Spiaggia, Fulham

October 31, 2014, 3:34 am

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Fulham's grimy, traffic-clogged, North End Road is a grim parade of pound shops, bookies, cash convertors and Kathy Burquas prodding market stall mangos , hoping to buy them for buttons, while the stallholders shoot them the BNP death stare. Now It's feared more locals will soon be reduced to haggling over the price of bruised fruit when better Dead Than Ed's bananas tax hits their 'mansions' - aka poky terraced houses. Bang goes the family holiday in Tuscany! Fulham's soon-to-be-more-squeezed-middle will have to make do with a little corner of Italy in the shape of a cutesy, white-washed, wood panelled shack opposite Waitrose (where they used to shop before their 4 x 4s satnavs were set to Lidl SW11). Tricked out in candy stripes and pastel gelati tones, Spiaggia is jolly as lolly-lickin' starlet La Lollobrigida (pictured) at a swingin' San Remo beach party not long after Mussolini was swinging in Milano - on a meat hook dangled from the roof of a petrol station. With impeccable timing, I Raggazzi della Spiaggia  (as the Beach Boys would have been called if they'd come from Cattolica not California) can look forward to sunshiny staff serving spritzes, negroni, rossini, bellini, vodka-limone sorbet and all manner of I-Ti tipples currently fashionable a Londra. Order an £8 cocktail (or vino and spumante from £19) and, at the appropriate hour, you'll be served aperitivi - free, not cheekily, sneakily slapped on your bill as at some greedy West End gaffs. Snackage includes tutti the usual suspects - crostini, piadini, arancini, Henry Mancini  - and trad grub like nonna knocked out in her Parma prime. Downstairs, in a dark kitsch playroom, there's big screen La Liga action featuring the peninsula's poutiest prima donnas, and a baby foot table for any budding Balotelli on your squad. Worryingly for mamma, there's also an inscrutable curtained cabana, wherein a large mattress: Randy di Rimini's office, the sort of horizontal accommodation nice Catholic girls should steer well clear of. I hope Spiaggia does well and doesn't end up as empty as Worthing beach on a wet bank holiday weekend: this tricky site has washed away a slew of bar/ diners in quick succession. Give it a go, Fulham! Fun, camp, kitsch, bonkers: it's gotta be a cheaper date than that other eccentric Italian import, Nancy dell'Olio.
461 - 465 North End Road SW6 1NZ 7610 2278 http://www.spiaggialondon.com 

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64 Degrees Bar, Pimlico

November 4, 2014, 10:00 am

≫ Next: Ognisko, Kensington

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Seemingly forever stuck in 1962, Wilton Street fixture Le Monde menswear boutique (pictured below) - with its jaunty Jamaican rudeboy hats, and knits last seen on Val Doonican - embodies Pimlico's eccentricity. It belongs in spirit to a London that's now largely vanished, much to my chagrin. If you haven't seen Ealing Studios' classic screwball post-War comedy, in which its kooky residents break away from the UK and declare themselves part of Burgundy, download Passport To Pimlico immediately. The film's title appears on the cocktail list at the nonconformist faubourg's newest drinking den, a warm, cosy, brick cellar hung with Warhol, Basquiat and Banksy-ness. You'll find it downstairs at 64 Degrees, the restaurant at quirky boutique hotel Artist Residence. It's the first London venture for a suitably oddball couple whose similarly whimsical postmodern Penzance hotel featured on cult TV bitchfest Four In A Bed - losing out to two clenched queens whose naff-looking Blackpool Bed and Breakfast had been voted the world's 5th best (by guests who had visited no more than five others, I like to imagine) Whilst time-warpy Pimlico ticks many boxes, its boring bar scene is also resolutely stuck in the past. So anywhere that punts Bourbon praline sour; gin, Tokaji and Aperol 'negroni'; tequila, mezcal, beetroot, cayenne and carrot fix, Acapulco (£10) and the aforementioned Passport (a gin, Syrah and forest fruit sour), should pull in the Pimlico punters. There again, as the locals are just as likely to be stopping indoors, happy at home, necking Blue Nun and Babycham, watching Dixon of Dock Green and Juke Box Jury on black and white television sets hired for half a crown a week at Radio Rentals, or eating powdered egg and snook and listening to The Goon Show on the wireless - good luck with that guys!
Artist Residence, 52 Cambridge Street SW1V 4QQ 7828 6684 

