring. Formerly On Anon - whose hilarious Canadian lumberjack cabin, now defunct, was as kitsch as anything on Hi Di Hi - the rambling pile’s darker new gothic trappings are supposed to design a fun adventure playground. I admire Damien Hirst-y diamond-clad antler chandeliers and Clinic, a crepuscular conspiratorial Dickenisan cocktail laboratory its white tiled walls lit cough linctus amber. Somewhere in the building's bowels, there's a Zen 'garden', I'm told, but my barnav clearly isn't working tonight. I settle in another of its half a dozen bars (called Noir) where my £6.80 ‘margarita’ is crafted by a blonde lovely in black rustling tulle tutu. Frankly, Desmond Tutu could do no worse: served in a warmish glass sans salted rim, it’s the vilest lip-puckeringly acidic trauma I’ve suffered since, off my nut , I once licked a lime fragrance toilet block to win a bet. If this is a margarita, my name’s Margarita Pracatan. ‘How about a dry martini?’ I ask, not unreasonably, of somewhere that offers cocktails. Ms Tutu glugs dry vermouth in a glass, enquiring cheerfully if I ‘want anything with it?’ Happy hour, I like... but amateur hour? My advice? Ladies, stick to Heidsieck (it’s champagne, not a nursery game) and dump Olly, Sex on the Beach and Lime Slime shooters for someone who’ll introduce you to grown-up drinking dens like Hix a short stroll away from this theme park aimed at the sort of people who watch TOWIE on TV...but not in an ironic way.

Jam Tree, Fulham

2011-03-31T06:31:00.000-07:00

At the private view of Proud Chelsea’s Sex, Drugstores and Rock & Roll: A History of the King’s Road, a bevy of demobed dolly birds and 60s faces now in their sixties are out in their finery. How fashion-fantastic that thoroughfare must have been in its patchouli-drenched Sergeant Pepper heyday. Nowadays, it’s a boulevard of bland, boring as a Boden-ed-up Belgian banker. By the bridge where Chelsea slums it with Fulham, there’s a new kid on the block, Olympia food pub The Jam Tree’s second branch. A big decked beer garden defies the sun not to shine from now until September and I like the main room’s funked-up new Britannia pose. A shortish wine list peddles quaffable stuff at under a score but upgrade to a zesty Picpoul de Pinet (£23.50), good with ‘colonial’ pub food: that’s Malaysian spicy noodle soup (laksi), Jamaican chicken curry (£12.50) and nasi goreng but not haggis unless they want their windows pushed through by outraged Bravehearts. The signature cocktail, (strawberry) Jam Mojito, is well enough executed but doesn’t improve on the classic recipe. On my second reccie, the crowd is a mix of Chelsea bland blondes and Chelseigh and her lairy Plan B lookalike mates from Fulham’s remaining ungentrified terraces. Stylish? In the 90s, this site housed Revolution, or at least that's what my brain cell thinks one of Jam Tree II's on-trend-for-a-nano-second predecessors was called. Sadly, King's Road's cool crown has long since slipped. The new owners should look to Haggerston or Deptford for Jam Tree III.

541 King's Road SW6 2EB 020 3397 3739 www.thejamtree.com

Sky Lounge, The City

2011-03-24T05:51:00.000-07:00

With the Nikkei in free-fall, some City traders risked vast amounts of wedge on a swift rebound for troubled Japan’s markets - 'someone else’s misery is another's golden buying opportunity' the maxim in these parts. By the time you read this, the carrion crows will either be be shirtless, s**t-faced on cheap vodka, or toasting a tidy profit in champagne - Armand de Brignac rosé (£600), say - on one of two sun decks at Mint Hotel’s Sky Bar. So popular is this new DJ lounge, reservations are already advisable, long before summer kicks in. What’s the big attraction? Not the hotel itself, as anodyne as any Square Miler’s stark Starck bachelor pad. No, it’s those views, yours for the price of beer. At £9 plus for a bottle of Goose Island Matilda or Belgian brute, Bière du Démon, a liquid cosh at 12% A.B.V, think of it as an investment. For, I’d pay twice as much for any panorama that encompasses Tower Bridge, The Gherkin and the shimmering Shard, breathtakingly beautiful by night. Similarly tasty, are cocktails such as Blackjack, a liquorice-infused Buffalo Trace old fashioned and Hard Shoulder (£10.50), a Monkey Shoulder toddy that drinks like cold Lemsip - useful for this virused-up hacking hack, full of man flu tonight. Not to be confused with Sky Bar, a new loft I loathe down Westminster way, Sky Lounge is a banker for bankers and snap-happy tourists. Make it a Nikon: Japan needs your bucks. Mint Hotel, 7 Pepys St, EC3 0845 601 3009 http://tinyurl.com/68lcw6r

