Fox Bar, Brixton

This new Brixton booze bunker is in Piano House, a creative hub in a converted Victorian warehouse. I remember this dive from my one previous visit when it was Substation South, owned by Erik Yu (Opium/ Burlock/ 68 and Boston). With my fashion show producers hat on, I'd hired its DJ, Martin Confusion, to develop a trip-hop soundtrack for a client - Katharine Hamnett, if my memory serves me well. What I do distinctly remember was rocking up at the club to discuss ideas, only to find his gig was a raunchy gay uniform night. Not much was achieved: well, you try concentrating, surrounded by 'squaddies' in the noddy, hard at it on manoeuvres that are far from Geneva conventional! Having been totally transformed (and doused in bleach, I trust), the sometime sex-pit now hosts Soho House’s latest whizz; a drinking den inspired by the old taverns of Chicago, in which city the same group’s original Fox Bar is based on traditional English taverns, I'm told. Confused? Here’s the 411. Fox Bar sits in a narrow arch next door to a branch of Soho House’s Chicken Shop roll-out. There’s barely room for thirty souls in what feels like a sanitised take on the sort of joint Frankie Machine - the fly by night hero of Chicago novelist Nelson Algren’s The Man with the Golden Arm - might have drunk at with his dissolute buds before graduating to injecting his veins with something a little stronger than Banana Penicillin, one of the drinks on a list worked up by Soho House’s global creative bar manager, Tom Kerr. Other classy £8 fixes (pun intended) that might have been less detrimental to Frankie’s health than his class A intake include Old Pal (a Rittenhouse rye Negroni), Southside Collins, Boulevardier and Nitro (espresso) Martini, the latter two on tap. Chuck in chicken bits and craft beers; Brixton’s baddest will be quickly hooked.

Piano House, 9 Brighton Terrace SW9 8DJ Facebook Fox-Bar-Brixton

The Collection, South Kensington

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