Where to Drink
Warm the cockles of your heart this festive season with a beverage from one of London’s newest ventures. South Kensington’s The Brompton Club was recently rebooted as Brompton by London nightlife impresarios Antoin Commane and Diego Bivero-Volpe. The revamped private members’ club features a country chic design with Art Deco gracenotes and a nod towards Chelsea’s rock ‘n’ roll legacy. The club currently houses gourmet Italian pop-up PizzaLuxe and “butler bells” are due to be installed in the new year to ensure that each member’s desires are met promptly.
Over on Brewer Street, the Danish steakhouse MASH made waves when it recently arrived in Soho in the grandiose site that formerly housed Titanic. Its glass-canopied, marble-clad island bar doubles as a drinking destination with DJs till late to enliven the ambience, which could provide the perfect transition from early evening for those looking to hit the clubs. Islington’s House of Wolf has been causing tremors in the Twittersphere with its intense molecular gastronomy and comes equipped with an envelope-pushing drinking den named the Apothecary. Behind the white-tiled bar, the house mixologists don laboratory coats and create theatrical cocktails with twists like popcorn or black pudding infusions.
The John Salt recently opened its doors in Islington as well, with ex-Roganic chef Ben Spalding manning the kitchens. The ground floor bar is a great destination for snacks, craft beers and some exceptional cocktails. ECC in Chinatown is being joined on Gerrard Street by another experimental cocktail bar. The Opium Cocktail and Dim Sum Parlour is spread over two floors, with a shabby chic aesthetic, reclaimed furniture and an upstairs bar with a central table, around which both bartenders and patrons cohabitate. Its drinks menu enlists age old Asian ingredients including tapioca balls and fortune cookies to create quality concoctions. Down south in Brixton the brains behind MEATLiquor have made their first foray into chicken with Wishbone. Its new cocktail menu specialises in sours, with pretty much every variation on the drink possible, including a delightfully tacky Jaeger Sour.