Peony, Chinatown

As a smoker, I vowed I'd give up when Marlboro Lites hit a fiver per pack. They soon did and I quit; although that was less down to price, all to Allen Carr...as in fag-aversion therapy clinic. Any aversion to the TV fag of that ilk is easily addressed: zap Chatty Man with your remote! I do. Similarly, I've vowed to give up cocktails when the benchmark for a boulevardier hits £20. Based on prices at Peony, a brand new space at  dimly lit pseudo-1930s-Shanghai den of debauchery, Opium, my drinking days are nigh over. Optional 12.5% gratuity included, prices zap from £15+ to a ceiling-busting £20.25 for Dragon Bite (El Dorado 5 rum, Benedictine, Xilli liqueur, lime, papaya and coriander). Yes, I have been known to shell out as much at Artesian or other starry lounges now and then, but all cheap 'n' cheerful chinoiserie, Peony ain't exactly The Connaught. Furthermore, at haute hotels, exotic snackage is often included in the price and smiling doormen invariably greet you as a long-lost friend. Tonight, despite coming armed with a reservation, I'm left outside, shivering in a biting wet wind for a full ten minutes while an impassive, impassable greeter attempts, FBI security-stylee, to communicate my presence to a front-of-house that's presumably pre-occupied, tending to other guests (all two of them, it transpires, when I do make it upstairs). The new inscrutable sepia tone saloon (its view, the sort of alley behind whose rubbish bins a vengeful triad member would carve a Shanghai smile into your boat race) is the domain of Rasa Gaidelyte, an enthusiastic Lithuanian blonde whose concise East-meets-West list is a work in progress. Served in patterned teapots, punches include a Chivas 12 whisky and green tea hot toddy - good with dim sum, seafood or vegetable platters from £15. Rasa's signature rinses include Mexican in China (Herradura tequila, Xilli pepper and maraschino liqueurs, grapefruit juice and lime) and a lemongrass-smoked Sazerac presented with goji berries and, wrapped in an exotic leaf, a gold coin for good luck. At this rate, a great deal of good fortune - i.e six numbers on tomorrow's Lotto - is required if this cookie is continue to afford to drink at London's more expensive lounges.

15 -16 Gerrard Street W1D 6JE www.peonychinatown.com

Ivy Market Grill, Covent Garden

The trouble with reviewing London's latest bars, is that they roll of the production line faster than Ford Mustangs did in Detroit's heyday. This inevitably means I spend evenings in places I'd often rather not, speculating what drug the PR was on when penning a press release that bears no relation to reality. Flash-in-the-pan turds such as Senkai Lounge, W1; Blitz, now Barafina in Adelaide Street, and SofaKingCool which, now mercifully departed, nevertheless remains this blog's most visited review...read regularly by masochists in need of a vicarious thrill, I imagine...spring to mind. Post-launch, that I have three times revisited Ivy Market Grill in as many weeks, speaks volumes. Like the original Ivy, here's somewhere that had me from hello. The all-purpose breakfast-to-one-for-the-road retro-fied room is a pitch-perfect pastiche of the sort of vielle école bar-brasserie you'd be lucky to say "Allo, Allo" to on a stop-over in an obscure backwater - Bar-le-Duc, Bourg-en-Bresse or the intriguingly-named Nancy, its boys more gay than Paris itself, par exemple. Unlike France's zincs - too often the domain of Surly, Snappy, Sneery and other similarly disagreeable Sarkozy-esque dwarves - service and presentation here are as polished as the butch bar's elegantly set zinc counter, at whose teal leather stools, afternoon tea at £8.75 (includes pots and pots of finest Ceylon), is a bonny cream scone steal. At around the same cost, house cocktails such as My Fair Lady - Ivy gin, Belle de Brillet, lemon and orange blossom (pictured) - and tin cup-serve Henrietta Maria Treacle are top notch, while classics such as a No 3 gin martini are executed with élan. All-day eats are of the type, post-Euromillions jackpot, my personal Mrs Patmore will rustle up on command: shepherd's pie; crispy duck salad (£7.75); steak, egg and chips; creamed mushrooms on toast; lobster thermidor; tuna carpaccio et al. IMG is VG indeed. If, in 2015, I'm not perma-present within, it's because I'm enduring some shonky Shoxditch scenester saloon in the name of research, dreaming of a civilised supper and cocktails in Covent Garden.
1 Henrietta Street, WC2E 8PS 3301 0200 http://www.theivymarketgrill.com

