When a bar opens on the site of the old Pinstripe Club (think Profumo, Keeler, O’Toole & others of that era), it has to be worth a visit or two. Taken on by the owners of the Barrio & Sovereign Loss bars, the re-design of this underground venue has really pushed what can be achieved in a linear & low-ceilinged space, creating areas of joy and mystery in equal measure.
The central bar reminds me of the sadly long-closed Green Room club, once described as ‘designed for twenty, but hosting one hundred’, where I spent more than a few evenings pinned against the walls by my colleagues from many (some nights it seemed like *all*) of London’s theatres – although the bar in Disrepute is a lot more beautiful. And far less damp and dark.
The key feature of the bar is the cocktail narrative – drinks are ordered by choosing from a menu of stories, or from a separate menu of ingredients – each drink only known by their initials. I had a ‘T’ on my first order, and mysterious and lyrical it was in equal measures.
Disrepute (or DRP, if you will) will be a members’ bar in the late evening, but right now, a cheery demeanour & a pleasant smile should be enough to score you entry early in the evening; certainly, it got me seated with a friend at a fine table by the bar, and served by some of the most happy and cheerful staff I have ever met in London. Disrepute by name, but definitely not disreputable; fabulous, actually. It’s excellence has not been lost on others, either, Vogue magazine just named the newly-opened bar in its top 10 of London bars – quite an accolade for a place that has only been open since December last year.
Every barman has a corpse reviver recipe: the drink they slide across the bar to the jaded customer without a word, just the unspoken understanding of what the client needs right now, right then. The recipes date back to the mid-C19th, served to young bucks who had over-indulged the night before, and now revived (if you will) for a modern generation of hungover clients.
Another recipe that can be made with Old Tom or dry gin – again, I am using a lighter London style in Hendricks. The mystery of this drink is why the ‘and’ in the title; the answer is in the ingredients: gin *and* brandy *and* vermouth. This sounds like a drink invented by someone ho couldn’t quite work out what to drink, so just kept adding ingredients.
Like whisky, sherry is an underused cocktail ingredient. But like its Scottish counterpart, it has to be used with a certain care – its dry, subtle flavours can add a mysterious quality, but the dryness can add a mouth-puckering quality if overused.
My Baron Samedi hat was in use at New Year at a masked party & although sadly we didn’t have a rum-based cocktail at the time, I thought I’d properly honour the spirit of the Baron with his favourite spirit, and mix up a voodoo-themed cocktail this weekend.
The dependable Manhattan has spawned many variations; the recipe is really simple, so it is very easy to substitute any of the ingredients to create something quite different: the Harvard is a variant where the rye or bourbon is replaced with cognac. Quite how a mix of French brandy with an Italian vermouth has come to represent on of America’s most blue-blooded, ivy-clad Universities is anyone’s guess, but my stab is a few alumni propping up a college bar one evening, deciding that they really needed a cocktail named after their alma mater*. The result is worthy, but not exactly groundshaking: cognac adds a fruitier dimension to the bourbon/rye original, which works well with the vermouth, but without the tension that the spikier spirits have. It’s a soothing drink, one to be lingered over on a cold evening, but I still prefer the original.
I was looking for a drink suitable for our 5th of November celebrations (for non-UK readers, this is the day we remember how an attempt to destroy Parliament by a huge gunpowder bomb, assembled by 
Very apt for Halloween, or Samhain (depending on your outlook and religion) is this recipe, taken from 
Ice & Bitters 