Facebook recently introduced another typically daft gizmo. Like so many others, it's presumably aimed at disaffected youth festering in Nowhere Nebraska, stroking their father's rifle collection as they plan their bloody revenge on those classmates that dared mock their Justin Bieber be-stickered lunch box. Based on past posts, Facebook's feature fancies it can select your personal top 10 moments of the year. In 2014, as well as buying a new loo seat, one of mine was attending a preview of The Great Gatsby in nausea-inducing 3D, apparently. Is my life really that dull? Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby was a frenetic, over-styled marshmallow - shallow, vapid and unrewarding. I mention this, not because I've fancy a gig as a film critic - although I'll happily give you a pithy précis of Behind The Candelabra if you like - rather that Luhrmann's lurid Gatsby evidently inspires Nick House's new City restaurant and bar behemoth, Steam and Rye. As at his other venues Mahiki and Bodo’s Schloss, this perma-House party, set in the former Bank of New York's august marbled halls, is crammed chock-full of gimmicks - a 20's gangsters and molls theme park for cocktail-crazy kidult bankers and their 20-something staff: Basildon blondes, Billericay bean counters and Southend secretaries that fancy themselves Essex's answer to Daisy Buchanan. Steam and Rye has been designed in conjunction with a model/ presenter/ serial red carpet-hogger whose clothing range, Kelly Brook at New Look, is sure to appeal to those that imagine ersatz glam the height of big city sophistication. As I'm unlikely VIP lounge material (I'm not dating a West Ham player and I'd refuse to give a K***ing Kardashian my contact details, even supposing it wanted them), I head downstairs to one of various spaces accessible to paying punters. Here, a passable rendition of an antiquated Eastern Pacific Railway dining carriage doubles as a cocktail lounge - New York's Grand Central Station another design influence I'm told. All aboard a cheesy choo-choo to Yonkers for a bonkers range of hooch served by flappers in shimmy shifts. Ignoring classic calls vieux carré and prescription julep (£12.50), tonight's throng is sold on tricks such as sticks of rock in soda fountain alco-pops, moonshine served in oil can mugs...or in faux footwear in the case of dead man’s boot (tequila, lemon and marshmallow). A Monica Lewinsky cocktail is a creamy rum and amaretto affair - fit for a president, no doubt. Be careful he doesn't splash it on your dress, love: people will talk. ‘Maize balls,' meanwhile, may well make Made In Chelsea fans miss the last train back to Basildon. Steaming at 2 am? I don't hang around to find out. I've got better, if not bigger, speakeasies in mind.
From the owners of Copita and Barrica, this off-Charlotte Street tabanco - a style of tavern dedicated to Jerez de la Frontera’s native drink - should prosper. A cosy bar - a tight squeeze with high stools - will suit those popping in for post-work snacks of olives and nuts, rillettes, terrines or various sharing boards (from £12) with a glass of chilled dry fino. Prices start at £2.90 for a range produced by internationally acclaimed Bodegas Rey Fernando De Castilla served from the barrel using a traditional cup. Beyond the bar, Drakes opens up into an authentically austere Andalucian-style room with banquette and, to one corner, a second bar with high stools for more casual dining. Top notch, limited release fino en rama works well with a fair seafood platter that has cured sardines, cockles, prawns, slightly soapy salt-cured air-dried tuna loin (mojama), mackerel paté and gravadlax. Rich aged oloroso, the owner’s recommendation, is served with both braised pig cheeks, hazelnuts and potato puree, and rolled lamb breast, lentils and salsa verde from a choice of 6 rustic mains (from £9.50) that also includes octopus chikpea and chorizo, and a white bean veggie stew. Full-on fruity rare old India 20+ years is pudding in its own right but was served here with apple crumble, nuts and hazelnut ice cream, a combo so over-rich, it could sink the eponymous Drake’s Golden Hind - the ship on which the seafaring Elizabethan brought sherry in butts, introducing the tipple to England.