Ognisko, Kensington

This timewarp-y joy is located around the corner from a Kensington dungeon I regularly frequent. Next time I'm about to submit to untold torture there, I intend to, first, hit the bar at Ognisko and steel myself with a brace of its stiffeners. Two brain-blaster drinks down the hatch; even the worst punishment a psycho sadist can mete out - root canal at the hands of my dear dentist, Brian, directly across the leafy garden square from Jan Woriniecki's Polish restaurant - should be a doddle. A year after it became possible for Joe Public to access the grand stuccoed townhouse members of The Polish Hearth Club have monopolised since the 1940s, I'm finally here. Poland's cuisine - with apologies to any of that land's 39 million populations or whichever one of its 37 million ex-pat plumbers may, in future, tend to my U-bend - ain't top of my list. But its best vodkas very much are. Monumental martinis enlist some of the country's finest rye and potato distillations: Chopin; Sobieski; Belvedere; Potocki et al. Served in chilled coupettes, they are text-book perfect. And lethal as a KGB agent's bullet. On which note, the formal room, charmingly old school in a sort of frumpy 1950s Poznan matron way, is the sort of place wherein Cold War gay spy Guy Burgess might have convened with that equally traitorous c***, Anthony Blunt, after being taken up the bandstand by an obliging off-duty guardsman, in exchange for a fiver, in nearby Kensington Gardens, I imagine. For double that amount or less per drink here,  you can get buggered senseless on Ruski Standard Vesper, beetroot martini, Potocki gimlet and Tough Love (rye, Davna red vodka, vin d'orange and Martini Rosso) and a range of classics that includes side car and Copenhagen, snips at £8.50. My Christine Keeler-esque arm candy for the evening is particularly taken with her prosecco-topped martini - blood orange liqueur, lime, grapefruit and Wyborowa - from a list of ladylike libations. Bar snacks, elegantly served and blissfully ignorant of the term 'portion control', are the sort of Herculean fuel that could sustain you through the worst winter Warsaw can throw at you. Blinis; pelmeni; pierogi; grilled sausage; peasant soups; potato pancakes and puddings that read like the Polish entry to next year's Eurovision Song Contest. Sliwka w Czekoladzie, anyone? Me? I'm laying into homemade flavoured shots. So strong is Ognisko's horseradish vodka, gimme three shots of this liquid novocain and Brian can skip the injections and yank out my molars with his bare mitts, for all I'll care.
55 Prince's Gate SW7 2PN 7589 0101 http://www.ogniskorestaurant.co.uk 

I spy Guy (right)

64 Degrees Bar, Pimlico

Seemingly forever stuck in 1962, Wilton Street fixture Le Monde menswear boutique (pictured below) - with its jaunty Jamaican rudeboy hats, and knits last seen on Val Doonican - embodies Pimlico's eccentricity. It belongs in spirit to a London that's now largely vanished, much to my chagrin. If you haven't seen Ealing Studios' classic screwball post-War comedy, in which its kooky residents break away from the UK and declare themselves part of Burgundy, download Passport To Pimlico immediately. The film's title appears on the cocktail list at the nonconformist faubourg's newest drinking den, a warm, cosy, brick cellar hung with Warhol, Basquiat and Banksy-ness. You'll find it downstairs at 64 Degrees, the restaurant at quirky boutique hotel Artist Residence. It's the first London venture for a suitably oddball couple whose similarly whimsical postmodern Penzance hotel featured on cult TV bitchfest Four In A Bed - losing out to two clenched queens whose naff-looking Blackpool Bed and Breakfast had been voted the world's 5th best (by guests who had visited no more than five others, I like to imagine) Whilst time-warpy Pimlico ticks many boxes, its boring bar scene is also resolutely stuck in the past. So anywhere that punts Bourbon praline sour; gin, Tokaji and Aperol 'negroni'; tequila, mezcal, beetroot, cayenne and carrot fix, Acapulco (£10) and the aforementioned Passport (a gin, Syrah and forest fruit sour), should pull in the Pimlico punters. There again, as the locals are just as likely to be stopping indoors, happy at home, necking Blue Nun and Babycham, watching Dixon of Dock Green and Juke Box Jury on black and white television sets hired for half a crown a week at Radio Rentals, or eating powdered egg and snook and listening to The Goon Show on the wireless - good luck with that guys!
Artist Residence, 52 Cambridge Street SW1V 4QQ 7828 6684 