Foundation, Covent Garden

2011-03-17T15:32:00.000-07:00

Foundation in Covent Garden comes courtesy of LatenightLondon, the behemoth that begat Tiger Tiger, Sway and Grace, inter alia. At their latest trademark megabar-diner-cum-nightclub, a mishmash of funky, loud retro styling ideas suggests its designers have been on a crawl of London’s edgier bars: Callooh Callay; Lounge Bohemia; Danger of Death - it all looks vaguely familiar. If I were 19, up-West on a date with Ashleigh, a junior stylist at Curl Up & Dye of Ilford, I’d be well-impressed by such sophistication. Unlike Ash, our drinks don’t cut it. Pear and Cinnamon Mojito tastes like licking the jammy layer in a poncey French yogurt pot while my editor strikes a mental red pen mark through her chosen cocktail. Billed as an ‘excessive and fabulous red hibiscus daiquiri...Darling!’ Holly Golightly could be a melted alco-ice pole for all I know: less Breakfast at Tiffany, more rinse at Ratner’s, this liquid bauble's cost is excessive. For something truly fabulous, take your £9 to Hawksmoor across the street, darling. Cute staff / ditzy service deliver bog standard steak sandwich and fish finger sarnie. It's the kind of scran I’d probably appreciate more, blootered and famished at 3 am. If Nicki Minaj, Hollyoaks, CKOne, Superdry and a dissertation on how fit (or not) are the birds on Jersey Shore - our neighbours’ specialist subject - work for you, Foundation might just float your boat. It sure as hell ain't aimed at me.

5 Langley St WC2H 9JA 7836 5005http://www.foundation-bar.co.uk

The Dime Bar and Diner, Battersea

2011-03-10T09:04:00.000-08:00

If it’s broke, fix it! The thinking, I imagine, behind this venue’s recent Americanisation. Out goes all pan-Asian pretence - its previous short-lived pose as The Red Monkey having not exactly wowed SW11 - junked in favour of a Mad Men-era cocktail lounge-cum-diner that's, spiritually, from somewhere down Vegas way. Gamblers might fancy a £7 punt on Pink Cadillac, Big Apple Sour, Bluegrass Cosmo or Chuck Berry Julep (honeyed Bourbon, fresh blueberries, plum and mint) or Jackie O ( a vodka, lychee, blueberry and elderflower Collins). Wandering Bear - American chardonnay at £16.50 - is one of a dozen or so wines on offer and Yankee ale includes Brooklyn lager. To eat: Elvis burger; tuna melt; pulled pork; calamari; wings; macaroni cheeses... and scant pickings for veggies. What has been retained from the site’s previous incarnation, are three state-of-the-art karaoke suites from £30. ‘Hit The Road, Jack’ to Clapham Junction if you fancy it . One question: will there be enough takers? Buddies, can you spare The Dime?

50 Battersea Rise SW11 7924 6288 http://www.thedimebar.co.uk/

For more of my reviews like this, go to www.squaremeal.co.uk

Amaranto, Mayfair

2011-03-10T02:19:00.000-08:00

At the Four Seasons, re-opened after a £125 million makeover, a scripted limpet attaches himself to me to promulgate ‘the concept ‘ behind Amaranto, its new drinks/ dining zone. Mesmerised by my dramatic abattoir red surroundings, I don’t hear him. As with creator Yves-Pierre Rochon’s gauche rehash of The Savoy, here’s more heroically hilarious designer swank. Fascist Futurist bas-relief; horsey hideousness; wine libraries behind glass; geegaws I swear I saw at TK Maxx; a lurid representation of the Four Seasons (as in weather, not Franki Valli); zebra print chairs at a vast polished table on which I envisage a decrepit, debauched Prime Minister of some basket case Mediterranean economy polishing off a tartelette by way of an amuse bouche; an open flame effect fire that's one sheepskin rug short of a hooker's shag pad: I’m getting Mussolini’s marbled palazzo booked for a 70s porn shoot. Worryingly, I quite like it. Cocktails work: date’s aperitivo hour classic, negroni sbagliato, is served with a wasabi nut mountain; cinnamon fig sour winks at me but I owe it to our OTT surroundings to go for gold. Flaked gold leaf floating in Cavalli vodka and Martini Gold by Dolce & Gabbana, the Hamilton Place martini is (Amanda) Lear jet-class camp at £18.50. Later, as Amaranto’s credit card terminal goes into terminal decline, I’m left dangling for fully ten minutes, sans apology. More time to gawp. Mubarak; Gaddafi; Brangelina (reportedly Four Seasons fans); leathery Latin lizards with dodgissimo taste: here’s your spiritual home. In his mustard Toytown soldier's uniform, a doorman bids us adieu to the strains of Cole Porter played on a (red ) baby grand. Camp or what?