http://artistresidencelondon.co.uk

Ognisko, Kensington

November 13, 2014, 9:27 am

≫ Next: Ivy Market Grill, Covent Garden

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This timewarp-y joy is located around the corner from a Kensington dungeon I regularly frequent. Next time I'm about to submit to untold torture there, I intend to, first, hit the bar at Ognisko and steel myself with a brace of its stiffeners. Two brain-blaster drinks down the hatch; even the worst punishment a psycho sadist can mete out - root canal at the hands of my dear dentist, Brian, directly across the leafy garden square from Jan Woriniecki's Polish restaurant - should be a doddle. A year after it became possible for Joe Public to access the grand stuccoed townhouse members of The Polish Hearth Club have monopolised since the 1940s, I'm finally here. Poland's cuisine - with apologies to any of that land's 39 million populations or whichever one of its 37 million ex-pat plumbers may, in future, tend to my U-bend - ain't top of my list. But its best vodkas very much are. Monumental martinis enlist some of the country's finest rye and potato distillations: Chopin; Sobieski; Belvedere; Potocki et al. Served in chilled coupettes, they are text-book perfect. And lethal as a KGB agent's bullet. On which note, the formal room, charmingly old school in a sort of frumpy 1950s Poznan matron way, is the sort of place wherein Cold War gay spy Guy Burgess might have convened with that equally traitorous c***, Anthony Blunt, after being taken up the bandstand by an obliging off-duty guardsman, in exchange for a fiver, in nearby Kensington Gardens, I imagine. For double that amount or less per drink here,  you can get buggered senseless on Ruski Standard Vesper, beetroot martini, Potocki gimlet and Tough Love (rye, Davna red vodka, vin d'orange and Martini Rosso) and a range of classics that includes side car and Copenhagen, snips at £8.50. My Christine Keeler-esque arm candy for the evening is particularly taken with her prosecco-topped martini - blood orange liqueur, lime, grapefruit and Wyborowa - from a list of ladylike libations. Bar snacks, elegantly served and blissfully ignorant of the term 'portion control', are the sort of Herculean fuel that could sustain you through the worst winter Warsaw can throw at you. Blinis; pelmeni; pierogi; grilled sausage; peasant soups; potato pancakes and puddings that read like the Polish entry to next year's Eurovision Song Contest. Sliwka w Czekoladzie, anyone? Me? I'm laying into homemade flavoured shots. So strong is Ognisko's horseradish vodka, gimme three shots of this liquid novocain and Brian can skip the injections and yank out my molars with his bare mitts, for all I'll care.
55 Prince's Gate SW7 2PN 7589 0101 http://www.ogniskorestaurant.co.uk 

I spy Guy (right)

Ivy Market Grill, Covent Garden

December 23, 2014, 5:45 am

≫ Next: Peony, Chinatown

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The trouble with reviewing London's latest bars, is that they roll of the production line faster than Ford Mustangs did in Detroit's heyday. This inevitably means I spend evenings in places I'd often rather not, speculating what drug the PR was on when penning a press release that bears no relation to reality. Flash-in-the-pan turds such as Senkai Lounge, W1; Blitz, now Barafina in Adelaide Street, and SofaKingCool which, now mercifully departed, nevertheless remains this blog's most visited review...read regularly by masochists in need of a vicarious thrill, I imagine...spring to mind. Post-launch, that I have three times revisited Ivy Market Grill in as many weeks, speaks volumes. Like the original Ivy, here's somewhere that had me from hello. The all-purpose breakfast-to-one-for-the-road retro-fied room is a pitch-perfect pastiche of the sort of vielle école bar-brasserie you'd be lucky to say "Allo, Allo" to on a stop-over in an obscure backwater - Bar-le-Duc, Bourg-en-Bresse or the intriguingly-named Nancy, its boys more gay than Paris itself, par exemple. Unlike France's zincs - too often the domain of Surly, Snappy, Sneery and other similarly disagreeable Sarkozy-esque dwarves - service and presentation here are as polished as the butch bar's elegantly set zinc counter, at whose teal leather stools, afternoon tea at £8.75 (includes pots and pots of finest Ceylon), is a bonny cream scone steal. At around the same cost, house cocktails such as My Fair Lady - Ivy gin, Belle de Brillet, lemon and orange blossom (pictured) - and tin cup-serve Henrietta Maria Treacle are top notch, while classics such as a No 3 gin martini are executed with élan. All-day eats are of the type, post-Euromillions jackpot, my personal Mrs Patmore will rustle up on command: shepherd's pie; crispy duck salad (£7.75); steak, egg and chips; creamed mushrooms on toast; lobster thermidor; tuna carpaccio et al. IMG is VG indeed. If, in 2015, I'm not perma-present within, it's because I'm enduring some shonky Shoxditch scenester saloon in the name of research, dreaming of a civilised supper and cocktails in Covent Garden.
1 Henrietta Street, WC2E 8PS 3301 0200 http://www.theivymarketgrill.com

Peony, Chinatown

December 24, 2014, 5:16 am

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As a smoker, I vowed I'd give up when Marlboro Lites hit a fiver per pack. They soon did and I quit; although that was less down to price, all to Allen Carr...as in fag-aversion therapy clinic. Any aversion to the TV fag of that ilk is easily addressed: zap Chatty Man with your remote! I do. Similarly, I've vowed to give up cocktails when the benchmark for a boulevardier hits £20. Based on prices at Peony, a brand new space at  dimly lit pseudo-1930s-Shanghai den of debauchery, Opium, my drinking days are nigh over. Optional 12.5% gratuity included, prices zap from £15+ to a ceiling-busting £20.25 for Dragon Bite (El Dorado 5 rum, Benedictine, Xilli liqueur, lime, papaya and coriander). Yes, I have been known to shell out as much at Artesian or other starry lounges now and then, but all cheap 'n' cheerful chinoiserie, Peony ain't exactly The Connaught. Furthermore, at haute hotels, exotic snackage is often included in the price and smiling doormen invariably greet you as a long-lost friend. Tonight, despite coming armed with a reservation, I'm left outside, shivering in a biting wet wind for a full ten minutes while an impassive, impassable greeter attempts, FBI security-stylee, to communicate my presence to a front-of-house that's presumably pre-occupied, tending to other guests (all two of them, it transpires, when I do make it upstairs). The new inscrutable sepia tone saloon (its view, the sort of alley behind whose rubbish bins a vengeful triad member would carve a Shanghai smile into your boat race) is the domain of Rasa Gaidelyte, an enthusiastic Lithuanian blonde whose concise East-meets-West list is a work in progress. Served in patterned teapots, punches include a Chivas 12 whisky and green tea hot toddy - good with dim sum, seafood or vegetable platters from £15. Rasa's signature rinses include Mexican in China (Herradura tequila, Xilli pepper and maraschino liqueurs, grapefruit juice and lime) and a lemongrass-smoked Sazerac presented with goji berries and, wrapped in an exotic leaf, a gold coin for good luck. At this rate, a great deal of good fortune - i.e six numbers on tomorrow's Lotto - is required if this cookie is continue to afford to drink at London's more expensive lounges.