http://artistresidencelondon.co.uk

Spiaggia, Fulham

Fulham's grimy, traffic-clogged, North End Road is a grim parade of pound shops, bookies, cash convertors and Kathy Burquas prodding market stall mangos , hoping to buy them for buttons, while the stallholders shoot them the BNP death stare. Now It's feared more locals will soon be reduced to haggling over the price of bruised fruit when better Dead Than Ed's bananas tax hits their 'mansions' - aka poky terraced houses. Bang goes the family holiday in Tuscany! Fulham's soon-to-be-more-squeezed-middle will have to make do with a little corner of Italy in the shape of a cutesy, white-washed, wood panelled shack opposite Waitrose (where they used to shop before their 4 x 4s satnavs were set to Lidl SW11). Tricked out in candy stripes and pastel gelati tones, Spiaggia is jolly as lolly-lickin' starlet La Lollobrigida (pictured) at a swingin' San Remo beach party not long after Mussolini was swinging in Milano - on a meat hook dangled from the roof of a petrol station. With impeccable timing, I Raggazzi della Spiaggia  (as the Beach Boys would have been called if they'd come from Cattolica not California) can look forward to sunshiny staff serving spritzes, negroni, rossini, bellini, vodka-limone sorbet and all manner of I-Ti tipples currently fashionable a Londra. Order an £8 cocktail (or vino and spumante from £19) and, at the appropriate hour, you'll be served aperitivi - free, not cheekily, sneakily slapped on your bill as at some greedy West End gaffs. Snackage includes tutti the usual suspects - crostini, piadini, arancini, Henry Mancini  - and trad grub like nonna knocked out in her Parma prime. Downstairs, in a dark kitsch playroom, there's big screen La Liga action featuring the peninsula's poutiest prima donnas, and a baby foot table for any budding Balotelli on your squad. Worryingly for mamma, there's also an inscrutable curtained cabana, wherein a large mattress: Randy di Rimini's office, the sort of horizontal accommodation nice Catholic girls should steer well clear of. I hope Spiaggia does well and doesn't end up as empty as Worthing beach on a wet bank holiday weekend: this tricky site has washed away a slew of bar/ diners in quick succession. Give it a go, Fulham! Fun, camp, kitsch, bonkers: it's gotta be a cheaper date than that other eccentric Italian import, Nancy dell'Olio.
461 - 465 North End Road SW6 1NZ 7610 2278 http://www.spiaggialondon.com 

