The Tokenhouse, The City

It's one of the City’s bigger watering holes, and under Fuller’s - whose Honey Dew and ESB are among the draughts on offer - what was once Bluu has had a major rethink . The building was once used as a repository for farthing coins before they were put into circulation, hence the new post-industrial Edwardian counting house chic theme in the main bar. I'm more inclined to a warmer loungey 1850s meets 1950s second bar that delivers on its promise of ‘comfy seating.’ Open early each weekday morning - for the power breakfast and recalcitrant deskbound alkie trade, presumably - Tokenhouse is an all-day trough for T.M Lewin shirts. Fill up on morning nosh - eggs Florentine, porridge or full English (£8). Lunch on mussels, langoustine risotto,veggie tarts or warm coronation chicken (£13) and come back after knocking-off time for a selection of 3 for £11 small plates and sharing platters and you'll be a proper fat bastard by Christmas time.  Wines include everyday red teeth stainers and a patrician Côte Rotie (£82.50). Cocktails such as pineapple punch and oriental martini (gin, lychee and cranberry) don't not exactly push any envelopes. There again, neither does the clientele on tonight's evidence. What is pushing it, is  £8.50 for a mojito in what’s basically a pub, albeit a tarted-up one. 

4 Moorgate EC2R 6DA 7600 6569 www.tokenhousemoorgate.co.uk

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The Merchant of Bishopsgate, The City

This new ‘freehouse and kitchen’ imagines itself ‘so good, you’ll want to miss your train.’ Its TOWIE-understudy customers seemingly concur. Preferring cask ales and £15 Lamberti Blush to Liverpool Street’s rush hour cattle trucks, they gossip about hair gel and ‘Mee-chelle’ being ‘well jel.’  Do ‘Great Cocktails!’ match that boast? ‘Dunno. They’re off, ‘ announces a waitress. ’People didn’t like them...or something.’ I order Sancerre from the Enomatic dispenser instead - frisky and fresh at £7.60 a glass. Parroting various (better) rivals’ design vernacular, The Merchant’s clichéd patter feels less fresh: trite shouty slogans as art; tinny tinnitus-y house muzak; canned Spam in a display of ‘heritage’ packaged goods; and from Downton Junction’s lost luggage office, battered Edwardian suitcases sprayed white hint at the old boat trains from Harwich to the Hook of Holland and exotic destinations beyond. On a table opposite, love’s young reem, Bill and Rikki from Billericay, chew on one another’s faces while I chew over a six-for-£20 ‘grazer’ selection that includes mini burger sliders (fair) smoked salmon in cheese scones (was that ‘stones’?) and risible, rubbery ‘blackpudding scotch egg’ (the dog’s chew toy minus the squeak). Suddenly, that Spam looks inviting. The prototype for a chain, The Merchant hopes to ‘revolutionise the station pub.’ I’ll stick with The Gilbert Scott at St.Pancras, thanks. 

Lower Concourse, Liverpool Street Station www.iamthemerchant.com  

Planet of the Grapes, City

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 

Sky Lounge, The City

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