15 -16 Gerrard Street W1D 6JE www.peonychinatown.com

Bar Termini, Soho

January 5, 2015, 10:11 am

≫ Next: Original Sin, Stoke Newington

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Crossrail makes me cross. So much of what I hold dear, sacrificed in the goal of getting to Hanwell or Hayes and Harlington in under half an hour. (Building a moat around London to keep out the Middlesex Massive might have been money well spent). Rampaging through the West End, this most unnecessary transport Jabberwocky is chewing up and spitting out the very bars and clubs that make (or rather, once 'made') Soho so special. Lost, the inimitably louche Black Gardenia whose door policy memorably specified "No jeans! No c***s!" Sayonara seminal gay sweatbox, Ghetto! So long, Punk! Adieu, The Astoria et al. And for what? Shiny shrines to Mammon as championed by London's myopic mayors. The newt-loving numpty and the Eton mess that ousted him have traded the capital's cultural capital for offensively bland malls where brandroids can shop for the same old shit available elsewhere. Sold to the highest bidder, Soho is being serially raped by spivs, grasping property barons who will presently be pimping more 'prime retail opportunities' as Denmark Street, aka Tin Pan Alley, the cradle of British pop music, is also razed in the name of 'progress'. Spiritually harking back to the same decade as that doomed, delightful thoroughfare's heyday, the 1950s, Bar Termini is a rare nugget amid the nauseating urban blight. Tony Conigliaro's understated new bar - his first since the similarly bijou 69 Colebrooke Row in Islington - is sheer joy for those nostalgic for the peroxide blonde, stiletto-heeled glamour of Soho circa The Krays, albeit with a classy, retro-modern edge Ronnie and Reggie would not recognise. Inspired by those chic buffet bars common to Italy's grand railway hubs ('termini'), this first class carriage, all slouchy high-backed banquette, looks the palle di cane - as I once translated 'the mutt's nuts' to a table of baffled Milanese business associates. At Tony's trad marble-topped counter, suave signori - handsome in pristine white tuxes - serve up a slice of La Dolce Vita from dawn until late. The menu is concise: (Illy) caffeine fixes and sugar rush pastries, Peroni, Prosecco, two wines, £1-a-pop panini, cheeses, tomato tartare and salumi. Any latter day Marcello and Anita will find elegantly presented drinks served with a Tony C trademark twist. His negronis include delicate rose petal, or perky pink peppercorn takes as well as a beefy Beefeater gin-based classic version. Aperol spritz (£8) is nuanced with rhubarb cordial and a soupçon of almond blossom informs a trad Bellini. Savour the experience while it lasts. For how long before Old Compton Street's soul is sold to the Devil incarnate: fast-buck property developer filth?
7 Old Compton Street W1D 5JE http://www.bar-termini.com

Original Sin, Stoke Newington

January 15, 2015, 8:58 am

≫ Next: Lima Floral, Covent Garden

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Happiness Forgets regularly appears high on those ubiquitous year-end Best Bars lists. Quite right too! No arsey doorwhores. No narcissistic nobs punting molecular fanny. No cringeworthy concept (PR imagines "pre-Revolutionary Romanov luxe in Fabergé jewel brights infused with the decadent spirit of Studio 54" while I imagine Boney M tribute band in traj tin-foil outfits murders Ra-Ra-Rasputin at a Hornchurch hen night. No Cristal-fuelled Kanye and Kim klones. No £25-plus anodyne Asian share boards as flogged for a quid -with free Peter Andre CD - at Iceland. No! Just delightful down-played decor and damn fine drinks. I too am all Happiness to be at owners Alastair Burgess and Andy Bird's Hoxton Square dive whenever I'm not feigning interest in launch night bourbon and butterscotch slush puppies at some Shepherd's Bush shithole (you know who you are!) or the likes. In the quiet downtime of the first week of 2015, I make it to Burgess's Christmas present to London nightlife; his second sexy saloon, a lo-fi linear cellar that has me from hello. Butch brick and wood panelling, convivial booths, perch-perfect bar stools and a brown baize pool table at which to unleash your inner Eddie Felsen (pictured) sett the scene for spot-on fixes that look to old school (vieille école?) tipples for inspiration. Served by enthusiastic, attitude-free, all-female bar staff, classic French red wine-based apéritif Byrrh (plus Kamm and Sons and aquavit) informs Penfold Sour, while Belle Époque Parisian favourite Suze (gentian root, its bittersweet base), white rye and Lillet blanc makes for a top-notch tart Diamond Manhattan. Original Sin could easily be the downfall of this man. My only beef? Bleary-eyed on a night bus, it's a long schlep back to my K + C crib from the cold, windswept steppes of Siberia... aka Stoke Newington. Time to dig out the fur and ring Foxtons!
129 Stoke Newington High Street N16 0PH http://www.originalsin.bar 