Four Seasons London at Park Lane, Hamilton Place W1 7499 0888

http://www.fourseasons.com/london

The Arch Bar, W1

2011-03-09T09:21:00.000-08:00

Refurbished in the currently fashionable mix of art deco/1950s-inspired anodyne chic favoured by many venues aimed at the Business Class buck, what was the Intercontinental's Lobby Bar has been re-invented. As The Arch Bar, it promises ‘unobstructed views of gardens, parks and the iconic Wellington Arch.’ Sightseers should avoid the adjacent lounge we’re initially consigned to for tea: two dark ‘phone boxes, like big dirty Daleks, skulk outside to spoil the much anticipated view (see left : what lies beyond those annoying lumps of metal). Better to secure a high stool at the attractive bar counter and view said Arch and Piccadilly’s roaring traffic - a thrilling prospect to contemplate as you dip into a fine selection of over two dozen gins and gin-based cocktails. Try Old Time Tipple (Berkeley Square basil-infused gin muddled with fresh tomato & cranberry), or cherry sweetened Mother’s Ruin which uses the new Six O’Clock Gin, so named because it harnesses only half a dozen botanicals such as orange peel, elderflower and the mandatory juniper. For gin avoiders, there’s rummy champagne granita at £16, coconut & chilli mojito or a range of wines, many English, as well as ales and occasional live music.

Intercontinental London Park Lane, 1 Hamilton Place W1J 7QY 7409 3131 http://www.intercontinental.com

Adapted from my review for www.squaremeal.co.uk

Sky Bar, Westminster

2011-03-03T03:27:00.000-08:00

A uniformed ‘air hostess’ (pole dancer? Albania's Eurovision entry?) shows us into a new cocktail spot. As far as a film of grime on the windows permits, the views from Millbank Tower’s 29th floor impress . ‘Wow!’ we gush giddily for fully five minutes before, all coo-ed out and done with drooling over the giant erection that is The Shard, we turn our attention to Sky Bar itself. Membership here costs £2,500, but for twenty notes, you too can temporarily join whoever might fancy a night in an anodyne shiny, white box with op-Art furniture and colour wash lighting. I'm guessing dictators’ sons, oily-garchs and vajazzled bimbos. Lindsay Lowlife has lived the high life within and Jack Tweed has graced the lofty pile with his stellar presence, as has his bezzie, pie and mash-faced cock of Ilford East, Mark The Only Way Is Essex Wright, I hear. ‘Ideal for a big fat gypsy wedding reception’ sniffs Milanese fashion designer friend, loftily. For my £2,500, I’d expect the bar to have tomato juice. No joy. On-the-wagon date agrees to mineral water. It’s served in a plastic beaker. Classy! I’m intrigued by Salt and ‘Peper’ cocktail, 'Crystal' and ‘Amand de Brignon’ champagne (£400). Is that supermarket own brand or do they mean Armand de Brignac? Maybe any profits can go towards a swift reprint of a menu littered with howlers? Are Sky Bar's cocktails worth £12.50 (service excluded)? Search me! I have to put up with prosecco bellini from a bar besieged. Lukewarm, astringent, pointless, it languishes unloved. We sit contemplating ice buckets (pictured) devoid of champagne that will never come. Hold on! What's this? I set off like Usain Bolt in pursuit of a quartet comely martinis I've spotted on a waiter's tray a hundred metres distant, only to be told they are for guests at a dinner that is happening behind closed, guarded doors. Somebody says Shayne Ward is at a table. But so far as I can see, even he's not in the house tonight. F***** off, we flee. For cocktails with killer views in cooler surroundings, take your £20 to Paramount atop Centrepoint. New Labour’s 1997 victory was celebrated at Millbank Tower. That night’s anthem occurs to me: Things Can Only Get Better. Over a bottle of cheap red at Pizza Express next door, things finally do.

