The Distillery (Bar, Hotel)

Top 10 things you need to know about The Distillery bar:

1) You’ve watched too many Made in Chelsea episodes to feel the need for a Mayfair cocktail bar, but you deserve to live how the other half live, to separate yourself from the riff-raff occasionally. Luckily, the hoi polloi haven’t heard of The Distillery bar yet.

2) Here, everyone - slick-back hair, perfect make-up, mostly work colleagues - has a coat draped across a high stool or a giant leather sofa, implying they arrived from outside and didn’t come from within the hotel. Nobody, for example, is wearing pyjamas.

3) Even though this expansive room is filled with soft luxurious furnishings, some still choose to sit at the bar and engage with the staff. Rightly so!

4) High quality products and lavish surroundings require Mayfair-sized groans from your purse or wallet. The prices are warranted, though. Each minute detail was probably the product of a lengthy meeting at some point.

5) Sterile hotel bars that revolve around anachronistic formulis are commonplace, but The Distillery is clearly retro-contemporary in its design, using reclaimed wood, metal, paraphernalia, decanter light fittings, and excavated pennies. You’ll want your home decorated this way.

6) Regrettably, the same amount attention wasn’t paid to the music. The uncomfortably loud, Heart FM playlist - James Bay, Taylor Swift - would be improved if swapped with the soothing, jazzy tunes found in the toilets.

7) The land upon which this bar stands was, in the 1800s, an essence factory and the signature cocktails are accordingly aromatic and fragrant. The cocktail menu is baffling, so talk to Ricardo behind the bar. He’ll provide enlightenment concerning every infusion and backstory, and then simply as if you prefer sweet, sour or bitter. Highlights from this “liquid cuisine” include the Distillery Fragrance using gin, rose liqueur reduction and lavender water, or the beefy, masculine Don’t Be Jealous Florence, a smarter way to drink a negroni.

8) In addition to the mascara-thinning 70-gin collection, English wines and craft ales (albeit £4 for a HALF pint) are stocked. Thankfully, not a whiff of Carling or Fosters.

9) A tidy selection of posh sharing dishes - Brixham squid, or mini chorizo dulce with garlic mayonnaise - is comforting, but, for a proper feed, head next door to OXBO Bankside for steak nirvana.

10) The Death Star extension at the Tate Modern is 100m away, and it’s only five minutes to Shakespeare’s Globe, so culture is never far from here....read more