Grubser's Cocktail Bar & Lounge (Bar)

Best for: great tasting made-to-order cocktails.

Great: place to go if you want City drinking without the heaving masses.

Madame is in the house. Well, Madame is in the house of theatrics. I am currently playing ‘Madame’ in Jean Genet’s play ‘The Maids’ and, as ever, these things tend to spill beyond the stage for the duration of the run (and a bit longer, if I’m honest). You see, Monsieur is in prison. Unbeknownst to me, my ‘maids’ penned some false letters and my Monsieur was arrested! They turned against me and now I need an escape. Oh, I must get out, get away. I need solace, I need contemplation, I need cocktails.

But where does a single girl go in The City? Does she join the marauding crowds of men in their favourite haunts on the main stretch or does she move a minute or two further on to somewhere a little more gentile? Gentile tonight, I think; main stretch next week, if Monsieur is still incarcerated (no girl wants a bloke in prison). So we, I, she venture forth past the main bars around Monument tube to Grubser’s Lounge, just at the end of Fish Street Hill.

I leave Madame at the door and she rushes upstairs, dark glasses firmly on face, to spend the night ensconced, incognito and away from public gossip while I head straight for the bar and the squashy bar seats. I - the real I - have no bloke in prison. I’m fine, thanks very much. So is the barman; a sweet man and a genius in the cocktail making stakes.

Mates arrive. One has a Cosmopolitan. It could be a reincarnation of Sex in the City as we’ve noted many a time before. Without the sex, though. No blokes, see. Cocktails in the City instead.

We discuss blokes, Italy, romanticism v straight in there, honesty and what three years and no sign of the L word means. And yes, we do know what it means. I have a Green Apple Martini, nice and dry with an apple bite and two French 75’s; gin, lemon, sugar and Champagne. I hoist a couple upstairs to Madame. She is French after all, and has a sophisticated palate (so she says), though I swear the way she keeps frantically peering through the railings to see who’s there definitely verges on the ridiculous. That and her mad gesticulations to me for another drink. Friends have Kir Royals, a Strawberry Cheesecake (yes, pudding in a glass) and that SITC Cosmopolitan.

Alcohol needs food and as Grubser’s sadly doesn’t offer any, we have to leave. I go upstairs and pull the now alcoholically subdued Madame off the sofa. She doesn’t shut up though. Apparently she likes the decor, the vintage look, very reminiscent of her 1950’s Paris, she says. The pictures on the walls are crooked though. How very lax! There’s a woman who has maids to do everything. Apparently her sofa is more comfortable than the seating downstairs. We receive a lecture on how important it is to sit on furniture before buying it. The woman doesn’t shut up.

Safely shoving her in a taxi, friends and I head off to Liverpool Street for food and more wine. Madame approved of Grubser’s Lounge. Though, overall, I know she was ready to go home. She does like a bit of drama despite protestations and we thought it was great for girly meetings of a more contemporary kind.

Would I go to Grubsers again? Yes I would. So would my friends. And I’m sure Madame would too if she needs a little respite but then again, if Monsieur finds himself locked up full-time, I’ve no doubt she’ll use the place for meetings of a more salacious kind. My thoughts; good for cocktails, for away-from-the-main-stretch drinking, and for those essential girly chats (with a few nice looking men thrown in for good measure).

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