29th Floor Millbank Tower, 21 - 24 Millbank SW1P 4QP 0845 500 2929

Zenna, Soho

2011-02-24T02:55:00.000-08:00

Time was when, clocking a sleb - as at pukka Indian, The Red Fort, tonight - I’d insinuate myself into their presence, ply them with cocktails until we became newest bestest friends, then sneak in a sly ‘so, Sandra Bernhard, did you and Madge really tip the velvet?’ But nowadays, no star’s CV is complete without some rumoured girl-on-girl action, so why bother? Hence, Sandra dines, unprobed, oblivious to the gossip ferret in the room. Urging me visit The Fort’s new downstairs bar, Zenna, its persuasive PR mermaids lure me onto the rocks. Numerous icy libations launch what will become a fatal Titanic bender. I can’t determine what’s actually ‘new’ here; Zenna seems a carbon copy of what was previously Akbar - give or take a few (apparently expensive), camp metallic leather tuffets that suggest the sort of pew Paris Hilton’s Pomeranian might park its pampered posterior on. What has changed, is the cocktail offer. Adroitly assembled by Dan (ex-Nobu) Thomson, chai tea martini, pineapple and sage mojito and Indian whisky sour are Soho basement bargains at £6. Don’t fall for Dan’s ‘fancy a spicy mai tai alternative?’ line. For that’ll be Illiana, served with a ‘fire extinguisher’ (a gin cooler) on the side - and then, only if you sign an indemnity waiver. Delhi belly? Chilli willy! You do well to avoid, Sandra.

77 Dean Street W1 7437 2525 http://www.zenna-bar.co.uk/

Wyld at the W Hotel, Leicester Square

2011-02-17T07:44:00.000-08:00

In a sleek lobby, next to an extraordinary sculpture, a vast cluster of glitterballs I dub ‘disco haemmorrhoids’, I’m greeted by a gym-buffed faun in fawn. The boy with the come-slither-stare's too-tight waistcoat and bum-accentuating strides are less Tom Ford more Tom of Finland (whadya mean, is there a difference?) He escorts me along crepuscular jet marbled halls to my semi-clandestine destination. As the door whore/quality controller at her Anne Robinson-esque lectern rates me not the weakest link, I’m shown into Wyld. One of two bars at the bling-tastic new W hotel, it’s touted as London’s next late-late lair for urban foxes such as Kate Moss who partied here with Primal Scream, Jade Jagger and Liam Gallagher ahead of its official launch. You’ll get the general vibe from its American owners’ promo movie (http://tinyurl.com/2aztx4e ) Entitled Away We Stay, it's an homage to Antonioni’s Blow-Up. Razzie-worthy performances from high cheek-boned high-roller target W guests, David Gandy and Helena Christensen, demonstrate why models should stick to just looking pretty. The mother of all glitterballs spins in what feels like the VIP room at a Miami nightclub circa Crockett & Tubbs. I sink serviceable cocktails: El Chapo, no cheapo at £12.65 (inc service). Wyld, you see, ‘pays tribute to the liquid soul of Mexico, Tequila.’ The lounge’s dominant red tone, however, pays tribute to The Aberdeen Angus Steak House’s illuminated sign on Leicester Square below. Post-modern irony? Coincidence? It only opened on Monday but, already, I can feel myself growing curiously wild about Wyld.

10 Wardour St. W1D 6QF 7758 1000 http://www.wlondon.co.uk/

Hawksmoor, Covent Garden

2011-02-10T01:59:00.000-08:00

The Hogarthian mien - all toffee-tone wood, polished leather, Fanny by Gaslight gloaming and total lack of frill or folderol - suggests Hawksmoor Seven Dials remains unchanged since gouty Georgian gents in garters and powdered wigs convened within. In truth, the whole kit and recycled caboodle is but months old, a smart reconstruction of that epoch’s covert ‘steak clubs’, all popeseye, pies, porter and potent punch for beefy brethren. They’re big on punches here: bag a stool at the basement restaurant's Brontë-esque bar - solid, dignified and Heathcliff handsome - and let the knowledgeable chaps behind the (reclaimed) zinc acquaint you with Hannah Wooley’s Punch, a claret and cognac recipe dating to 1672, or various julep jars as enthusiastically emptied by her contemporary, Samuel Pepys. Served in covetable period stemware, rare retro revivals include Silver Bullet (a gin, lemon juice and caraway/cumin-y Kummel opinion polariser alleged to be Churchill’s killer slug); 1920s Parisian pash, Boulevardier (a Negroni built on bourbon, not gin) and, as well-presented as designer Tom himself, The Ford Cocktail, a Benedictine and orange bitters be-knighted antecedent of the modern martini. Trad English bar food has meaty man appeal and at around £8 a throw, I’ll be back to work through Hawksmoor’s hooch historians’ chronology of the cocktail, a fascinating read that invites repeated study.

