Given the attention it’s getting, the most popular element of Lee Broom’s design for a new South Ken cocktail joint - think blue-collar Parisian zinc meets Rococo bordello - is the mirror that lines one wall. ‘Hey, Mr. DJ! Gonna drop Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain?’ At the launch of the Valmont club’s cute sibling Coquine - that’s French for ‘saucy’, not ‘Cookeen’ as I initially mishear it - the perma-preening chosen ones are representative of the types that cleave to this gilded postcode. Agents casting for someone to play Jodie Kidd, Tara P-T, George Osborne, a young Omar Sharif or Jerry Hall, look no further. (Hold on! That's no Jerry look-alike, I'd recognise the old Stone's ex-doll's lazy Texan dr-a-a-a-a-awl from a mile away). Into that giddy social stew, sprinkle platinum blondes with diamond designs on someone else’s titanium Amex and you’re getting the picture. What they get at this sure-fire SW5 hit is a range of plausible £8 cocktails that includes a summer berry martini called ‘Caprice’. Bingo! Caprice as in ahem, ‘supermodel’, that’s who the venal blondes remind me of. Luckily for them, they’re all calorie counting: promised ‘comfort tapas’, we languish, bellies rumbling, for over an hour while one solitary table of four VVIPs is served tray after tray. Cottoning on to my plight, sweet PR summons ponced-up fish fingers and maki rolls to placate Mr. Grumpy. Momentarily, the other guests’ focus shifts from the mirror.
160 Old Brompton Rd SW5 7341 7678
