Opium Cocktail & Dim Sum Parlour (Bar, Restaurant)

Best for: exquisite dim sum; Oriental cocktails; a night to remember.

Great: place for dates; interior design; at raising excitement.

In day-to-day life, I’m excitable. There only has to be a whisper of a new type of super soft fabric softener and I’m quivering.

But, despite its many restaurants and bars, when it comes to eating in London, I am rarely excited, often finishing an evening feeling deflated. Perhaps my job has spoiled my enthusiasm.

That is until I heard about Opium, a cocktail and dim sum parlour in the heart of central London’s Chinatown.

A place that draws inspiration from the opium dens of the 19th century? Exciting! Whilst I don’t want to suck on a pipe and get high, it is a never-lived nostalgia that has me forgetting about my fabric softener, excited instead about a place that before even passing through its door has encouraged me to daydream, unlike the modernist and sterile restaurants London seems to spit out at an unfathomable rate these days.

Opium pulls me from Chinatown’s colourful streets via a jade door and immediately that all too foreign feeling hits: excitement. Opium is designed to assault all the senses. In the dark of the stairwell, candles or incense must be burning as the first thing I notice is the smell, and then the warmth. It’s surprising how the instant temperature increase has me (here it is again) excited; and it feels almost humid, like the Orient.

Up to the third floor, I pass through the Train Carriage. Through dim lighting I can make out a mix of couples and small groups of friends invading the intimate nooks and crannies, lounging in floral chairs both grannies and East End designers would appreciate. Needing a reservation to get in, and using a discreet entrance, this is the ‘in the know’ crowd. Everyone is cool but not in a scenester way; these are interesting people having interesting conversations about art and literature and politics (I assume). A modern parallel to the alchemists reclining in the Chinese dens of past, discussing mythology, spirituality and religion.

Past the Train Carriage I perch upon a high stool at a large table known as the Bartender’s Academy which is where Opium really shines. I’m very much still excited. This is where I find cocktail expert Dre Masso who, along with bar entrepreneur Eric Yu, is the mastermind behind this parlour.

Unlike the Train Carriage with its alcoves, this space is lofty with its exposed beams, and intimate conversations are pushed aside in favour of conversations with whomever will care to listen. Here, the stranger next to you will become your confidant within 10 minutes.

Watching the contortions of Dre’s bartenders as they mix, shake and stir with what I think is called ‘pizazz’, I order my first cocktail: Opium Cocktail No.1, a drink which has more theatre than the entire West End. This cocktail is served in a traditional tea gourd, and Dre adds a ginseng capsule to the absinthe and rum base, activating a mist of dry ice. An ‘oooh’ escapes my lips. It’s short and that’s probably a good thing; the effect of its potency is probably what has those in the Train Carriage reminding me of opium den dwellers.

Back to the second floor to fill my absinthe-lined stomach and into the Chinese Apothecary where the shelves behind the bar are filled with identical looking bottles, the contents identified only by Chinese symbols. Another faultlessly designed room; my excitement hasn’t let up yet.

Deciding on what to eat isn’t hard, the dim sum menu is concise and I want it all. Not quite the whole menu but a more than ample cross section of delights including sesame and poppy lobster-prawn toast, crab and samphire dumplings, and scallop, coriander and pea dumplings. If you think you love dim sum, you have no idea. Opium will make you a dim sum snob. Through the use of delicate and fresh flavours and a unique twist on fillings, Opium has managed to make dim sum sophisticated. It is to dim sum what Hawksmoor is to steak.

Although my excitement hasn’t died, time has, and as much as I want to reside, permanently, at Opium, I still have to leave. Opium is a new idea born from an old age but never has it seemed so relevant at a time when most of what London regurgitates is soulless and uninspiring. Opium is what I would call a destination: you don’t go for one thing, you go for the whole experience, an experience which is, yep you guessed it, exciting. ...read more