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 

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Karpo, King's Cross - September 2013 now Megaro (see new review)

‘Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder’ said the guy with the lisp. Well, if you’re fond of the aniseed-flavoured spirit, hit Karpo at King’s Cross. The Megaro Hotel’s stylish, moodily -lit new dive bar is a persuasive ambassador for a range of absinthe served, as romantic tradition demands, with chilled water dispensed from exquisite Belle Époque glass fountains. The Marmite of the drinks cabinet, I used to hate the stuff; put-off by youthful misadventures in Glasgow where, poured over burnt sugar cubes on slatted spoons, bars once pushed it as ‘wreck the hoose juice.’ Cue frenzied trippy disco-dancing in total strangers’ Gorbals high-rise flats followed by immobilising paranoid half-blind hangovers. No wonder countless absinthe-raddled French Impressionist painters ended up as daft as their brushes. The trick is to ease yourself gradually in to this dangerous mistress’s seductive embrace. For a sexy first date, novices might risk Karpo’s subtly absinthe-d coupes - Fourth Degree (a Bermondsey’s Jensen Old Tom gin martini); Violent Femme (£7.50) or Corpse Reviver no.2  served with equally addictive spiced pecans. Still not tempted? There’s a range of non-Abs Fab alternatives and retro cocktail manuals for inspiration. But if you do yearn to see the green fairy, ‘Karpo diem!’ - says the guy with half an ear for Latin.   

23 Euston Road NW1 7843 2221www.karpo.co.uk