Caipirinha Bar at Cabana, Brixton

(one familiar face looks happy- Sandra from Gogglebox )

No sooner had the Champagne corks popped at midnight; 2016 began to shape up as an annus horribilis. "Serves you right for buying your Hogmanay fizz from The Co-Op, you cheapskate!" you snark. But at £16.99, or whatever its current offer price, Les Pionniers beats many a bigger Brut, I'll have you know. First upset: Michel Delpech, the French pop star that soundtracked my Blé En Herbe years, croaked his last. Next, the markets went into mega-meltdown mode; 'informed insider' punt on China as shonky as most everything those Asian a'holes mass produce; and then ..the unthinkable: BOWIE! Cue an emotional tsunami on a "Princess Di just died" scale; the slight difference being that Bowie's talent went far beyond rocking a frock and cleverly manipulating the media. Drawn or by coincidence; ostensibly to check out a new bar; I'm in Bowie's native Brixton, at the shrine to Ziggy (who'd surely scoff at such sentimentality) where a generation grieves the glue that held it together - the Thin White One's (truly) unique Sound and Vision. Can forty years really have passed - "sordid details following" - since this precocious show-off was excluded from prep school for showing up with a rainbow-died feather cut and a streaked face? My bronze shimmer, kingfisher blue and 'Flaming Flamingo" flash (courtesy of Miners and Rimmel from my sister's make-up bag) less The Prettiest Star, more a lad insane. The Golden Years - when I span the man at Boys Keep Swinging, a post-punk disco night I hosted at The Fridge, just yards from his makeshift memorial - dead and buried...or cremated, in his final brilliantly orchestrated act to prevent the mawkish media circus his funeral would have surely otherwise been. Tonight, I'll drown my Sorrow (his cover of The Merseys' hit, a personal favourite) and toast the Starman in caipirinhas in the Victorian bowels of Britain’s first purpose-built department store; the now-defunct  Bon Marché, the unlikely setting for a much needed blast of Brazilian sunshine in  sad SW9. At Cabana, surf boards as tables and Castrol oil drum as tub chairs - among the recycled furniture that benefits the poor of Brazil’s favelas - set the tropi-kitsch, beach bum scene for this mid-market chain’s standalone cocktail lounge. Here, the classic Rio cachaça cocktail comes in various fruity flavours along with Ipanema Iced Tea, boozy batidas, coladas and hurricanes such as Carmen Miranda and Red Parrot - juicy at £7.95 - and snacks of gloopy guacamole, salt and pepper squid, and crispy, melted cheese pastels. DJs spin electro-bossa and power samba and by 10pm, this Copacabana carnival is steaming. An excited girl is proudly showing off a selfie taken with Olly Murs. "Shame it wasn't Zayn!" sighs her friend. "Or Justin" adds another. In years to come, I imagine the girls will, like my chums, be just as inconsolable when the visionary, talented, truly original, not-at-all manufactured epoch-defining Messrs Malik and Bieber depart this mortal coil.

201 - 207 Ferndale Road SW9 8BE 7326 5760  https://cabana-brasil.com/restaurants/brixton/

