Little Drury, Covent Garden

An adjunct to The Drury Club downstairs, you need neither that nightspot’s £350 membership card nor guest-list guile to pass Little Drury’s portals. Billed as an ‘exclusive New York speakeasy-style cocktail bar’, its exposed brick ‘shabby chic’ interior design-on-a-tight-budget (I'm guessing) feels like the stuff of any $5 martini joint in Queens. Simpatico Italian staff mix punch bowls to share and £9.50 cocktails that , competently dispatghed, aren’t necessarily as ‘wildly creative’ as LD’s marketing spiel fancies: the likes of strawberry mojito and Drunken Avocado (a lychee and avo’ vodkatini) push no envelopes. When I visit, the promised ‘extensive’ selection of Italo-bites consists of: prawn and courgette, crab, or seaweed fritters (£4.50); bresaola stuffed with ricotta; caprese (mozzarella, basil and tomato) and Parma ham skewers; and cannoli… or all of the above for £21. A small slightly claustrophobic, mezzanine area with a table football is available for hire at this soul-soundtracked ‘haven of hedonism’.
167 Drury Lane WC2B 5PG 7831 9399 www.littledrury.com

Above review for www.squaremeal.co.uk