Lima Floral, Covent Garden

January 16, 2015, 8:14 am

≫ Next: Ladies and Gentlemen, Kentish Town

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My list of famous Peruvian exports is short. There's my childhood chum Paddington; my mate Deborah's ex-lodger, a snapper called Mario (who could now buy up all of Peru, never mind afford a London pad of his own) and operatic loungecore diva Yma Sumac (who some argue was born Amy Camus in Brooklyn and, so, doesn't qualify). Them, and pisco. Distilled from grapes, Peru's brandy-like national spirit has become increasingly popular in London's bars, as fickle trend-chasers trade mojitos and caipirinhas ("too TOWIE for words, hon") for pisco sours. The classic lime-laced recipe (£8.50) is present and correct in this new Peruvian restaurant's buzzy dark cellar bar, run - somewhat implausibly - by a jolly brave, jolly Estonian couple who had never ventured much beyond Tallinn before taking on the gig, they tell me. Other ideas tend towards the sweet and fruity: an orange and lemon-infused pisco, watermelon and apple Collins and Casi Peruano, a perfectly doable pisco slant on a negroni. The only drinks downer is when Mr Tallinn commends me his finest chilli pepper-infused pisco and strawberry martini (pictured). If my name was Chelseigh (20, nail technician from Charlton) and I was handed one to get me in the mood to splash out on a puce Rabbit, crotchless panties and nipple tassels at my first ever Ann Summers-at-home party, I'd probably rate this syrupy, cloying chilli horn-garnished sinner "lush." To my taste, it is more Lush as in high street purveyors of not-dope soap. Noticing I've left it left untouched, a dried-down, better, version presently appears. “Pisco" translates as “little bird”: bird-like appetites will make do with just one dish from a selection of muckle piqueos - Peru’s answer to tapas  Escabeche of paiche (an Amazon freshwater fish); zingy, fresh and flavoursome tuna and ginger ceviche in tiger’s milk, and anticucho - velvety, tender rare beef loin with chilli and corn puree (£10) - are hits. Roasted baby aubergine with cashew, cheese, coriander and cress might look pretty on the plate but, en la boca, suggests being a veggie may not be much fun in Lima, old bean. 

14 Garrick Street WC2E 9BJ 7240 5778 http://www.limafloral.com 

adapted from my review for www.squaremeal.co.uk

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Ladies and Gentlemen, Kentish Town

January 21, 2015, 6:18 am

≫ Next: The Cocktail Trading Co. Development Bar and Table, Soho

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In the grim, grey, not-so-gay days of the 1970s, any unfortunate bent gent caught hanging out in the gents risked being felt up...only, not in the way he'd hoped for. For Lily Law, loitering lads were an all-too-easy cop. Nowadays, 'cottaging' (ask your grandpa') has been rendered redundant by Gaydar, Grindr and, if you like it rough, Recon. As for those caught short, after the old public conveniences became an inconvenient drain on councils' resources and shut, McDonalds finally had a purpose. Squatting every high street in the land, the ubiquitous Yankee burger chain is a blessing to bladders about to burst (Purchase, neither necessary nor advised). Lately, however, London's long-abandoned privvies are being snapped up by shrewd bar owners. Where once randy buggers' cocks cruised tail, cocktails are now being served. Bermondsey Arts http://tinyurl.com/oq4akhd; The Convenience in Homerton http://tinyurl.com/o57bjtd; WC at Clapham Common: the latest reconfigured loos to add to a growing list are in Kentish Town where William Borrell, owner of Vestal Vodka, has done a decent job (enough with the puny puns!) with his own khazi conversion. A mix of original Edwardian gubbins, jumble store jollies and paperbacks by the yard (something to read on the throne?) set the scene for a short list that will be regularly refreshed. Spend a penny (800 pennies, to be precise) on china teacup serve El Dorado 12 hot buttered rum; Portobello Road gin sour, Rhubarb and Custard, served in a Bird’s tin; or a Bulleit-based Gentlemen’s Old-Fashioned that bungs butterscotch and Werther’s Originals into the mix. Launched in December 2014, a steady trickle through Borrell's bogs' doors suggests this will be no flash in the pan. I arrived late, so I can't report whether they do 2-4-1 happy hour cocktails, known in such establishments as a BOGOF deal, natch.
2 Highgate Road NW5 1JY @ladyandgentsbar 

