Bar of the week: Flipdog, the Shoreditch spot stoking its cocktails with a hot poker
Hot pokers and experimental cocktails? Thanks very much, says Anna Moloney in her write up of new Shoreditch hotspot Flipdog City AM’s bar of the week
Flipdog is Shoreditch’s hottest new bar – and not just because it sears its cocktails with a 1,200°C poker.
Perched on Old Street roundabout and marked only with a small, unilluminated sign, Flipdog is currently operating on a need-to-be-in-the-know-to-notice basis. Luckily, backed by a well-credentialed team including head bartender Igor Brovko, formerly of Tayer and Elementary (last year named the fifth best bar in the world), there’s sure to be a few that count themselves as so discerning.
That’s not to mistake anything at Flipdog for pretension, though. Set up by award-winning Ukrainian bartender Artem Shapenko and industry consultant Alex Kostenyuk, it’s a playground for experimental cocktail-making, but playfully tempered with a ‘we’re also just having fun’ twinkle in its eye.
Why the hot poker?
Case in point, the hot poker – also known as a loggerhead or a ‘flipdog’ (aha!) – which is plunged into the cocktails to create a unique flavour profile, and also, we assume, for showmanship. Inspired by a niche method apparently once used in 18th century North American inns, the searing is meant to caramelise the liquors in a way that Brovko says creates a metallic, ‘plasticky’ taste, which admittedly is not the most appetising description.
Fortunately, Brovko has another pitch for the signature ‘Morning Platform’ cocktail, made with a mix of bourbon, disaronno, sherry and coffee: “It should taste like it’s early in the morning, and you’re waiting on the platform to get the Eurostar to Paris, maybe with a takeaway coffee and a cigarette.” It’s served warm and makes for a perfect, and unique, nightcap.
Our picks of the menu
If you’re not into the flavour profile of St Pancras station, there’s plenty of non-stoked options, including my favourite, the Necta 2, a sweet and foamy concoction made from rum, soka, vermouth and a Flipdog special nectarine eau de vie, and served in a pleasing tortoise shell coupe; complex but extremely drinkable. With all cocktails priced between £9 and £11, you actually might be able to afford to get tipsy on them, too. There’s a selection of ‘small plates’ available, though they really only feed one each so we’d term them more properly as ‘snacks’. The popcorn chicken and octopus skewers are my pick.
The bar is split into two levels with separate menus. Upstairs is a more casual, drop-in counter space that will host popups this summer. It’s drenched in a spacey glow thanks to its silver, foiled wallpaper, which is almost impossible not to touch. If you’re looking to settle in, head downstairs where velvet booths, perforated metal tables and chaotic wallpaper converge to create a kind of maximalist, urban, indoor grotto. Designed by Ukrainian muralist Waone Interesni Kazki, you’ll find eyeballs, accordions and the repeated portrait of a buzzcutted man’s head (that allegedly unintentionally resembles Brovko) tumbling across the walls as you watch your cocktail being seared with the iron poker. A little weird but a lot of wonderful.