Tag Archives: connaught hotel

The Best of London – Olympic Edition

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The Olympians are in London!  I see them walking the streets ready to chase their dreams. Good luck to them all!  As the motto says, citius, altius, fortius; faster, higher, stronger!  Thrill us. We will share your joys, shed your tears, but most of all we will prepare to be amazed.

Now for the rest of you who are here to witness the spectacle, a few words of advice. You are not athletes. You really should not wear sporting attire, especially if the furthest you’ve run recently is to the refrigerator door.   Sneakers should not be seen outside the gymnasium. It is not acceptable to wear baseball caps indoors.

This is an exciting city with some wonderful bars and restaurants.  Please frequent them.  I know it is exciting for you to be here. Please contain yourself.  We don’t really need to hear your conversation. Yes we know London is expensive and it rains a lot. We really don’t need you to tell us that either.  I know you love your kids. I love mine too. I leave them at home when I go out.  All decent hotels in London have babysitting services.  They employ very beautiful Eastern European girls who speak no English, so your kids won’t bother them.

The Tower Bridge proudly displays the Olympic rings

When the sun is shining in London, as it is now, there is no finer city in the world.  Despite their stiff upper lips, the natives are friendly.  Be warned however, that they will drink you under the table.  Have a helluva time! Here are my current favourite bars and restaurants:

The best martini in London is to be had at Dukes Hotel. This is a tiny hotel and the bar is a small traditional affair. All the tables are marked reserved.  Allesandro Palazzi, the bartender, will size you up.  If you are a serious drinker there is already a table reserved for you. If you order something silly like white wine they’ll banish you to a lesser bar. Ian Fleming sat here and wrote Casino Royale.  Legend has it that the phrase “shaken not stirred” was invented here.  Don’t even think about taking your kids.

Another favourite martini haunt is the Connaught Bar at the Connaught hotel.  It is only open in the evening.  The Dukes Hotel is for serious drinkers.  The Connaught is for serious drinkers to see and be seen. It is glamourous.  They have an excellent range of home made bitters with which they will delicately flavour your martini.  I like the lavender bitters in a Plymouth Gin martini. If you want to taste a £40 ($60) martini ask for their super premium vodkas.

Some of you may make it to London with someone you actually like versus someone you happen to get married to after you got drunk together during senior week. Take the person you like on a cocktail date to the Beaufort Bar at the Savoy Hotel.  It’s dark and sexy, all black with gold leaf accents.  The cabaret stage features live music from a venue where the likes of George Gershwin broadcast over the then newly launched British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).  There are 27 champagnes available by the glass.  The bar counter is by Rene Lalique.  The cocktails are serious.

The magnificent Beaufort Bar at the Savoy

If you want to explore a proper drinking den without venturing too far outside central London I recommend the Experimental Cocktail Club (ECC) in Chinatown.  The entrance is unremarkable except for the bouncer guarding it.  Upstairs are two floors of shabby chic, a combination of fin-de-siecle opulence and antique store finds.  The drinks are reasonably priced at £10 (US $16) although you can push the boat out and order a £150 (US $230) martini made with 1950′s Gordon’s Gin. I’m not sure gin actually improves with age – more likely its a marketing gimmick to take advantage of finding a case of unopened gin in granny’s attic.  The crowd is young, hip and beautiful.  Whilst you are in London do try the most exciting new spirits houses – Sipsmith and Sacred Spirits are both brewed in London and both make an excellent London Dry Gin.  Sipsmith also makes a very good vodka. Chase’s makes my favourite potato vodka. All of the bars mentioned in this article stock them.

London’s food scene is cosmopolitan and exciting.  Unfortunately most good restaurants get booked early.  Go in the early part of the week or book lunch which tends to be less crowded (and frequently better value).