The Cocktail Trading Co. Development Bar and Table, Soho

January 29, 2015, 6:13 am

≫ Next: Sky Pod, The City

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The name is a mouthful. So too, in a tastier way, this new dive's dandy drinks. Crammed to capacity, just days after opening - "That's because they've got a great PR" quips the bar's star media massager, Anne Kapranos - tonight, the basement's 50-strong crowd of self-evidently satisfied soaks does not include Ed Burstell, MD of Liberty across the street. Phew! The main turn in Channel 4's highly watchable fly-on-the-wall TV series/ extended advertisement for the creaky old pile may be an affable sort, but the spindly American Mister Ed (the Talking Clothes Horse) gives me the pure heebie-jeebies. A modern-day Childcatcher, camp and slightly creepy in black duds by Dior, he loomed large in a particularly disturbing nightmare I once had that also involved Gok Wan and Mary Portas, and saw me wake up, gasping, convinced I was being strangled by a Paisley-print silk scarf. (Make of this what you will, Dr. Freud!) Cocktail Trading Co, on the other hand, is a discerning drinker's wet dream. Run as an 'ethical co-operative' by a trio of joshing patter merchants - friendly faces you'll likely recognise from London Cocktail Club and Steam and Rye is likely to succeed where others such as its immediate predecessor - the conceited 'no-brands' concept that was "And Co" - failed. Why? Because the raffish, retro wood-panelled pit is "Ding Dong" as Leslie Phillips would put it and £8 is a steal for real-deal drinks such as my deftly dispatched boulevardier or the solid gold sazerac that follows it. Fresh ingredients and attention to detail are part of the package. And while I'm more likely to snog not-half-as-sharp-as-she-thinks, oboxious ogre in a Worzel Gummidge wig, Katie Hopkins, than lock lips with jokey ideas such as Tu-Whit-Tu-Whoo-Woo - vodka, lemon, peach, sage, cranberry and prosecco served, tiki-style, in a red owl mug coiffed with pink candy floss - if wacky is your bag, it's done here with wit, style and substance. No more so, than in the guise of a Jim Beam, yuzu, ginger, plum and matcha tea Shanghai sour (pictured). Sipped through straws disguised as chopsticks, served in a waxed noodle container, garnished with a mound of the sort of Chinese chow Nancy Lam would wham bam your way, it's doable as well as dippy. Dippy, Cocktail Trading Co's sussed owners are decidedly not but you'd be daft to miss a production that will hopefully outrun Cats, Lord Wibbly-Wobbly's steaming pile of caterwauling crap that is, unfathomably, still pulling them in by the charabanc-load at The Palladium next door.

22 Great Marlborough Street W1F 7HG 7427 6097  www.thecocktailtradingco.com/

Sky Pod, The City

February 18, 2015, 10:50 am

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Towering egotist Boris Johnson's architectural legacy will be a London skyline raped willy nilly by the filthy erections of willy-waving  'starchitects.' Could-be-anywhere skyscrapers thrown up by spivvy developers and financed by tin-pot despots from the Gulf to Guangzhou, these shameless shrines to Mammon are a depressingly familiar sight today. I don't dig Victorian pastiche. I'm no fan of mock-Georgian. I am not Prince Charles. Modern buildings per se are not my enemy: hello Hadid, Zaha; F off Farrell, Terry and take your tawdry towers with you! "But, hey! The little people will love any sub-Dubai crap outcrop as long as it comes with a cute nickname" reason the urban planners that have the ear of the mop-top Eton Mess in charge at City Hall. Today, I've scaled the 37-storey 'Walkie Talkie' (more of a 'molar implant' to my mind), a grim grey Goliath whose daft design meant the summer sun, reflected in and magnified by its concave curves, melted Mondeos parked outside. Nor is Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian's architecture critic, smitten: 'As a literal diagram of developers' greed, it provides painful proof that form follows not function but finance..poking its unwelcome bulk into the skyline from almost every possible vista." Like Kim Kardashian, only in concrete and glass, then? On the plus side, I suppose, the building's upper levels host a leafy new London belvedere; an indoor sky garden consisting of two vast banked swathes of sub-tropical foliage. Serving it, is an island cafe-bar run - like restaurants Darwin and Fenchurch on levels 36 and 37 above (both of which are blessed with more intimate bars, nota bene) - by caterers Rhubarb. In addition to those armed with bar or restaurant reservations, the aerial arboretum is open daily to the public; cue queues at the lobby level airport-style check-in. Order an £11.50 cocktail - Thyme For Tea, Chelsea Garden; or Autumn Breeze (vodka, pinot noir, falernum, beetroot and apple juices) - and the sort of snacks you'd expect of posh wedding canapé slingers such as Rhubarb as you watch the tourists coo over the "Oooh, aaah, Barb-a-ra!" wraparound views . Open until 2am, Sky Pod is undeniably cool ... as in, climate- controlled to the point where wooly blankets and hot water bottles are provided gratis. Cool in the other sense? Only if you're a fan Center Parcs and crass glass carbuncles.
20 Fenchurch Street EC3M 3BY http://skygarden.london/sky-pod-bar

The Italian Job, Chiswick

February 19, 2015, 3:05 am

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Order a machete in London's grittier faubourgs; they'll bring you a bad ass blade. But in bucolic, bourgeois Chiswick, chances are the locals will recognise Machete as the dreamy pint they sank last summer on that perfect day in Parma, whence this punchy 7.5% abv American-style IPA hails. One of the four co-owners of 'London's first Italian craft beer bar' - a dozen regularly rotated ales on tap and countless bottles from Europe's boot - is a certain Signor Campari who doubles, ironically, not as a maker of red bitters but of rather fine beers at Birrificio del Ducato, his microbrewery in Emilia-Romagna. The four raggazzi behind this interesting venture, launched with love on Valentine's Day 2015, have remodelled what used to be Pickwick's wine bar. If the new interior is Italian in style, it sure as hell wasn't put together by rococo leather bag/ designer Donatella Turtle. All bare brick and barrels, it looks like the sort of howf used for sheltering sheep in the Sienna hinterland's hills. Also worth noting, is New Morning -  Campari's bottle-fermented Belgian-style beer with its distinctive ginger, camomile, coriander and green peppercorn nose. If you're looking for beers to "blow the bloody doors off" as Charlie Croker puts it in the cult flick that inspired the bar's handle, this Italian may be just the job!
13 Devonshire Road W4 2EU http://www.theitalianjobpub.co.uk

The Doll's House, Islington

February 22, 2015, 5:08 am

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(scarier still than talking waxwork Sharon Osbourne)

