Barts (Bar)

Top 10 things you need to know about Barts:

1) Barts may just be the most West London incarnation of a speakeasy you’re likely to visit. On a very grand street, in a very grand residential building, it’s hidden beneath homes for rich people and companies that seem to charter yachts, and other mysterious business not familiar to someone growing up outside an SW postcode.

2) The extremely brusque, uniformed doorman will point vaguely down a corridor. Navigating the marble floored maze isn’t easy. You might have to work out if that two-person wooden lift leads you to Barts, or, just keep trying and you’ll hit on a discreetly signposted door into another universe.

3) Bedecked with gangster-inspired comic strips (think 1950’s Chicago), this micro bar is meant to make you feel like Al Capone’s floozy: ready to get tipsy on bathtub gin.

4) The calibre of the booze is, however, slightly more upmarket with an extensive cocktail menu weighing heavily towards the bartenders’ concoctions, laid out in “chapters” by flavour profile.

5) If you’re a fan of the purity of a cocktail with few ingredients and an austere presentation, then Bart’s is not for you. If, however, you want to dive into a (metaphoric) sea of alcoholic exploration and extreme receptacle choices - glass, cup or hollowed out vegetable - you’re in luck.

6) Mozart’s Dark Symphony is an unlikely marrying of pisco, chocolate bitters, strawberry purée, fresh blackberry, and cherry brandy all delivered in a brass goblet adorned with fruits and shaved chocolate on a banana leaf platform.

7) It’s a great cocktail. Complex and moreish and, like most of what’s available, different to what you may have tasted in the past.

8) As for bar snacks, the calamari is underwhelming, which is not surprising considering it’s made in a kitchen roughly the size of an Ikea wardrobe.

9) Barts tries very hard to be a quirky cocktail bar and largely wins. You’ll have to be a fan of an experience bar to enjoy it. The clientele are strictly Chelsea, neatly ironed jeans and awe-inspiring blow dries all round.

10) It’s the kind of secret cocktail bar that, when the hostess pulls back the little sliding peephole to check if you can come in, will impress a first date - just make sure you’ve reserved and have a keen sense of direction. ...read more