Duck and Waffle, City

Insomniacs with an interest in molecular mixology, apply within. Long after other watering holes have closed, Duck and Waffle’s lights (and creative cocktail-shakers) remain switched on, forty floors above the slumbering City below. Whether it’s for a wee small hours one-for-the-road Monkey Shoulder Whisky Sour (with rosemary and truffle foam), a G and T ponced up with rose petal and yuzu spume, or a bespoke breakfast Bloody Mary, D and W’s inside-out bar - think Garfunkel’s salad bar geared to adventurous drinkers with the £13 price of Dark and Stormy ‘bottled and bagged’ Bowery bum-style for modern-day Marie-Antoinettes’ amusement - is a fun, if slightly pretentious experience. Open 24/7 - although no hard liquor is available between 3 am and 8am  - its ‘iconoclastic’ cocktails are often prepared using unexpected ingredients: Sarson’s malt vinegar in your margarita? Why didn't I think of that? Staff, happy to waffle on about their ‘craft’, will not duck out of a challenge to ‘make mine a Mescal and Marmite martini, garçon!’ But like Marmite, opinion is split 50/50 on some of the smoke and mirrors mixology the date and I sampled:  A blow-torched barrel stave provided the smoke, lots of it, for a house Manhattan adjudged ‘complex and interesting’ or ‘like being at a party and accidentally drinking bourbon from the glass into which someone dropped a cigarette butt.’ Either way, you’ll find plenty to entertain you until the sun comes up. 

Heron Tower, 110 Bishopsgate EC2N 4AY 3640 7310 www.duckandwaffle.com 

See more reviews like this at  www.squaremeal.co.uk

Sushisamba, The City

Acrophobics will not relish the 38-second rocket ride in a glass-sided lift up the face of the Heron Tower to its 38th floor. Thankfully, stiffeners for jelly legs are dispensed upon reaching Sushisamba. The first overseas outpost of a Yankee chain-ette punting Peruvian, Brazilian and Japanese nosh; it's bold, blingy, bright and brash in a kind of Vegasy/ Rihanna way. Higher than the nearby Gherkin, its views of London-by-night from an alfresco belvedere terrace provide the real ‘wow’ factor - its focal point,  a circular bar built around a gorgeous coppery ‘tree’ whose reinforced trunk and metal branches looks capable of withstanding Hurricane Hermione. Harmony hairspray (three cans) is advised for strategically-styled barnets, however and. given London's all-too-preditably unpredictable autumn weather, you'd do well to also pack Havaianas and Ambre Solaire plus Moon Boots and one of  Sir Edmund Hilary's old cagoules. From an interesting list, Pablo Piscobar (a yuzu-flavoured pisco sour) and Kaffirinha (using kaffir leaf-infused cachaca) work well enough at £9.50. I’m old-fashioned about Old-Fashioneds; so Tonka Bean Old-Fashioned’s queer menage-à-quatre - Bajan rum, tonka beans, star anise and Benedictine - fails to convert me to drinks 'Ja-per-zilian’ - as I christen Sushi-S’s fusion cocktails. I’m fine with Shiso Fine, though, until a barman drily suggests  this sweet and sour sling is ‘one for the ladies.’ Blown-out by the chill wind, the open gas coal-effect fire pit cannot be re-lit no matter how desperately staff strives. Shirt tails flapping like the clappers, this big girl’s blouse has had enough and scuttles indoors to a second, Manga-style, DJ bar. Corridor-like, garish, too brightly lit, and patrolled by security guards; it could be in an underground Shinjuku shopping mall. (Sushi) 'samba rolls’ are fun; our neighbours - sloshed suits, rolling drunk on the floor and snogging secretaries (tongues drilling as if for oil down Iain from I.T's grateful neck) ...not so much. Beery Loadsamoney boors excepted, (quote 'I don't want no attitude off no f**kin' barman; not when I've just dropped £400 on drinks') aside, it's a definite case of altitude slickness in the City.  110 Bishopsgate, EC2M 4HX 3640 7330  http://sushisamba.com/