The spacious ground floor bar at The Don’s smart new bistro is a cosy cork-walled charmer, suitable for City chinwags over a glass of finest Fino. The black-cloaked hombre depicted in the bar's branding has, for centuries, been synonymous with Sandeman, purveyors of award-winning sherries and port. Served comme il faut (unlike your nan's Christmas Emva Cream), wrap your laughing gear around various styles with shaved Bellota ham off the bone for an authentic taste of Spain. From a list of sherry-laced cocktails, I like flamenco (Woodford Reserve bourbon, Manzanilla, peach liqueur, mint, lime and barley syrup), and torero (loosely, a sherry Americano). The Don is also big on gin, stocked in numbers and used in sophisticated sours such as the Londoner (Adnams First Rate, Noilly Prat, apricot liqueur and lime with egg white). Nutty symphony (a cognac, fig, chestnut honey and butterscotch liqueur fix) is one of various £13 digestifs that promise ‘a surprising journey of flavours’ - albeit not a journey my palate cares to undertake. Three dozen wines come by the glass. Ask to visit The Don's fascinating 18th century cellars, where the restaurant’s stellar cast of 400 global hotties has top notch Tempranillo and Pena das Donas Almalarga, an elegant mineral-rich white produced from Galicia’s godello grapes. Quality hams and crispy pork crackling aside, there's Manchego and sobrassada piquant sausage toastie (£7), various croquettes, deep-fried olives with goats curd, and smoked prawns. Service is slick and although, to the average St Paul's wage slave, prices may err on the steep side, off Cheapside, the Don is definitely your man.
"'Kench' is a little-used term for a fish salting bin, as well as the olde English equivalent of that current online überacronym, LOL. 'Bibesy' is an archaic term for an excessive desire to drink." So says the owner of this new Smithfield gaff, a man whose Nottingham childhood must have been so uneventful, he can still recall every round of Call My Bluff. Mine host, the linguist Chris Peel, is keen to point out the thinking behind the name of his new dining room (Kench) and bar (Bibesy), lest I imagine it's in the same vein as his other premises. Chris, you see, is also the man behind cod-1920's Chicago Mobster's speakeasy Evans and Peel - a quirky hole-up that would doubtless be fun-lovin' Diana Spencer's local had she not kissed a Greco-German frog, become a princess, left her pad in Earl's Court for an even more louche Court, and died after the dream turned as sour as her sister-in-law Anne's equine fizog. Whether Diana, smudged panda eyed patron saint of TV confessionals, would have enjoyed Kench's modern Brit tapas, who can say? She was a finicky eater, one of her friends tells me. I enjoy K and B's..... in part. Pulled oxtail with red cabbage, and pork 'bellypops' are fair but chewy, flavourless, salt-cured flank steak tartare echoes Diana's demise: a car crash. Wotevah! I'm feeling more bibsey boy than kenchy tonight, so it's the downstairs drinking den here that interests me more. As at Evans and Peel, part of the fun is divining its entrance. If you're not thick as a brick, you'll discover a rough-hewn pine-clad blue-collar cabin that has presumably been modelled on a shady Adirondacks shack circa Hank Williams - the sort of dive where rednecks drink doctored hooch and eye up their cousins' beavers after a day spent shootin' squirrels in the woods - Tufty taxidermy is a bit of a theme at Bibesy. From a back bar stacked high with premium spirits, Bibsey's cocktails are no hokey moonshine. Campari eggnog aside - an ill-advised experiment that tastes like the poo of a jaundiced alkie Milanese mama's breast-fed baby - the menu is packed with must-try stuff. Despite its crap name, Beyond Epale ('the bastard lovechild of a martinez and a presidente') is a winner. So too, Dedicated Follower of Fashion, Bibesy's Kinky Boulevardier built on Calvados. The drinks keep coming faster than a horny hillbilly in a $10 parking lot whore. By the time I get to Redemption rye and Arran and Islay whisky-based Salt and Malt Sazerac, Hank Williams' 'I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive' is playing in my head. At one point, I swear there's a mean squirrel on my shoulder and it's after my nuts - always a bad sign that you're one more drink away from a paramedic's intervention. It's testament to this luxe liquor pit's pull that I'm still here, howling for more, at 3 a.m on a school night. OK, I'll level. It helps that Peel lures us into a lock-in, the tab on him. As I, too, am keen to revive obscure old English words, let me add that if you can corrade the cost of an Oenological Manhattan (11 gold bits), freck hither, twitter-light, and deliciate at a brannigan within.
As the heavens open and the storm rages, I'm alright Jack! An early adopter, I'm sitting it out - happy as a sand-boy in a squishy sink-in sofa by a roaring fire - at Rosewood's rather gorge bar. The haute hotel chain’s maiden European venture harks back to the days of Britain as a global superpower. Set in a palatial pillared marble hall of the Pearl Assurance Co’s former showpiece HQ, Martin (Scott’s/ 34/ The Ivy Club) Brudnizki’s candied fruits-tone updated take on Edwardian pomp is a triumph that, at a stroke, creates a classic new luxurious London space. Better still, one with great cocktails on tap. Classy calls, prepped at an imposing L-shaped bar, include humidor (Chivas 18-y-o, white port and absinthe); hats off (mezcal, Aperol and agave-sweetened citrus fruit juices); Connemara peated single malt and cherry liqueur fix, Irish mermaid (£12); fish house punch, and pith helmet - a reference to Britain’s colonial adventures in India, the inspiration for various items of old Delhi tiffin on a menu that also includes attractively presented smoked salmon or chicken liver pot, merguez pizzette, and cheese and onion sourdough toasties (£7) - the latter so addictive, I'm beginning to regret binning my Breville. For now though, there is liveried staff to cater to my fat neck's new-found need. I may be down on the dumbest TV costume drama of all time, but when I say this deeply doable drawing room-cum-library-cum-home-from-home feels like a set from Downton Abbey, it's meant as a compliment. I sit totally alone, like The Dowager Countess of Grantham spoiling for a sparring partner who'll wither under my vinegary sarcasm. Nobody comes. Not a single sausage. Heaven on Holborn! Don't tell another living soul!