Steam and Rye, The City

Facebook recently introduced another typically daft gizmo. Like so many others, it's presumably aimed at disaffected youth festering in Nowhere Nebraska, stroking their father's rifle collection as they plan their bloody revenge on those classmates that dared mock their Justin Bieber be-stickered lunch box. Based on past posts, Facebook's feature fancies it can select your personal top 10 moments of the year. In 2014, as well as buying a new loo seat, one of mine was attending a preview of The Great Gatsby in nausea-inducing 3D, apparently. Is my life really that dull? Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby was a frenetic, over-styled marshmallow - shallow, vapid and unrewarding. I mention this, not because I've fancy a gig as a film critic - although I'll happily give you a pithy précis of Behind The Candelabra if you like - rather that Luhrmann's lurid Gatsby evidently inspires Nick House's new City restaurant and bar behemoth, Steam and Rye. As at his other venues Mahiki and Bodo’s Schloss, this perma-House party, set in the former Bank of New York's august marbled halls, is crammed chock-full of gimmicks - a 20's gangsters and molls theme park for cocktail-crazy kidult bankers and their 20-something staff: Basildon blondes, Billericay bean counters and Southend secretaries that fancy themselves Essex's answer to Daisy Buchanan. Steam and Rye has been designed in conjunction with a model/ presenter/ serial red carpet-hogger whose clothing range, Kelly Brook at New Look, is sure to appeal to those that imagine ersatz glam the height of big city sophistication. As I'm unlikely VIP lounge material (I'm not dating a West Ham player and I'd refuse to give a K***ing Kardashian my contact details, even supposing it wanted them), I head downstairs to one of various spaces accessible to paying punters. Here, a passable rendition of an antiquated Eastern Pacific Railway dining carriage doubles as a cocktail lounge - New York's Grand Central Station another design influence I'm told. All aboard a cheesy choo-choo to Yonkers for a bonkers range of hooch served by flappers in shimmy shifts. Ignoring classic calls vieux carré and prescription julep (£12.50), tonight's throng is sold on tricks such as sticks of rock in soda fountain alco-pops, moonshine served in oil can mugs...or in faux footwear in the case of dead man’s boot (tequila, lemon and marshmallow). A Monica Lewinsky cocktail is a creamy rum and amaretto affair - fit for a president, no doubt. Be careful he doesn't splash it on your dress, love: people will talk. ‘Maize balls,' meanwhile, may well make Made In Chelsea fans miss the last train back to Basildon. Steaming at 2 am? I don't hang around to find out. I've got better, if not bigger, speakeasies in mind. 

147 Leadenhall Street, EC3V 4QT 37018793 www.steamandrye.com  

Great Gatsby outfit (pictured) available via www.joke.co.uk

Kench and Bibesy, Smithfield

"'Kench' is a little-used term for a fish salting bin, as well as the olde English equivalent of that current online überacronym, LOL. 'Bibesy' is an archaic term for an excessive desire to drink." So says the owner of this new Smithfield gaff, a man whose Nottingham childhood must have been so uneventful, he can still recall every round of Call My Bluff. Mine host, the linguist Chris Peel, is keen to point out the thinking behind the name of his new dining room (Kench) and bar (Bibesy), lest I imagine it's in the same vein as his other premises. Chris, you see, is also the man behind cod-1920's Chicago Mobster's speakeasy Evans and Peel - a quirky hole-up that would doubtless be fun-lovin' Diana Spencer's local had she not kissed a Greco-German frog, become a princess, left her pad in Earl's Court for an even more louche Court, and died after the dream turned as sour as her sister-in-law Anne's equine fizog. Whether Diana, smudged panda eyed patron saint of TV confessionals, would have enjoyed Kench's modern Brit tapas, who can say? She was a finicky eater, one of her friends tells me. I enjoy K and B's..... in part. Pulled oxtail with red cabbage, and pork 'bellypops' are fair but chewy, flavourless, salt-cured flank steak tartare echoes Diana's demise: a car crash. Wotevah!  I'm feeling more bibsey boy than kenchy tonight, so it's the downstairs drinking den here that interests me more. As at Evans and Peel, part of the fun is divining its entrance. If you're not thick as a brick, you'll discover a rough-hewn pine-clad blue-collar cabin that has presumably been modelled on a shady Adirondacks shack circa Hank Williams - the sort of dive where rednecks drink doctored hooch and eye up their cousins' beavers after a day spent shootin' squirrels in the woods - Tufty taxidermy is a bit of a theme at Bibesy. From a back bar stacked high with premium spirits, Bibsey's cocktails are no hokey moonshine. Campari eggnog aside - an ill-advised experiment that tastes like the poo of a jaundiced alkie Milanese mama's breast-fed baby - the menu is packed with must-try stuff. Despite its crap name, Beyond Epale ('the bastard lovechild of a martinez and a presidente') is a winner. So too, Dedicated Follower of Fashion, Bibesy's Kinky Boulevardier built on Calvados. The drinks keep coming faster than a horny hillbilly in a $10 parking lot whore. By the time I get to Redemption rye and Arran and Islay whisky-based Salt and Malt Sazerac, Hank Williams'  'I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive' is playing in my head. At one point, I swear  there's a mean squirrel on my shoulder and it's after my nuts - always a bad sign that you're one more drink away from a paramedic's intervention. It's testament to this luxe liquor pit's pull that I'm still here, howling for more, at 3 a.m on a school night. OK, I'll level. It helps that Peel lures us into a lock-in, the tab on him. As I, too, am keen to revive obscure old English words, let me add that if you can corrade the cost of an Oenological Manhattan (11 gold bits), freck hither, twitter-light, and deliciate at a brannigan within.
50 - 52 Long Lane EC1A 9EJ 7796 3631 www.kenchandbibesy.com

Cosy Kettle, Euston

("oops!")