11 Langley St WC2 7856 2154

www.thehawksmoor.co.uk

QV Bar, Soho

2011-02-03T02:05:00.000-08:00

Gossip girl has the dish on an American pin-up whose love life, unlike his clean-cut hetero hero screen image, tends more towards dirty low-life. I need a seat and a stiffener: scandal is such thirsty work. Sipping a Harvard, a cognac-based Old Fashioned, I settle into a comfy, maple leather banquette for a Perez Hilton-style precis. We’re at QV, the smart new bar at 1920s Soho doyenne, Quo Vadis, nowadays in the capable hands of Sam & Eddie Hart also of Fino and Barrafina renown. The brothers have transformed ‘the bit of the restaurant nobody wanted to sit in’ into a timeless chic salon away from the hubbub of the main act. For bitchy têtes-à-têtes, it’s perfect. Seamless, discreet service delivers faultless cocktails - at £8, cheaper than at most glossy West End rivals and within reach of any Tom, Dick or Harry. Correctly prepared steak tartar, black pudding and duck egg, snails au gratin and a shoal of crispy baby squid are the type of bar food I crave: ‘trendy’ joints can shove their ‘pan-Asian tapas share-platter slates’ where the sun don’t shine. Which brings me back to Mr. Seedy. Lawyers are listening, so even after a carafe of lip-loosening Loire lovely Menetou Salon (£21), my cakehole remains zipped . What I can say is that with its walk-ins only policy, you’ll likely frequently find me at QV. Stand me a Manhattan: there’s every chance I’ll blab.

26 - 29 Dean Street W1 7437 9585 http://www.quovadissoho.co.uk

Searcys Champagne Bar, Paddington

2011-01-27T03:05:00.000-08:00

Catching the 4.50 from Paddington circa 1957, Miss Marple would have been lucky to secure Camp coffee and a stale Bath bun at the station buffet. Fast forward to 2011, at the new Paddington Champagne Bar, the tweedy sleuth could get slewed on a bottle of vintage Dom Perignon, foie gras and macaroons for £160; roughly the same cost as a standard return to Bristol Temple Meads. Buoyed by the success of their fizz fountain at St. Pancras, caterers Searcys have homed in on another iconic terminus. Champagne and trains? It’s a fit, if you believe the marketing hype; rail travel is seen as a glamourous alternative to flying by the Jimmy Choo-choo set...and my name’s Isambard Kingdom Brunel! Have you ever sat, fuming, outside Doncaster station 'due to a broken down train ahead of us', sweating like a glass blower's arse in a fetid carriage with no air con, gripey babies puking up on the tables, random nutters in cagoules trying to engage you in conversation and lardy overpainted Beryl Cook women on mobiles hollering 'I'm stoook ont' train, Marjorie luuuuuuv?' All this and a fifteen minute assault course to get to a buffet car that's out of everything except shortbread and chippy attitude? No thanks! Fair dos to Searcys tho'; there’s over a dozen bubbles by the flute from a not-greedy £8.50 here, Paddington Bear cocktails - sadly, without the furry one’s fave ingredient, marmalade - and traiteur-style treats. The bar, a streamlined art deco-inspired enclosure not unlike Searcys’s perma-packed outlet at Westfield, is at odds with its location, ‘The Lawn’ - some marketing clown’s hilarious euphemism for food court/ shopping mall. Visually incoherent, clattery, nerve-jangling; this hellish revenue-generating box is buzzed by the occasional pigeon. Poop on my Prada, pal, and Ma Marple will have the case of The Bird With The Wrung Neck to investigate.