If you are going out to eat in London you must taste the best of British cusine:

  • Fergus Henderson at St John Hotel near Leicester Square (plus his original Michelin starred St John Bar and Restaurant at the Smithfield’s).  Don’t take your muslim friends here.  Fergus celebrates eating the pig, every part of the pig, in what he calls “nose to tail eating”.  He serves up inner organs in big exhilarating dishes that combine high sophistication with peasant roughness.
  • Jason Atherton at Pollen Street Social in Mayfair.  Atherton won a Michelin star at Maze and it won’t be long before his solo venture receives the same accolade.  This is sophisticated but fun food, served in a bright space with great cocktails.  Moreover there is a bar where you can eat the same food if the restaurant can’t find you a table.
  • Mark Hix at Hix in Soho.  I also like his new restaurant Tramshed in Shoreditch.  There is a daily changing menu of seasonal British food.  The emphasis is on beef and shellfish, particularly oysters.  The art is by Damien Hirst and a revolving panoply of British talent.  The bar downstairs is exceptional (see my review in Bombay Rolls, Persian Lovers and a Bit of Hanky Panky)

Cigarette Girls in their prime at Quaglino’s

If you’ve forgotten to book early, look for a large restaurant with a bit more space.  My favourite last minute haunts are Quaglino’s in Mayfair and Le Pont de la Tour in Shad Thames (by the Tower Bridge). These are both establishment restaurants that have stood the test of time.  John le Carre’s spies met their handlers at Quaglino’s.  My friends in the intelligence community suggest it still is favoured by James Bond types.  The cigarette girls who sashay amongst the tables no longer offer cigarettes, but they still sashay.  Quaglino’s offers a classic brasserie menu.  Le Pont de la Tour offers a French menu, a waterfront setting and fabulous views of the Thames and Tower Bridge.  There are no cigarette girls at Le Pont de la Tour but the service is impeccable with an old world courtesy rarely seen in busy restaurants.

Before Margaret Thatcher kicked socialism into the long grass and put the Great back in Britain, the food here was atrocious.  It was said that the only edible food you could find in the UK was Indian.  London still has some of the best Indian food in the world.  Amaya in Knightsbridge serves some of the most creative Indian food in the world.  It is better than anything I’ve tasted in India, plus the waiters smell nicer.  Amaya was one of the first Indian restaurants in the world to be awarded a Michelin star.

If all else fails drop me a comment on this site and I’ll suggest some alternatives.  I’m keeping the home bar going for all visiting friends. No baseball caps please.

Further Reading

This fabulous tube map of some of London’s best cocktail bars was put together by the Gin Monkey.  Click for a larger image.  The list of bars mentioned is also available on Foursquare; handy if you want to meet people once you’ve had a few drinks and feel irresistibly attractive to the opposite sex.  You can find a very reliable list of London’s top 40 cocktail bars at Class Magazine, produced by the Difford’s Guide

Tube Map of Cocktail Bars – copyright The Gin Monkey (ginmonkey.co.uk)

Surf ‘n Turf, Damien Hirst and Winston Churchill’s mother

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Successful artists tend to be those we associate with a unique style or trend. Rich artists are those who distill their style to a few key elements and exploit it ruthlessly.   An ongoing exhibition of Damien Hirst at the Gagosian’s eleven galleries around the world underscores my point.  Entitled “25 Years of Spot Paintings” it celebrates the fact that Hirst has made millions selling paintings of coloured circles on white backgrounds. The emperor’s new clothes came to mind as I wandered through the Gagosian in Mayfair and tried to understand why anyone would spend tens of thousands to buy a painting of a spot.  There are even paintings of half a spot.  To be fair to Hirst he has a second trick.  He is really good at sawing animals in half and dipping them in formaldehyde. I imagine a factory somewhere in Shenzhen full of skilled  8 year olds churning out spot paintings and slicing animals in half…

One spot, two spot, half spot, full spot

Around the corner from the Gagosian in Mayfair is another factory with a couple of smart tricks up its sleeve. The Burger & Lobster restaurant and cocktail bar does what its name implies.  It serves burgers and lobster together with a fine selection of cocktails. There is no printed food menu. For your £20 (US $30) you have a choice of a burger or a lobster (flown in from Nova Scotia). Both dishes come with double cooked french fries and salad.  The food is good, but £20 is a lot for a burger. By comparison Daniel Boulud’s brasserie at the Mandarin Oriental which serves the best burgers in London according to my American friends, charges “only” £13.  Unlike in America however, whole lobster is considered a rare luxury in London and £20 is a fair price for a large crustacean with fries. The punters love the Burger and Lobster; it has been packed since it opened a few months ago.