Like arriving at a house party your antennae has assessed as a dreary dud, even before its host has finished air-kissing you at the front door, beating an inconspicuous retreat when you don't fancy what you find at any unfamiliar bar, hidden from view in a basement, can be  'hashtag-awkward' as people say (annoyingly). No more so, than when the place is empty save for three punters and two members of staff who look genuinely thrilled to greet you. That's the scenario tonight at a peculiar new cocktail and cake lounge beneath long-running, not-half-bad pub, Somers Town Coffee House. Quick as a flash, I've decided the decor doesn't do it for me. An inchoate mishmash of homespun ideas, twee recycled 60s gubbins, stage set doors, kitsch seats even Steve at Corrie's Street Cars office mightn't fancy; it reminds me of when some of my classmates, aged 11, did up Malcolm MacKenzie's old man's garage as a nightclub. Using stuff found in local skips, Malc and his equally moronic muckers fancied it looked like somewhere cool where Tony Blackburn might DJ, while my innate superior imagination was getting 'dump in Blackburn, Lancs.' For a cocktail lounge, this garish gaff's back bar's scant gins, vodkas and Bells whisky - presumably for wee hard man drinkers fresh off the Glasgow train at nearby Euston - don't exactly augur well - but reinforcements are apparently on the way. Thank God I'm not out on the pull (assuming there was anyone to pull): it's very bright for a bar. How many staff does it take to unscrew a few lightbulbs? Still, I'm here; the barman (pictured) looks the part and the menu promises he'll mix something else if I don't fancy the likes of Lynchburg lemonade, gin fizz or margarita on the rocks from a terse list of unambitious ‘cocktaails’ (sic). "How about a Boulevardier?" Negative. This, despite a Diffordsguide, an informative tome that includes its recipe, in clear view. "Er, OK. I'll have a sweet Manhattan," I say, now back on-menu. After what seems like an age, it is ready. Served not sweet, not perfect, but dry, it is also wrong. "Dry: that's the way I tend to make things" its maker's wet explanation for this disappointing £9.80 effort. Word up, fella! If I ask a bespoke tailor for a silk mohair suit, I won't wear tweed because that's the way he tends to make things. Gitme? If you, however, fancy trying on his French martinis for size at 1.30am, dive in; it's open until 2am. Only don't expect to cosy up to me at this queer Kettle. I've got bigger and better fish to fry. 
60 Chalton Street, NW1 1HS  7387 7377 www.thesomerstowncoffeehouse.co.uk 

Peckham Pelican, Peckham

When I used to spend time in San Diego (bored rigid by its plastic people and sunshiny superficiality), my idea of a fun day out was to slum it over the border in  Tijuana. Tequila, tacos and more soul than glossy California could shake a stick at: me gusto! BUT... I would not want to live there. I feel much the same way about Peckham, aka the Dalston of the Sarf. I love its exotic food stalls; rudeboy fashions; "Praise the Lordy" old West Indian dames in their mad mother of the bride hats and Sunday best floral prints; not to mention Frank's rooftop Campari bar, Peckham Springs art gallery (ahem, and bar), and those fascinating lurid beauty parlours wherein, there's so much acrylic weave going down, one carelessly misplaced Marlboro and the whole damn neighbourhood will become an inferno. On my latest awayday, I discover a new bar. All squat party decor, council refuse tip-dodging 1960s furniture, and DIY art - a surrealist spinning wheel after Marcel Duchamp, that's virtually identical to the original. Set in a concrete wing of a peeling Art Deco building, the ultra lo-fi Peckham Pelican is set to take off; located, as it is, away from the main ragga drag, towards arty Camberwell College. From a short list of cocktails, I ask for a bloody Mary. The manager smiles, ‘We’re out of Worcester sauce but I’ll cycle down to Tesco and find some.” £20 million pads or not, don't expect that level of service in Chelsea. While Bradley Wiggins sets off on Le Tour de SE15, his sweet female charges (so green, I wonder if their parents realise they are not upstairs in their bedrooms drooling over camp Justine Bieber posters) set about pizza making. My 3-toppings-for-8-quid special isn't particularly special, but as it's edible and made with love and isn't from Jamie's Italian; I'm happy as Larry - whoever Larry was. ( Grayson? Olivier? The Lamb?) To smoove 70s soul, I pore over a fascinating pile of ancient top shelf magazines found among the random junk dotted around the joint. Take Parade. Price, one shilling. Sample article: "Don't believe the current health scares. If  you ONLY smoke 25 cigarettes a day, your only worry should be the expense.' Life in 1964 was so simple. I could happily stay in my Peckham time warp forever.
92 Peckham Road SE15 5PY 7701 0225  https://www.facebook.com/thepeckhampelican?fref=ts

