Regular readers will know I’m a bit of a martini-Hoover, a regular Don Draper de nos jours...minus The Betty Ford Clinic season ticket, hopefully. To find a well-made martini is manna. To find a well-made one off Bond Street for a paltry sum that wouldn’t buy the fine twine handle off a designer carrier bag, is downright dangerous. But from 4 pm to 10 pm weekdays (8 pm on weekends and all day Sunday), a measly four of your English pounds - or Scottish ones for that matter, so long as the auld nation is still part of the Union - secures a dirty, verging-on-pornographic, Plymouth martini accessorised with a Kalamata olive and thyme sprig fascinator at this new W1 branch of the Covent Garden original. A similar happy hour spend gets lychee, passion fruit or chocolate martini - wuss juice for junior suits which, tonight, look to come mostly from Debenhams. Yes, Dirty Martini is a mid-market gaff but at these prices, who expects fancy schmancy David Collins interiors? Actually, I quite like the decor, chic in a kind of Carrie Bradshaw circa 2001 way, and the tricky space - think tunnel! - is intelligently utilised. What I don’t dig, are the constantly prowling high-profile black suits. Most unnerving! Is security anticipating a ruck between Tatleristas and Voguettes - both magazines share premises across the square - over whether, at £4 - a sum that buys the waifs a whole month’s groceries - Margiela or Miu Miu martini is the hip sip this season, supposing such items exist?
10c Hanover Square W1 www.dirtymartini.uk.com