London is being sucked dry by vampires; spivs who would bury their own mother under the foundations of their designer developments if it'd secure planning permission (invariably granted by craven councils). The latest victims of this greedy builder breed are Adam and Katy - the sweet young owners of The Doll's House. Unceremoniously turfed out of their HQ to make way for more of the ticky-tacky £1.5 million + boxes that will ultimately rid Hoxton of what little edge it still retains, the couple have wasted no time in securing a new billet in the champagne-swigging socialist republic of Islington. Its bare bones still recognisable, they've titivated what was the House of Wolf - a bar that was about as entertaining as Wolf Hall, the BBC's turgid Tudor yawn. Whether Henry VIII, played unconvincingly by local-ish lad Damien Lewis, will drop in for wenching, wine and winin' the royal rump to rare groove, soul and live jazz until cock crow remains to be seen. If he does, and brings along cast member Claire Foy (aka Anne Boleyn), they'll find generously poured classics that include espresso martini and a good whisky sour. Getting off your head on old fashioneds beats the old fashioned fate that awaits poor Claire/ Anne back on set where, I can exclusively reveal, she's about to be axed. A boyhood fling with Action Man and a brief flirtation with voodoo figurines and pins before I grasped the concept of karma (apolz to you - now obese, bald, bankrupt and still looking for Mr Right! LOL), I'm not the sort of big girl's blouse that's big into Fashion Barbie. Indeed, since unwisely watching The Twilight Zone in a cockroachy New York hovel, off my tits and on my tod one night, I've been deeply dubious about all dolls' intentions. See Talky Tina in action here http://tinyurl.com/ljmchcf and tremble as she tops Telly Savalas. Clearly, that doll is no Pussycat.  Thankfully, Tina the tormentor allows me safe passage on steep stairs from the Doll's House's attic bar (the cutest of three on offer). I waltz off into the night leaving her posse to party until 4am while Sindy and Tressy bitch about how Ken is way too kool for that Botoxed plastic American tramp he's dating.
181 Upper Street N1 1RQ www.thedollshouse.org

Sovereign Loss, Brixton

March 9, 2015, 5:32 am

≫ Next: Fontaine's, Stoke Newington

≪ Previous: The Doll's House, Islington

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After The Dance - torrid sessions at The Fridge, a full-on anything-goes nightclub - we'd limbo low under a metal roll-down shutter on Railton Road. Granted access - God knows why - by a couple of grim Yardie guardians to a secret scene that recreated the cover of Marvin Gaye's sexy seminal album, I Want You, we'd crub with the best of them to Gregory Issacs, Shabba Ranks and other reggae ragamuffins. Back in the day, Brixton was peppered with West Indian-run illegal drinking dens (known as ‘shebeens’ from the Irish term for moonshine whiskey). This was long before today's London's groove-jets fell for the more vanilla thrill of drinking in pastiche Prohibition-era speakeasies - pretty much the vibe at Sovereign Loss. Moody, penumbral and affectedly louche, welcome to an Edward Hopper-esque gin joint to be found behind a door marked ‘trade entrance’ round the back of The Prince of Wales pub. Journalist, Corpse Reviver, El Presidente and Metropole cocktail (a brandy-based Manhattan named after a notorious 1900s Times Square hotel frequented by scarlet women), co-owner Chris Dennis (ex-ZTH, Clerkenwell) and his enthusiastic young team are happy to mix reasonably priced martinis, old fashioneds and revisited classics until daybreak: a covetable 24-hour licence allows the Art Deco-inspired saloon to stay open until as late as 5am at weekends; ideal for nightcaps after a bar crawl on Brixton’s increasingly interesting cocktail scene. 

467 - 469 Brixton Road SW9 8HH sovereignloss.com  

(adapted from my review for www.squaremeal.co.uk )

Fontaine's, Stoke Newington

March 10, 2015, 9:16 am

≫ Next: The Vault at Milroy's, Soho

≪ Previous: Sovereign Loss, Brixton

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"You look like an old man cut-down!" My father's withering assessment of my attempt at a young Frank Sinatra hits Havana. To his Austin Reed-attuned eyes, dressing in some Yank's cast-off 1940s cream tux, midnight blue Oxford bags and jazzy rayon palm print shirt was anathema - no matter that, days before, L'Uomo Vogue had snapped me in said look for a 'Londra Trend' feature. Hard to imagine now, but wearing "smelly", "old", second-hand clothes, some from an Edinburgh junk shop run by Mrs Doubtfire (yes, she inspired Robin William's character), as I first did in my student days, was then considered downright weird. 'Vintage' is, of course, big business today, but where to show off when you're channelling Ava Gardner as Gilda, if you get it right or Father Ted's Mrs Doyle if you don't? Try Fontaine's, a new retro-styled bar whose unofficial PR is, tellingly, http://www.diaryofavintagegirl.com 's Fleur McGerr. All 1930s cream upholstery, Odeon foyer art deco with bronze Egyptian palms, here's a film set for a duet featuring Fred and Ginger. Appropriately period cocktails include Aviation, Clover Club and Singapore Sling. Hollywood Hills silver screen era, silver tray staples include oysters Kilpatrick, smoked salmon and caviar blinis and Bellinis. In a tiki bar downstairs, the vibe is more Marlene Dietrich sings Hot Voodoo - hers, a lurid look that will get you odd looks at your local All Bar One. Vamping up, vintage-style, for cocktail hour is to be encouraged in these super-dull Superdry days. Choosing an appropriate backdrop is key. This Stokey belter fits the bill.
176 Stoke Newington High Road N16 7UY https://www.facebook.com/fontaineslondon 