Old Mary's, Bayswater

'Have you heard of a Bayswater bar called "Old Marys?"' asks a colleague. I have not. The name conjures up a last chance saloon for prune-skinned Paddington bears. That's not ' bear' as in MIchael Bond's creation, rather the grizzly clientele of The Old Quebec. Popular with gay bears, I visit from time to time for no other reason than its ossified punters make me look like Justin Bieber's younger bro' by comparison. (Such morale boosters are important now that I have reached an age where policeman do indeed 'look like children,' as my father long ago predicted they one day would.) 'Old Mary's'  (singular), as it happens, is a new space in a handsome old Young’s house, The Mitre Tavern. Its website reckons it's 'a speakeasy.' I disagree. But these days, isn't that the boast of just about any bar that offers any drink more complicated  than whisky and Coke? When I drop by on a Saturday evening, the place technically qualifies as a speak easy: I don't need to shout to make myself heard - another constant irritation once one's age exceeds their chest measurement - above its handful of (seemingly straight) customers. Whatever ambience there is in this semi-deserted flagstone floored cellar feels more Charles I than Chicago 1931. Apt, given the pile's spooky back story. Said to haunt the Mitre, the eponymous Mary was a Jacobean scullery maid who embarked on an upstairs-downstairs fling that ended in a bloodbath. When M'Lady discovered M'Lord Craven giving the Maidenhead - as the custom was known in Mary's native Berkshire - she plunged a knife into the hired help's hussy heart. Cue Bloody Mary on a list of drinks that also has mai tai, espresso martini and Aperol spritz (£8.25), draught ale from Meantime and Camden, and a selection of bottled craft beers. Franks and chilli dogs are also available: easy for any passing gummy old Marys to masticate, I imagine.  

 24 Craven Terrace W2 3QH 7262 5240 www.mitrelancastergate.com/ 

adapted from a review for www.squaremeal.co.uk

House of Wolf, Islington

Previously, it housed Albert and Pearl, a swine among bars with ideas above its station (that's Highbury and Islington if you are tubing it); if you were part of (cringe!) 'Cool Britannia', you'll have fond memories of the place as The Medicine Bar; and if, like me, you used to ride a penny-farthing, you'll have enjoyed it as a Victorian music hall. Now this rickety ramble is in the clutches of the crew behind Brighton venue Madame Geisha who have transformed the Islington jumble into an ‘experimental pleasure palace’ that comes on like a Jack The Ripper era cocktail bar as imagined by Tim Burton. Tweedy young fogeys and vintage-clad chapesses who frequent postmodern gin joints such as The Worship Street Whistling Shop and Purl will adore it. Overwhelmed, minimalists may need smelling salts and a period of repose in the secret Victorian ‘fainting room’ while they recover from House of Wolf's ‘multi-sensory’ overload. I popped in for a tequila at a Patron pop-up, and I'm still reeling from an encounter with a fortune teller who tells me I'm about to father a set of triplets who will be born hideously deformed. Ah well, I can always pimp them out to a future House of Wolf freak show; for Gothic divertissements are very much in the spirit of the entertainment provided in the venue's ground floor main bar-cum-performance space.  Expect live sets from name-to-drop musicians, off-the-wall bingo, quizzes, cabaret and Saturday late The Burning Beat - billed as ‘wild-eyed-gypsy carnival rock n’roll'. This room's bar does a range of a dozen cocktails at around £8.50, but the intrepid will fancy an adventure in the Phileas Fogg-esque Apothecary upstairs. Here, lab-coat-clad professors (resting actors?) prepare arcana such as a black pudding-infused rum libation served in a Lyle’s treacle tin; a doctored knickerbocker glory unsuited to any child except The Omen's Damien; and the vodka peculiar that is popcorn-flavoured sour, Over The Pop. Over the top? Exciting innovation or pretentious tosh? Online reviews have been rapturous... and damning in equal measure - particularly in respect of the restaurant's outlandish 'experimental' food. But don't shoot the Wolf until you've checked out its den for yourself. Beast/ beauty? Either way, you won't be indifferent.