The Lawn, Paddington Station, W2 7993 3279 http://www.searcys.co.uk/paddington-champagne-bar/

Hed Kandi, Clapham

2011-01-25T15:24:00.000-08:00

Occupying the unit vacated by the late Rinky Dink on Clapham’s Hedonism Boulevard (aka the High Street), this is the celebrated house music label’s premier venture into the bar scene. The 6pm- ‘til late venue’s Ibiza 60s moderne, neon-lit, night-clubby decor is as stylised as Hed Kandi’s instantly recognisable CD artwork, blown up and used here as art. A dress code that stipulates ‘no bling/ no baseball caps/ no loud sportswear’ speaks volumes about who they don’t want to entertain, although the sight of Bianca Gascoigne and that duck-faced bimbo from The Only Way Essex (who can tell them apart?) the night I attend, might deter fussier types. Bottle service (that night-club pose again) is significantly cheaper than West End prices: £65 (includes mixers) for Buffalo Trace. Cocktails such as Kandi colada, coco’licious and twisted disco (a citrus and dark rum mule) at £6.50 reflect the 20-something party crowd’s tastes. Wines start at £13.95, champagne from £8.95 (Mumm): Wave your hands in the air and p-aaaa-rty. It's Hed-y stuff. Oi! No shagging that bird from Billericay with the Battenberg tan you just met; you're in genteel Cla'am, not Benidorm I'll have you know.

38 Clapham High Street SW4 7UR 7627 1036 http://www.hedkandi.com/bars

Taken from my review at www.squaremeal.co.uk

Venn St. Records, Clapham

2011-01-20T04:14:00.000-08:00

There’s a musical slant to two recent Clapham openings. Ousting what was Rinky Dink, purveyors of holiday-in-E-beefa house, Hed Kandi, have launched their first ever bar. All Barbarella 60’s moderne, it’s as slick as a Joey Negro MP3 download. But, having recently re-invested in a Technics turntable - David Guetta, beware! - I’m nowadays more inclined to vinyl, the old skool theme spun at Venn St. Records at the common end of the high street. Take Rob’s record shop from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, light it neon red, cover the walls in collages clipped from vintage issues of Sounds and NME, throw in a buzzy bar, et voilà! Unlike Si’s sorry karaoke shenanigans, VSR genuinely has the X-Factor. My instant crush on this little neighbourhood sweetheart may owe much to hit £7 cocktails served 2-4-1 before 7pm, except on Saturday: Spun Agave, AC/Daiquiri and Raisins’N’Apricots (an apricot-infused bourbon and sherry Old Fashioned) top my chart and, in at No. 4 with a Bulleit (well, Jack Daniel's, to be pedantic) is minty, peary, apple-y Stairs Julep. Open until 1 am, occasional live music is provided by local duo, Redgrave, whose Kylie and Oasis covers, although listenable enough, suggest any debut album will not bother Buddy, The Beatles or other legends whose LP sleeves are displayed within. A barman tells me the vinyl is for sale. £10 secures a pot luck pick. I'd be gutted to get the Jackie Genova Aerobic Workout LP, prominent above the bar: I picked that up at Oxfam for my aunt a few years back. Cost, 5p.

78 Venn St SW4 7738 8645 www.vennstreetrecords.com

Mason & Taylor, Shoreditch

2011-01-13T01:38:00.000-08:00

Over a dozen draughts and forty bottled craft beers and ciders are the tempting offer at new Shoreditch shout, Mason & Taylor, sister to The Duke of Wellington, Dalston. Instinctively, I gravitate to a list of ‘oddities’: Fraoch Heather, amber contentment at £4, and Kelpie, a treacly seaweed stew that hints at dark, stormy, winter nights in coastal bothies in the wilds of Argyllshire - both from Williams Brothers of Alloa. There’s more interesting froth from as far afield as Ukraine and Brooklyn, while Bermondsey’s Kernel Porter, based on a Victorian recipe from Truman’s in nearby Brick Lane, is just one example of the venue’s support for the welcome revival of London’s artisan brewing tradition. What you won’t find here, is lager lout swill. Good news! Good too, are £3 - £6 small plates (please, not ‘British tapas’): addictive salt grilled Jerusalem artichokes; ham and egg; whitebait; (Toulouse) sausage and mash and fat boy puds served by attentive charmers. ‘Accentuate the positive’ is my New Year’s resolution, so, I have. What deserves a kicking is the architects’ ‘thorough redesign’ of what was once (and still looks uncannily like) Green & Red - minus that bar’s mellow Mexican cantina vibe. A 1960s Malibu beach blanket party soundtrack is totally at odds with a frigid, deconstructed, impersonal hard-edged, concrete shell. At a banquette booth (pictured above, nearly completed), facing a swinging door that ushers in blasts of Arctic air smokers pop in and out for a snout, I muse that The Beach Boy's Californian Girls would never know such a shivery plight. To be fair, our waiter offers us another pew. As the table much too close to its neighbour, we prefer our Siberian isolation and the chance to flaunt nifty parkas indoors. Mason & Taylor, then? Great beer, and if 1960s Brutalist Bulgarian bus station’s half-built cafeteria is your bag, wrap up warm and dive in!