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The Vault at Milroy's, Soho

March 16, 2015, 7:51 am

≫ Next: Cahoots, Soho

≪ Previous: Fontaine's, Stoke Newington

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Like The Gay Hussar - a stagnant old Hungarian restaurant that seems stuck in the same year Soviet tanks crushed the fledgeling revolution in Budapest, 1956 - whisky merchants Milroy's, next door, is a Soho institution - albeit a less senior one, opened in 1964. With closure looming, the Hussar's campaign look to be over. Not so Milroy's. Now in the hands of Simo, its 20-something rapscallion new owner who previously ran the short-lived Coal Vaults on Wardour Street, Milroy's 2015 offers a reinvigorated vision of what went before. Sample some of the 250+ whiskies stocked at the stripped-back Georgian shop's ground floor bar's copper counter and then penetrate deeper. For what is brand new here, is The Vault. Follow resident mutt Chester through a door in a fake bookcase, downstairs to a converted stockroom, now a rough-around-the-edges liquor lair with a small bar, leather chesterfields and the Barrel Room (pictured below), a handsome piratical salon privé lined in warm wood. Folderol-free fixes include a Dutch whiskey old fashioned and Smoking Gun (pictured above), a lethal mix of corn whiskey, Oloroso and Earl Grey tincture in a wood chip-smoked martini glass. For uisge beatha avoiders, my top tips are a Mezcalito served over a blood orange ice cube, in a black sea salt-rimmed glass, and vodka, port, Campari berry and pomegranate sour, Tutti Frutti (£9.50). Cold cuts and cheese platters are available and a 60s Brit-beat, bubblegum, Northern and Tamla playlist could have been filched from my iPad. Raw, honest and with on-the-money mixes, Milroy's is a Soho whisky seller/ soul cellar to savour.    
3 Greek Street W1D 4NX 7734 2277 http://www.milroys.co.uk 

Cahoots, Soho

March 17, 2015, 7:50 am

≫ Next: Blue Boat, Hammersmith

≪ Previous: The Vault at Milroy's, Soho

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Duncan Stirling and Charlie Gilkes do love a theme bar. The pair owns Made In Chelsea magnets such as Bunga Bunga (bottom-pincher-plagued cheesy Neapolitan 1950s pizza parlour), Bart's (Val de Sloane Square après-ski chalet shindig) and Mr. Fogg's (Victorian voyager's Mayfair town 'hice' or tweedy 30s-throwback MP Jacob Rees-Mogg's gaff, I can never quite decide). Their latest wheeze replaces what was the no-less heavily staged DISCO (Cahoots' self-explanatory 70s-style predecessor, sadly, nowhere near as dangerously debauched as Studio 54, as this tearaway teen remembers it). So convincing is the mise-en-scène that is the venue's entrance - flagged up by a sign that says "To The Trains", accessed via a wooden escalator that leads to a ticket office manned by the first of various period-piece extras straight out of Foyle's War - foreign tourists are convinced Kingly Court Station is actually part of the London Underground network. If it were a station, it would be on the Party Line; for here's a morale-boosting knees-up in a full-blown recreation of a Tube station (complete with old Bakerloo line carriage) circa Biggin Hill and Bluebirds Over The White Cliffs Of Dover. Van-loads of vintage props set the scene and, when I drop in, some game birds have gaily entered into the spirit by dressing in 40s mufti, presumably in the hope of attracting a GI who will cover them with Hershey's kisses, shower them with cologne, Helena Rubenstein rouge and Nylons and whisk them away from bombed-out London to a lovely new life as a Housewife of New Jersey. My gimlet eyes, of course, see this barmy bunker for the charade it is. Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr. Stirling? In wartime Blighty, you'd be lucky to find Camp coffee - as in sickly sweet ersatz alternative, not espresso served by some queer bugger debarred from service lest he become the barrack-room bike. Here, you're on for cracking classic and contemporary cocktails billed as 'starlets and sirens' and 'wide-boys and good-time girls, all served - neat touch! - with free rations of ham and pickle cut-up sarnies in army issue tins. What's more, the two brooding Continental chaps charged with martini-making would certainly not be employed behind Cahoots' bar, rather charged and slung behind a POW camp's bars; "Wops" - "Italians" to you - being shamefully allied to those spiffingly attired but thoroughly beastly Nazis back in 1941. Any internment in this camp caper is no hardship, what with decent drinks and jitterbugging to Glenn Miller's In The Mood with hunky Hank from Hoboken NJ to keep you amused. Welcome to The Blitz... if not quite as the late lamented Steve Strange imagined it! 
13 Kingly Court W1B 5PW www.facebook.com/cahootslondon

