Nineteen Below Review

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Best for: World record breaking achievements in the centre of London.

Great: selection of cocktails; level of service; Italian meat & cheese platters; and Dim Sum.

At the present time, London is staring down the barrel of a fully loaded Olympic gun, mere days from firing a bullet of multi-cultural chaos and sporting pandemonium right into the face of our city. High achievements will be sought, tough challenges will be scaled, merchandise will be bought, new world records will be nailed. The entire world will go record breaking crazy and the phrase ‘at the London 2012 Olympics’ will start to flood Wikipedia.

The City of London’s Blackfriars was not part of the Games’ redevelopment. Bulldozers and cranes did not clear the way for Westfield malls and Olympic stadia. And yet, the Crowne Plaza Hotel bar, NineteenBelow, provided a number of world records, both good and bad, during our visit, some weeks prior to those (surely) amazing Olympic Games.

World’s Worst Bar Name, for a start. NineteenBelow, as in two words conjoined, with a capital letter half way along. Please! Really? Are we still doing this? I thought we’d moved on from this trend. Besides, NineteenBelow sounds like it’s freezing down there and deserving of a very thick polar jacket (see also ICEBAR, which, incidentally, uses NOTHING BUT CAPITALS IN ITS NAME as well as conjoinedwordstomakeitsoundcoolifnoticecold). It’s likely that the name is something simple like 19 steps below ground level to the bar, in which case, what’s wrong with ‘Just Beneath’?

NineteenBelow is also the World’s Unnecessarily Longest Bar. It is a whopper! Were this a bar in the style of Coyote Ugly, Tyra Banks, star of Coyote Ugly, and every single one of the contestants from her America’s Next Top Model TV show, past and present, could strut their stuff atop of its length. But this is not Coyote Ugly. This is Tuesday, in Blackfriars.

NineteenBelow is the World’s Most Arrestingly Subdued Bar, or, to give it its full title, the World’s Best Chill Out Cocktail Bar For A Tuesday Night When It’s Raining Proverbial Felines And Canines. The musical journey we took began on a chilled beach in Ibiza, before it donned a pair of Brazilian havaianas, picked up a coconut, and headed for the African Mediterranean before transitioning into mainstream Euro dance.

Whilst my ears relaxed, my mouth was entertained by the World’s Best Overpriced Champagne Cocktail (£13.50 = boom! Have some of that!) and the World’s Most Delightful Dim Sum. This was quickly followed by the World’s Most Fantastically Pungent Cheese On A Bar Platter (juniper berry pecorino = boom! Have some of THAT too!) and the World’s Most Balanced Signature Mojito.

This latter record was achieved only after the World’s Slowest Cocktail Decision was made, having spent several minutes eyeballing the many, many, too many options on a cocktail menu that provided good reading for whisky fans, and which was presented on old school wipe-clean pages.

This unfashionable format clearly paid homage to the World’s Most Dated Decor, which travelled through time using a David Lynch sense of red, identical black glass tables in a military precision row, carpet so awful it could shock Laurence Llewelyn Bowen to death, and, on the walls, Athena style photos of Big Ben, St Paul’s, The Gherkin, and Tower Bridge so that foreign guests visiting from the 1990s who forget which city they’re in will have a wall of images to remind them.

I suppose, what may seem prosaic and passé to me, could be the ingredients for London’s best cocktail bar to someone who resides in a less expectant city than London (ie. anyone from Basingstoke) and, with this in mind, NineteenBelow is also the World’s Most Awesome Basement Bar (Only Potentially). I don’t want to seem unnecessarily churlish, but the space could be used for the better. I’d like to see more of the string drapes, providing a continuous S pattern along the room, so that the snooker hall expanse gives way to rooms of semi-exclusivity.

And please, do something with the World’s Most Pathetic Outside “Terrace”; a slither of real estate barely big enough for two smokers to stand abreast, made to look even more ordinary with some foliage and a few standing tables.

We did receive the World’s Most Cordial Greeting Upon Entering A Hotel Bar though, so all credit to the knowledgeable, impeccably dressed staff. They remained attentive from start to finish, offering nuts whilst drinks were being made, and created drinks that evoked all the colours of the rainbow. The Highland Sling (a dessert of a cocktail), the North Pole martini (a zesty sharpener of a cocktail), and the Air Mail Champagne with rum (a high flyer of a cocktail) were their greatest rewards.

For every Oscars there’s the Razzies; for every yellow jersey in the Tour De France, there’s the Lanterne Rouge; and NineteenBelow has certainly achieved some of the best, and worst, records on the London bar scene. Being that the bar and my house are no more than 200m from a train station at either end, however, means NineteenBelow wins the World’s Quickest Time For Us To Get Home once we’ve stepped back out into those cats and dogs. Olympic!
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Christian Rose-Day 11 Jul 2012

Customer Reviews for Nineteen Below

Average (based on 1 votes): 1 Atmosphere: Value: Quality:

The following customer reviews are not endorsed by Fluid London and are simply those of users who wish to publish their independent experiences of Nineteen Below.

“Very good cocktails, great table service, dated decor, lacking in atmosphere.”
Atmosphere: Value: Quality:
The Restaurant Hunter, London (10 months 15 days ago)

Additional Information

• Cuisine Type: Bar
• Dress Code: Not Specified
• Group: (Independent/Freehouse)