I lunched there recently with friends including the Springbok Sloane. She belongs to a species who believe that leaving the bubble around Sloane Square is physically dangerous.  They occasionally drive to Mayfair in a Range Rover to eat at the Wolseley.  They are only tempted to leave the bubble by a hot new restaurant or a gallery opening.  The B&L buzz had reached Sloane Square and the Springbok Sloane was bang on trend.

The Burger and Lobster is also on trend with the annoying habit of not taking reservations. I don’t get the point of queuing for your food, but this is England where people like queues.  You must either get there early and shiver in the cold outside or jostle at the bar while covetously eyeing a table of diners lingering over their coffee.

The bar at the Burger and Lobster. The decor is simple but well executed

The atmosphere at the Burger & Lobster is casual and fun.  The decor is straightforward – stripped wood and exposed brick walls, stools and banquettes covered in red leather, the occasional marginally risqué piece of art.  The wait staff is uniformly cheerful.  Giles Looker of the Soul Shakers bar consultancy (Whisky Mist, Trailer Happiness, Virgin Airlines) has devised a cocktail list divided into B cocktails and L cocktails to go with your food.  There is a sensibly priced wine list but why drink grape when you can have cocktails matched to your food? All cocktails are priced at £9 (around US $12).  The B cocktails feature a whisky or bourbon base to go with your beef. The Bull and Bear for example had a base of Woodford Reserve bourbon with blackberries, raspberries and mure (a blackberry liquor) topped with Zinfandel.  The L cocktails are lighter with primarily a gin or vodka base.  I had a B&L gin fizz which on a base of Beefeater gin had Cointreau, lemon, egg cream (for body), rhubarb bitters and soda.  It was the perfect accompaniment to lobster – creamy but not sweet with a nice hint of bitters coming through on the palate. On paper, a lot of modern cocktails appear to have too many fussy ingredients.  Skillfully blended, as they are at the B&L they are light, complex and tasty.  I would have happily stayed to work my way through more of the cocktail list, but the throng at the bar eyeing up your table discourages tarrying.  They turn their tables quickly here.  At heart the Burger & Lobster is a premium fast food restaurant.

In need of a post prandial tipple we turned the corner into the casual elegance and warmth of the Connaught Hotel.  The hotel has two bars. I usually go to the Connaught Bar, covered in a previous blog under the Finest Hotel Bars in London. However it doesn’t open till 4pm, so we went to the Coburg Bar instead.  This is a traditional hotel bar, which stays open all day and serves light meals and drinks. At the Connaught they do this kind of bar with style and elegance.  The cocktail menu at the Coburg Bar has a chronological bent to it with eight pages of drinks ordered by their date of origin.  The list starts with a pre-1800 drink; the sour family of cocktails. You choose a spirit and they’ll add sugar, lemon juice and egg white to make your sour.  Take a look at their bacchonology menu if you have a moment to spare – it’s a fun read!

I learned that the Pimm’s Cup No 1 was the first British Cocktail, invented by James Pimm for his London oyster bar, circa 1840.  Flips, cobblers, fizz’s and daiquiris originated from the 19th century.  Margaritas, martinis, piña coladas and Bloody Mary’s hailed from the 20th century.  I chose a Manhattan figuring the rye whisky and bitters  (with a dash of vermouth) would cut through the richness of my meal.  The Manhattan was invented in the 1870s at the Manhattan Club in New York  for a banquet thrown by Jennie Churchill (mother of Winston).  I enjoyed the history lesson and I enjoyed the Coburg.  It is not a destination bar but is a warm and convivial place to relax with friends. It is not cheap, but having apparently “saved” money eating cheap lobster, we minded less…