Blue Boat, Hammersmith

March 25, 2015, 6:42 am

≫ Next: The Natural Philosopher, Hackney

≪ Previous: Cahoots, Soho

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I despise the profit-driven developers that are wrecking London's riverside with their gauche gulags. St. George, patron saint of postmodernist pony and trap architecture was the company responsible for throwing up, inter alia, the hideous high-rise hive (pictured below) whose grotesque bulk, looming like the gates to Hades on the southwest side of Vauxhall Bridge, still makes me gasp, appalled and incredulous. Too bad the bloody dragon didn't burn old George to a crisp. The holy sainted builder's latest designer dwellings/ aspirational bollocks  - at Fulham Reach - are, by comparison, relatively innocuous. At the brand new Fuller's pub and dining rooms that sits at Fulham Reach's cynical new-build heart, mollified by a bottle of house white (£19), by the misty moonlight of a spring evening by the Thames, pastiche Victorian warehouse - all luxe loft living upholstered chez Roche Bobois and Smegs stashed with Waitrose tiramisu and Taittinger - almost begins to look like an attractive lifestyle option. Its name inspired by the annual varsity waterborne grudge match that will presently flash by, in a blink, en route from Putney Bridge to its Mortlake conclusion. The Blue Boat is sure to prove popular then and, especially, come summer. For that's when its vast sun-trap belvedere terrace, far-removed from all traffic, will be chocca with Chukka Umunna and James Cracknell lookalikes who can well afford pads priced up to £2 million+. Indoors, Oxbridge circa Brideshead Revisited, all natty nautical styling, sets the not unappealing scene for an all-day menu of decent modern Brit-Med pub grub. Jerusalem artichoke soup and cod loin, chorizo and tomato stew will do nicely at £22 for both. All told, with local brewer Fuller's ales, Frontier, ESB and London Pride on tap, there's much to put a smile on my boat race here. But not a word to George!
Distillery Road, W6 9RU 3092 2090 www.theblueboat.co.uk 

The Natural Philosopher, Hackney

April 4, 2015, 7:27 am

≫ Next: The Dundee Arms, Bethnal Green

≪ Previous: Blue Boat, Hammersmith

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It would be easy to walk past The Natural Philosopher, mistaking its frontage as a shop window for another East End bric-a-brac emporium peddling retro tat for London Fields  poseurs' postmodernist pads. Downstairs, beyond a reception area's rococo display and avian taxidermy - Corrie Steve's Street Cars office as imagined by Tim Burton - lies Dalston members club Manero's new liquor lounge. First though, there's a detour: I'm invited to inspect an anteroom that houses what must be The East End's smallest "museum." Piled on shelves, ten-feet high, is owner/ curator James Manero's collection of Apple computers, myriad Macs dating back to the earliest commercially available examples. Techies will be fascinated. Anyone under the age of 30 will ponder how we did our jobs pre-Jobs. (Search 'IBM Selectric''carbon paper''jammed keys' and 'abacus'). Me? I'm instantly stressed by the prospect of the Performas and Power Macs that, for all their shiny, sophisticated state-of-the-art promise, would end in tearful tantrums as two weeks worth of work - my backing up to floppy notoriously sloppy - were lost as 'bombs' that were not "da bomb" and the dreaded Sad Mac Face (pictured) indicated my much admired hardware was now about as useful as a five year-old Big Mac®. Talk about expensive landfill! Downstairs, the laid-back Natural Philosopher's living room-sized cocktail lounge is served by a deep, sunken bar to one end, its tenders' heads barely visible above the surround that separates it from guests. Step away from the ledge, Squiffy McGee! Falling face down into a mixologists' mosh pit is the pits. Accidents should be rare: the house policy is table-service only. A limited launch night menu's quartet of cocktails (normally £9) throws up a couple of hits: summery gin sour, Lord Kelvin and Zabarella, a cardamom-infused Ocho tequila and pomegranate margarita. Named after the ancient Greek philosopher, the house signature is the Parmenides. Well-executed and attractively presented it may be, but I'm not convinced by its brandy, yellow Chartreuse, absinthe bitters and white wine recipe. There again, schooled in philosophy in Athens in the first century AD, my tutor was another ancient Greek cogitator: Agrippa The Skeptic.
489 Hackney Road E2

The Dundee Arms, Bethnal Green

April 10, 2015, 2:28 am

≫ Next: Demon And Wise/ The Arbitrager, The City

≪ Previous: The Natural Philosopher, Hackney

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I'd often passed by The Dundee Arms without ever setting foot inside. Why would I? I don't fantasise about chavs as championed by porno peddlers, Triga; nor am I a pitbull fancier. That's as in your average EDL voter's canine chum, by the way; the Florida rapper is pretty Bon Bon in my book. Any trackie bottoms and shell suit tops spotted at The Dundee today are likely to be worn by the fiercely fashionable; 80s Brookside Scally is a hawt Hackney look reckons a stylist friend. Saved from the clutches of greedy property developers (praise be!), this Victorian boozer has got its mojo back, rescued by the peeps behind The Empress at Victoria Park and the Crooked Billet in Clapton. Original wooden bar counter, glorious glazed tiles and remnants of old wallpapers retained, lit by Eames era ceiling lights, moody and macho in cerulean blue and Bovril tones, the deconstructed, downplayed Dundee is a Cockney looker. Craft beers on tap represent the new East End. Expect the likes of Truman's Zephyr and Redchurch Shoreditch Blonde plus tasty stuff from Redwell of Norwich and Dulwich micro', Clouded Minds. Wines come in four colours: red, white or rosé at £16 and 'orange' (upmarket white rioja, more 'straw' in colour, at £28). Behind his counter, a Tales of the Riverbank-ish mustachioed magnificent - hot of the boat from Brooklyn by the sound of him -  talks me through the food. Dundee's most famous son is hirsute hipster Desperate Dan. The cow pie-scoffing cartoon hero might not go a bundle on the sole hot option, but raclette, spring onion and truffle oil toastie is fine and Dandy by me.
339 Cambridge Heath Road E2 9LH  https://www.facebook.com/e2dundeearms