51 - 55 Bethnal Green Road, E1 7749 9670 www.masonandtaylor.co.uk

Experimental Cocktail Club, Chinatown

2011-01-06T02:51:00.000-08:00

Behind an anonymous, distressed door, lurking deep among Chinatown’s wonky wonton dens, lies a cool new speakeasy. For cookies fortunate enough to ascend its steep stairs, 2011 will be an auspicious year. Sweet or sour, drinks impress at the Experimental Cocktail Club. With a trio of quoted Parisian liquid lounges that includes Prescription in St. Germain to their credit, ECC’s owners decided to play les rosbifs at their own game: head honcho Pierre-Charles confiding in me, in a moment of uncharacteristically Gallic modesty, that London’s cocktail culture is streets ahead of the Parisian competition. Really? What rarified quaffs ECC’s friendly froggie ‘tenders pour would be perles before cochons in the majority of this city’s drinking troughs. House ‘experiments’, such as Autumn in Normandy (Dupont VSOP Calvados, cinnamon syrup, lemon juice and dry cider) and the twisted Sazerac-esque Ragtime, are blue chip investment at £10. So too, recipes accredited to hip North American bars. Try East Village New York hot spot Mayuhel’s tequila, mezcal, sherry and chilli blast ,Stone Raft, or order Havana: a sexy, smoky, cigar-infused bourbon deep throat thrill courtesy of Vancouver’s l’Abattoir, it's the ultimate way to get elegantly slaughtered at this art-deco-inspired, six-til-late-late duplex with its ambience feutrée and unpretentious boho early-adopters. We’re talking Milk and Honey minus the membership fee. ‘Vive la France!’

13 A Gerrard St W1 7434 3559

http://experimentalcocktailclublondon.com

Starland Social Club, Bayswater

2010-12-28T07:13:00.000-08:00

Dine at Johnathon (Milk & Honey) Downey’s Bayswater baby bro’ to Clerkenwell diner Giant Robot and, if you ask nicely, chances are you’ll be admitted to the clubby pre-Profumo-style drinking den below, an intentionally shabby throwback to the 1950s - only with way better cocktails. Old record sleeves contain a list of £9 suggestions that include gin swizzle, grasshopper, penicillin and final word (gin maraschino, green Charteuse and lime). In the gloom and without my Mad Men bins, I have difficulty making out a hand-written list and ask my date if the recipe for coffee cocktail really does involve brandy, egg white and 'dirt'. 'It says port you prat.' she laughs. Dirt/ port, it's the only bum note to report. Off-menu requests are capably handled by staff that are up to any challenge - an accurate history of the drink’s origins eagerly volunteered when I request espresso martini. 'That's an original Dick Bradsell recipe' offers young Aussie 'tender by way of a history lesson. 'Really?' I say, not wishing to burst his bubble by telling him I was present at The Atlantic when Dick invented it back in 1998 (I seem to recall). Wines start at £4.50 and a fiver for fizz, and there’s Hogsback T.E.A, Little Creatures pale ale as well as bottles, juices and mixers from a not unreasonable £90. Milk & Honey members are guaranteed entry while 'local membership' (advisable) works out at around £3 a week: makes sense when repeat visits are a cert.