Lounge Bar at The Hoxton Holborn, Holborn

I've gravitated towards hotel bars since I was persuasive enough to convince their barmen to serve me. As an easy-on-the-eye, precocious 15-year-old, I'd loiter in the better ones, sipping tequila sunrises. Fancying myself the height of sophistication, I'd put the make on  hot older guests flying solo. After an educational field trip upstairs, randy on Ruinart from my prey's minibar, I'd expect to be gifted something by Saint Laurent or Gucci the next day for having been a gold star student. Populated by good-looking fash-caj types - to the point that two lone businessmen in grey suits stick out like pork pies at a bar mitzvah -The Lounge Bar at The Hoxton Holborn would have once been fertile cruising ground for me. Given my current dishevelment, I'd be lucky to attract a ten-bob-the-job, tired old tart from Talinn. Not that I'm suggesting the oldest profession stalks the Hoxton Holborn's corridors. At 8.30 am, fragile, pale and clammy, I'm beginning to regret last night's orgy. A "FOUR IN A BED ROMP" as The Sun would have it? Sadly, Four In A Bed on Channel 4 is of more interest to  me these days...but never say "never", for hope springs eternal. After barely three hours' kip in one of the hotel's 'cosy' rooms (and an argument with the shower), I'm suffering the hangover of the month...so far. Mixing Champagne, Palomas, Tommy's margaritas, espresso martinis, corpse revivers, rhubarb bitter-tinged Brooklyn cocktails - and Midori and methadone mojitos for all I can remember - seemed like a good idea at 2 am as the hotel's epic launch party raged on. I do recall that the event kicked off with an inspired immersive production that saw the whole place turned into one big film shoot, with guests roped in as extras (not, on paper, my cup of tea but great fun as it transpired). My only hope of salvation lies in the full English I've ordered in the busy lobby downstairs - assessing that the concierge's contacts don't stretch to organising an emergency blood transfusion  in situ. Of scant consolation, is the prospect of last night's host, the hotel's PR, across the table. A fellow renegade half my age, she looks twice as rough. (Dem yoot? Lightweights!) Made of stronger stuff, another party survivor looks more chipper. "Apparently, all the alcohol in the lobby's fridges can be purchased by guests at near enough retail prices," he tells me. "Can't wait to rock up with the boys at 2am, check into a room and cane it all night. Cheaper than taxis back to mine." he says, already there. There was a time when I'd have found such a proposition irresistible. As it is, future evenings at the Hox Hobe's slouchy 50s-revisted bar, will be restricted to civilised tippling, rabbit on toast, steak and chips, patty melts or super healthy salads from in-house Brooklyn-style grill Hubbard and Bell... and taxis before midnight. At least, that's what I tell myself this morning.
199 - 206 High Holborn WC1V 7BD  7661 3000 https://thehoxton.com 

American Bar at the Beaumont, Mayfair

(fantasy becomes reality at The Beaumont )

I occasionally fantasise about being alive in London of the 1920s and 30s (Oi, missus! I may look ancient and decrepit but.....) Decked out by Savile Row's finest tailors; nightingales singing in Berkeley Square; bowling along a traffic-free Piccadilly, gay flappers and squiffy slappers in tow: I'm off to get royally rinsed in the American Bar at The Savoy and trip the light fantastic to Carroll Gibbons and his Orpheans in what is now that hotel's Beaufort Bar. Of course, the grim reality was much more likely to be a life of empty-bellied drudgery on the dole in Deptford, the occasional half of bitter, incurable clap and the only foreign holiday I'd ever take, a future day trip to a beach in France - no arguments - where I'd promptly have my dancing feet blown off by a Nazi mine. My reveries are likely to be further indulged - and frequently, I'm thinking - at Corbin and King's latest lounge, the devastatingly handsome, walnut-tone art deco American Bar at the Beaumont Hotel. The pile may look as if was around long before Vera dreamed of bluebirds over Dover but, back in the day, the 30s cream building it inhabits is where imaginary Me's chauffeur would park the Roller while sir rolled into Selfridges - whose garage this then was - to purchase a new Rolex oyster for his fine-boned wrist. As with other Corbin and King venues, (Wolseley, Delaunay, Colbert, Fischer's) here's a persuasive pastiche of past times where the white tux-totin' staff's drinks are similarly period and convincing: boulevardier, Brooklyn, Martinez, aviation and remember the Maine very much what Lord Barker-Main would sink back in the day. Nostalgic film set; impeccable service; modern-trad bar bites; champagne at under £50 and all the scofflaws I can scoff ? "Heaven, I'm in heaven," as my fantasy friend Fred sings it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOYzFKizikU

Beaumont Hotel, Brown Hart Gardens, W1K 6TF 7499 1001