Eleanor's, Charing Cross

Aeons ago, too 'loved-up' to sit out the taxi ride home, I dragged an angel met in Heaven (a night-club then doubling as Sodom according to the tabloids) round to Charing Cross station’s hellish hotel. Depressing? Checking into Zurich’s Dignitas clinic would have been more life-affirming. But what’s this? The gloomy Victorian morgue has been reborn with the Guoman group as midwife? Up a regal candle-lit staircase, down complex, moody perfumed corridors we waft in search of the pile’s unsigned bar (take a satnav) until, lo, Eleanor’s: the new lounge’s lame name, a reference to Edward I’s Queen commemorated in the elaborate stone (Charing) cross outside. Against my expectations, Eleanor is a looker. Her smart taupe and Rioja-tone threads reflect her signature drink. Winking at us from a large Kilner jar, it’s presented with some ceremony by the politest bona fide Monégasque I’ve ever met (admittedly, these are few in number),  the principality being mostly populated by vile, tax-dodging grand prix pricks and non-native bling. He expounds the properties of Castilian sangria (Eleanor’s speciality) in a kind of posho Franglais  ‘Avez-vous ever been to a Harvester before?’ way. Sweet! Rather than burst his bubble, my date keeps schtum about a decade spent in Barcelona. Cracking cocktails include Cajun Martini - a hottie at £11.95. So tempting, and generous, are Monsieur Monaco’s meaty platters (£14.95), we later skip dinner. On the downside, Queen El’s current courtiers are not the coolest. Oust them! The dame deserves a sexier crowd.

Charing Cross Hotel, The Strand, WC2 0871 376 9012 http://tinyurl.com/42gncyr

Bassoon at The Corinthia Hotel, Charing Cross

Unless you’re an oligarch’s spoilt brat or one of TOWIE's more cash-than-dash dumbos - in which case, you won’t really get the understated sophistication of Bassoon at the Corinthia - there’s a price point for cocktails above which sensible souls will not venture. When I was an apprentice lounge lizard, that ceiling was a shilling; a princely sum that secured a port and lemon and a bag of scratchings back when the Queen’s tongue-tied old man was still on the throne. Fast forward to 2011, and I’m the one left stuttering at The King’s Speech: at nigh-on twenty knicker, this champagne and Chambord fix costs a king’s ransom. It’s all relative, of course: my stylish arm candy is delighted with her Mantovani - a Hendrick’s-based concoction named after the band leader who played here in its 1930s heyday as The Metropole before providing the ethereal soundtrack to countless cremetoria. Were she paying (seamless service and candied/ savoury snacks included, or not): ‘what berk blows £16.88 on a drink?’  This, from Lola in twice-worn Louboutin spikes whose £695 cost would stock my drinks cabinet for a year. Check out Bassoon by all means - David Collins’s classy pastiche of an ambience feutrée Parisian piano lounge circa Léger - but be prepared to punish the plastic or pimp yourself out for the price of its Gimlet.

Corinthia Hotel, Whitehall Place, SW1A 2BD 7930 8181

http://www.corinthia.com/en/London/home/