78 Westbourne Grove W2 7065 6805 Wed - Sun only www.strlnd.com

For more reviews , visit www.squaremeal.co.uk

The Euston Tap, Euston

2010-12-28T06:48:00.000-08:00

Investigate one of the listed stone lodges that formed part of the original Euston station's grand Victorian buildings and discover ETa microbrewery fan's delight from the people behind Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes. Although the prosaic standing room only, split-level box may not win any design awards, aficionado Jamie Hawksworth’s range of twenty-plus draught craft beers from small producers and over 150 speciality bottleds from around the world provides reason for ale fanciers to delay their departure to the sticks from platform 6. Thornbridge Kipling, Marble Dobber, Saranac Black Forest, Fyne Ales Jarl, Dobransky Dragoun and Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter - names that may not register with your average Joe Kro’ - are typical of the reasonably-priced, recherché quaffs on offer: the emphasis is on quality rather than beer belly swill. To eat, try snacks from the Fleet River Bakery and Inter City 125 wheel-sized pizzas. As off-sales are also available, there will be no need to resort to the local 7/11 for something much less interesting when commuters eventually reach their destination - weather gods willing.

West Lodge, 190 Euston Rd NW1 2EF 3137 8837 www.eustontap.com

For more reviews visit www.squaremeal.co.uk

The Butterfly Bar, Notting Hill Gate

2010-12-28T03:51:00.000-08:00

A branch of Itsu might not be the first place you'd automatically think of for cocktails. But above the chain's Notting Hill premises, in a postmodern Madam Butterfly-ish lounge (think Corrie's Carla Connor goes mad at Matalan) in lurid rhubarb and lime jelly tones (think Su Pollard goes mad at Primark), you might be in luck: never more so than between 6-8pm, or all night on Thursday, when 'butterfly sips' are 2 for 1 at £7.85. Choose from painted lady (basically, a vodka and lime mule) or swallow tail (basically, a mojito but why call a spade a spade if you can fanny it up in fancy schmancy-ness?) or, if you're particularly daring, go à la carte with lychee martini, Itsu Collins or geisha’s passion (vodka, green grape, passion fruit and ginger at £7.95). Of course, if you're after more sophisticated hooch, you'll head off down Kensington Park Road for Montgomery Place or Lonsdale. But for junior Foxtons estate agents, this is the butterfly's balls (No doubt some lepidopterist loon will e-mail me to say the species doesn't have testicles) 'Look there’s Asahi and Bud and something called sake.' trills one of their number (estate agents, not butterflies, that is). Actually, its pronounced 'sa-kay', Melissa: it's Japanese and you won't like it. sio stick to the Clare's Accessories coloured stuff, sweedie. As well as a limited range of wines from £18 to £30 (Aussie shiraz/ cab sauv) and 'zingers' for alco-avoiders, there's sushi, sashimi and bento box staples all served under the watchful eye of resident love birds tweeting ( in under 140 characters)...wish this lot would eff off so they can put the covers over our ruddy cage #thoughtlessbastards.

100 Notting Hill Gate W11 3QA 7229 4016 http://www.itsu.com/restaurants/nottinghill

Modified from my review at www.squaremeal.co.uk

The Grazing Goat, Marylebone

2010-12-28T03:09:00.000-08:00

The latest addition to the family that includes The Orange, The Pantechnicon and The Thomas Cubitt, all in SW1, is ‘Portman Village’s new neighbourhood public house and hotel.’ Portman Village, the ludicrous handle conceived by those who would land ancient London districts (Marylebone) with names more appropriate to mock Georgian housing estates on the outskirts of some dreary Surrey bourg. Kerbside, TGG looks not unlike the sort of establishment you’d find on a small French town’s rue principale, but the bleached wood, bourgeois countrified interior - roomy enough for a herd of grazing goats - looks more like something in Canada circa 2000, perfecto for Mr. Smallbone of Devizes, a commuting accountant who secretly harbours a desire to break free of his Wiltshire 7 to 7 and become a lumberjack. It's the sort of 'funky' place Zoe Wanamaker might take her TV family when they hit the John Lewis sale in search of new goose down duvets and an-teak coffee table for the home extension..sorry, I mean 'conservatory'. Zo/ Susan could choose from two dozen doable wines by the glass from a strong list from £18, or if she's feeling bold, £8.50 cocktails daiquiri royale and billy goat (vodka, grapefruit juice, basil & raspberry puree). Robert Lindsay/ Ben gets a superior beer offer that includes Badger Dandelion organic (pricey at £7.50).The food offer runs to bistrot staples such as steak tartare, potted crab, oysters, burger (£13.50), a range of surf and trurf from the rotisserie and grill and crumble, tarts and cheesecake after which, one of the Goat’s eight ensuite rooms, scheduled for Feb 2011, might seem like a good move.

6 New Quebec Street W1H 7RQ 7724 7243 www.cubitthouse.co.uk

Adapted from my review at www.squaremeal.co.uk