The Vault at Milroy's, Soho

Like The Gay Hussar - a stagnant old Hungarian restaurant that seems stuck in the same year Soviet tanks crushed the fledgeling revolution in Budapest, 1956 - whisky merchants Milroy's, next door, is a Soho institution - albeit a less senior one, opened in 1964. With closure looming, the Hussar's campaign look to be over. Not so Milroy's. Now in the hands of Simo, its 20-something rapscallion new owner who previously ran the short-lived Coal Vaults on Wardour Street, Milroy's 2015 offers a reinvigorated vision of what went before. Sample some of the 250+ whiskies stocked at the stripped-back Georgian shop's ground floor bar's copper counter and then penetrate deeper. For what is brand new here, is The Vault. Follow resident mutt Chester through a door in a fake bookcase, downstairs to a converted stockroom, now a rough-around-the-edges liquor lair with a small bar, leather chesterfields and the Barrel Room (pictured below), a handsome piratical salon privé lined in warm wood. Folderol-free fixes include a Dutch whiskey old fashioned and Smoking Gun (pictured above), a lethal mix of corn whiskey, Oloroso and Earl Grey tincture in a wood chip-smoked martini glass. For uisge beatha avoiders, my top tips are a Mezcalito served over a blood orange ice cube, in a black sea salt-rimmed glass, and vodka, port, Campari berry and pomegranate sour, Tutti Frutti (£9.50). Cold cuts and cheese platters are available and a 60s Brit-beat, bubblegum, Northern and Tamla playlist could have been filched from my iPad. Raw, honest and with on-the-money mixes, Milroy's is a Soho whisky seller/ soul cellar to savour.    
3 Greek Street W1D 4NX 7734 2277 http://www.milroys.co.uk 

Whisky Lounge at Hilton London Metropole, Marylebone

Hands up how many Londoners have ever visited the Hilton London Metropole....excluding the time you picked up a tourist from Toledo Ohio and were talked into testing its mattresses after you'd emptied the mini-bar? Thought not! Anyway, the hotel is most excited about the £6 million transformation of its lobby. About time too. Last time I looked, a display case next to the main door housed what looked like a faded celebration of Harvest Festival 1954, as arranged by the local Women's Institute. (I'd been there in my professional capacity, not bonking a Belgian chocolate rep...honest!) The term ‘intimate whisky lounge’ - part of the big makeover - conjures up Caledonian cosiness à la Boisdale, or the postmodern luxe of the Athenaeum’s bijou temple to uisge beathe. But at the Hilton by the Flyover, the concept translates as a boxy, deeply dull room. A chandelier fashioned from glass decanters, and jarringly lit display walls housing some of the six dozen available pours, make for a too-bright space populated by ‘meh’ oatmeal armchairs. The corporate vibe is more big drinks brand showroom than a seductive space in which to savour some of Scotland’s finest - or their Irish, Welsh, American, Indian and Japanese cousins along for the ride. Blends from £5.50, and tasting flights of 3 malts from £12, are a useful introduction but will those serious about their drams choose to splash out £110 on rare Johnnie Walker Odyssey triple malt in such frigid surroundings? Blood and Sand and Rob Roy are among a selection of whisky cocktails, and bar snacks include Welsh rarebit, savoury macaroons and smoked salmon. You'll find the lounge to one side of 'EDG' - a spanking new lobby bar that has all the EDG of a put-together boy bland on X-Factor. The whisky lounge's PRs imagine it a new ‘destination bar.’ Me? I'm destined for The Savoy, Claridge's or The Goring: classic trumps EDGy I'm afraid. 

Hilton London Metropole, 225 Edgware Road W2 1JU 7402 4141http://londonmet.hilton.com

(Adapted from my review for www.squaremeal.co.uk )

Crystal Bar at the Wellesley, Belgravia

Once a Tube station (witness the original LU oxblood tiles outside), latterly this building housed Pizza on the Park. It's perhaps symbolic of London's position as the bluest of blue squares on the global edition Monopoly board that the Maserati masses who have recently colonised SW1 care not a jot for pizza and pichet of plonko di Puglia, demanding instead sevruga and the sort of smokes that Mayfair hedgies and showy Northern oiks with too much money to burn after landing the Euromillions jackpot might splash out on. '£3,000 for one ruddy cee-gar? I remember when we used to sneak Embassy Regals behind the borstal's bike sheds, oor Brian!' Captured in oils, Cuban aficionados JFK and Churchill survey a luxurious cigar lounge. It is serviced by a state-of-the-art walk-in humidor wherein reside anything from £12.50 panatelas to boxed sets whose £120,000 cost could buy the entire terrace of Sunderland 2 up 2 downs oor Brian wuz brought up in, had they not all been flattened to make way for his auld toon's new Lidl. At this opulent new boutique hotel, choose from one of two lavish indoor/outdoor terraces where lighting up is permitted - 'opulent' and 'lavish' used here as euphemisms for the sort of damped down bling oil-rich Russian oilgarchs and their desert rat pack equivalents are big on: let's just say, the Yemeni-owned Wellesley's look is not so much Shaker chic, more Sheik Yermoney at Harrods circa the Egyptian grocer. Fancy a scotch? Its selection of single malt whiskies, eaux de vie and cognacs gives Salvatore Calabrese's stellar collection across the road at The Playboy Club a run for its money, so prepare to cough up a harem scarem £5,000 for a double shot of rare Macallan single malt. Cocktails are more accessible at £15 for a range of classics and novelties such as 'Grass-tasty-hopper' or Italian Margarita (reposado tequila, lime/lemon sorbet, agave syrup and kirsch). As a nod to the building’s Pizza on the Park days, regular live music has been retained in the Jazz Room and there's a bijou jewel box of a restaurant. There's also a night bus stop outside; not that that this will register with Crystal's clientele: handy as hell for any Bulgarian bus boys employed within, tho'. 

The Wellesley Hotel 11 Knightsbridge SW1 7235 3535  www.thewellesley.co.uk