If you've never been to The Cumberland, do please go...if only for the hotel's lobby - a vast plain that could be a public square in Pyongyang populated by sculptures inspired by those wretched human statues that litter Covent Garden Piazza. After scant cosmetic tweaking, the pile’s Patrón bar - nice tequila shame about the room - has morphed into Momentus, a hard-edged lounge that imagines itself ‘the place to be in W1.’ It might be the place to be on the M1 - if motorway service stations did bars and this were Leicester not London. Where it sees ‘laid-back, sultry, stylish and full of colour,’ I see clattery, impersonal, dated and bland. Billing itself a champagne bar, you might reasonably expect its list to offer more than three types by the glass - Moët and Chandon Impérial, entry level bubbles, fair at £8.50 and champagne cocktails (£11) that include Bellini and Buck (sic) Fizz. At the bar's lame launch - a less than Momentus occasion - I'm expected to wear a name tag. Have I wandered, in error, into a conference break-out for Ukranian combine harvester salesmen? I manage to grab two canapes: a smoked salmon pagoda thingy, and a sliver of pork pie. Neither inspires further investigation of the bar food menu. The highlight of my visit is a magnificent MILF, more of a MI-wouldn't-LF - a brave bingo-winged big bird that, despite being the size and the age of
Hoxton Market is a gritty strip that, 15 minutes hence, will inevitably host Byron, SpaceNK and Little Waitrose. The catalyst for its poncification may prove to be the arrival of White Lyan, a liquid lounge anybody remotely interested in the art of the cocktail will beat a path to, as sure as 85% of Ireland legs it to Lourdes (or is pushed there in a chair, that is, as I witnessed on my recent reccie). The cure-all waters dispensed at this shrine are courtesy of Ryan Chetiyawardana, something of a saint in the spirits world. After stints at Bramble in Edinburgh, Purl and Worship Street Whistling Shop in London, this award-winning cocktail barman, and consultant to numerous high-end clients, has opened his own place with fellow ex-Brambler Iain Griffiths - a chap who has come a long way from the sheep-shearer/shagger bars of his native Australian Outback. Replacing what was until recently the old Hoxton White Horse pub, White Lyan's interior is all Bauhaus black no-nonsense minimalism, putting the focus on its owners' craft. 'We've done away with ice and lemon' (or words to that effect) says Griffiths reaching for one of various small batch pre-mixes, hidden from view, in stark temperature controlled cabinets. No stirring, no shaking and, it goes without saying, definitely no flairing: the ethos here is closer to the intellectual approach of Tony Conigliaro, at whose 69 Colebrooke Row temple Ryan also once served. Reasonably priced drinks - such as the house old fashioned (using scotch from a bottle whose interior has been pre-coated with layered beeswax), and 'white Guinness' (whisky, coconut, almond and ash from a syphon) are, in terms of content, unimpeachable. So why am I not gushing about this gaff like a girl giddy on gimlets? Call me old fashioned, but I want my old fashioned bespoke-made to order. As a piece of theatre, a pre-mixed pour - current industry in-thing or not - can't provide the frisson of excitement watching a sazerac created from scratch provides. White Lyan's pre-batched Moby Dick sazerac - the name refers to the spot of ambergris it contains - is a well-balanced kick ass beast - its garnish, limp. A rice paper strip float turned aqua from absinthe dripped onto it clings to the wall of a rocks glass like loo roll stuck to a toilet bowl. Cue flashback to nightmarish past humiliation: the time two spiteful, deeply uncool school prefects - insanely jealous of my innate metrosexyfabulousness - jumped me in the bogs, washing out my immaculate Bryan Ferry brilliantined black quiff in one of the stinky pit's Armitage Shanks porcelain pans. My glittering career would go on to include styling Roxy Music for NME but one of my assailants, karma being karma, ended up a plumber, minted but up to his elbows in shite, I hear.
@gallerymain.jpg)