181 Upper Street N1 1RQ 7288 1470 http://houseofwolf.co.uk 

KCz ( formerly SofaKingCool), Soho

‘Have you tried Sofa King Cool?’ asks a pal. I’m affronted. Do I look like I'm in the market for a leatherette three-piece suite and matching pouffe from some DFS-clone off the North Circular? Sofa King Cool - say it quickly if, like me, you’re a bit slow on the uptake - is Soho's 'modern newest gay concept venue', it transpires. It promises a ‘cosy setting for wanna-be-lovers to fawn over each other’ and a ‘trendy retro feel.’ That'll be 1990 revisited, when, If easyJet did VIP lounges, I imagine they’d have looked like this. All orange, black and shiny with ‘high poseur tables’, stylistically, it's a bit ‘gay’... in the Peckham patois sense of the word. All shiny sculpted cheekbones and matching hair, does our retro-tastic bartender moonlight in a New Kids on the Block tribute band when not making margaritas, I wonder? Served with £4-a-pop bites -  calamari with spicy mayo, fish goujons with chilli mayo and food last deemed 'fancy' when Simon Mayo was still a rookie DJ - ‘professionally prepared cocktails’ include Manhattan, Million Dollar Mojito (£8) and Lavender Martini. Sex on the Beach, also appears: the déclassé Benidorm binge-drinker’s favourite might help lubricate Leroy, a junior crimper at suburban salon Curl Up and Dye - the ‘wanna-be-lover’ some dodgy sugar daddy aims to have his wicked way with, rating him ‘sofa king horny.’ 

23 Frith Street, W1D 4RR 7734 3268 https://www.facebook.com/pages/SofaKingCool/195734540558912 

Postscript: a mere three months after launching, it seems SofaKingCool has singularly failed to pull the Soho Cool. How else to explain its transformation, according to its female CEO, into a "womens only resteraunt (sic) and bar." She tells the Standard newspaper the new venture is to be 'a place .. by women for women...(but) not just for gay women. Networking is the main thing.”  Hmmm why am I thinking Candy Bar crossed with spendy dames-only members club Grace (yours to access for £5,500 pa) in Belgravia? This niche market is notoriously tricky to call. As a DJ in my 20s, I laughed in the face of a straight Northern male club owner who planned to cash in, launching 'Lez Dawson's' - a putative Pimlico gay club for big girls and their fanciers. The sisterhood was not amused: Lez's lasted two weeks. In December, the Canadian rugby-playing female CEO of NotSofaKingCool's replacement canvassed the Twitterati for suggestions as to what sort of bar/ restaurant 'da girls' might be currently hankering after. Given the CEO's idea of a 'yummy meal' (see pic right and at @KCGATES ) coupled with the new venue's  handle "KC'z", what modern wimmin want now, presumably, is something that sounds like a Doncaster dykes disko circa The Hitman and Her.

Post-postscript: 9.15 pm, a wet Thursday night in February 2013: an animated KC is out on Old Compton Street pressing 2-4-1 promo flyers on passers-by like a desperate Playa del Ingles tout. We take one and venture into her kingdom (queendom?). The place looks much the same as before only with even less punters. We leave. Where is the Sunshine Band when KC needs you most?

Post-post-postscript: March 2013. News reaches me that KC'z latest guise is to be as a restaurant called LABELS - which sounds more like a naff designer boutique in Burnley circa Hazell Dean. Apparently, one of its dishes is to be breaded mushrooms with garlic mayo. make that circa early Helen Shapiro....the sort of nice young girl KC'z older target audience might remember fondly.