MAYFAIR’S FINEST WATERING HOLES

Mayfair, on the doorstep of West End entertainment and shopping, is an enclave free of wandering tourists. With sophisticated bars and suave cocktails to suit different moods and different company, it is home to some of London’s finest watering holes.

The Donovan Bar

The Donovan Bar is named after Terrence Donovan, one of the fashion photographers of the 1960s who created as much as they captured a ‘swinging London’. In one group photo taken in Trafalgar Square in 1962 he brought together virtually every noted jazz musician in the country and this shot, along with many others, hangs in the eponymous bar of Brown’s Hotel in Albermarle St. Around the walls, luminaries of the past gaze agelessly — Terrence Stamp, Alex Guiness, Tony Hancock – alongside fashion shots that could still grace the front cover of The Gentleman’s Journal. There is even a ‘naughty corner’ that brings together some of Donovan’s more cheeky work featuring provocatively undressed females.

The Donovan Bar’s cocktail menu cannot be taken in at a glance and requires serious consideration before a decision is finally made; likewise, the preparation of your chosen drink is worthy of being observed at close quarters. You’re unlikely to see in London a more nuanced cocktail being mixed, shaken and poured: even the ice – purified to remove the impurities and air bubbles that give regular ice its opaqueness – is specially delivered in 25-kilogram blocks every couple of days. It melts more slowly too, prolonging the balance of tastes in the flute, coupe, goblet, designer porcelain mug or whatever receptacle has been selected as most appropriate for your drink of choice. A Smoking Mary, a Bloody Mary smoked by way of a spray from a suitable whisky, comes not in a tall glass but in a canteen mug and requires no lemon after being injected with a micro-sauce of chilli, paprika, horseradish and pepper. The final mix is not stirred, just poured between the parts of a shaker, and it tastes like no other Bloody Mary you’ll imbibe this side of Pluto. Cocktails change with the season and now is the time for Grant Me A Journey, concocted with 21-year-old Glenfiddich, mango juice and a rum-based bitter mixed in-house, served in a vintage tea cup on a base of wood taken from a Glenfiddich barrel. A quick drink will be served here as easily as in any bar but best save The Donovan Bar for a leisurely and fastidious state of mind, alone or in company, with cocktails that demand more patience and measured enjoyment than London’s swinging sixties allowed its celebrities.

For more information, visit www.roccofortehotels.com

The Polo Bar

The Polo Bar in the Westbury hotel in Conduit St has a lively social buzz that insists you come here with at least one other person and a firm intention to enjoy superior bar bites and cleverly served cocktails. Ladies will warm to the mellow taste of the Japanese Breakfast martini, a house invention with little in common with Salvatore Calabrese’s now classic breakfast martini, or the equally unorthodox Blue Lady which takes its name from the infusion of a Blue Lady tea before being shaken with blueberries and elderflower. The signature cocktails will appeal to the debonair, the champagnes to the giddy, the hard liquor to the seasoned connoisseur. The pesto flavoured mini-sized cones filled with a goats cheese mousse will disappear at speed if shared.

For more information, visit www.westburymayfair.com

CC BAR

Sometimes, what suits is a quiet but tastily appointed watering hole, conducive to a tête-à- tête without being secretive, and the soft seating at the CC Bar in Park Lane’s Hilton hits the spot. The mood is far more gregarious at the hotel’s Traders Vic restaurant but, while it’s close by, any conga line gyrating there at weekends will not reach the lobby’s cosy corner devoted to champagnes and cocktails, hence the name CC. The drinks list is selective, concentrating on classic creations using Vranken, part of the large champagne house that includes Pommery, Heidseick & Co. Monopole and Charles Lafitte. The bartender, Eduardo, can mix a champagne to suit most moods and CC makes a pleasing port of call after a meal in Shepherd’s Market.

For more information, visit www.parklanehilton.com/bars

The Coburg

The Coburg is the quintessential Mayfair bar where, whether drinking alone, as a couple, or in a crowd, you blend effortlessly into the urbane surroundings, as if you have always known this comfortable sitting room with its wingback chairs and finely patterned plaster ceiling. The room has history – being the headquarters of General De Gaulle and the Free French forces in World War II – and the mirrors at either end are testimony to a vintage elegance, though the candles below them now waft the scent of a designer perfume into the air. The small bar does not draw attention to itself and withdraws into the background like the soft jazz coming from unseen speakers. The menu of drinks is a collector’s list when it comes to whiskies from Glenfarclas, the Speyside whisky distillery in Ballindalloch, Scotland, and cognacs from Thomas Hine & Co. The champagnes come from the oldest house of them of all: Ruinart, established at Reims in 1729.

Justifiably renowned for its sophisticatedly adult range of drinks, the Coburg Bar avoids feeling exclusive or clubbish and makes instead the perfect classroom for lessons in bacchanology (the study of drinking, its preparation and history). At regular intervals a different family is chosen as the basis for cocktails – Sours are currently under the alchemist’s spells – with a chronologically arranged list of old favourites always available to be ably mixed and stirred. In addition, over the next few months, a series of cocktail masterclasses is being run with the Director of Mixology, Agostino Perrone.

For more information, visit www.the-connaught.co.uk/

The Connaught Bar

It is only a matter of steps from the Coburg in the Connaught Hotel to the Connaught Bar itself but the landscape changes completely. The Coburgh’s democratic light gives way to a singular design creating space for intimate décor: plush seating and low lighting, irrefutably masculine in tone. Martinis are the house speciality, served under your instructions with bespoke bitters from a trolley, though satisfying in another way is the Faraway Collins with its twist on the Tom Collins courtesy of yuzu juice and eucalyptus infused sugar syrup. All the established cocktails seemed to be served by glamorous women, though maybe that was my imagination. Nothing possibly fictitious, though, about the Vieux Connaught though it plays adventurously with Vieux Carré, the New Orleans aperitif, by way of saffron smoke. Ritzy and stylish, that’s The Connaught.

For more information, visit www.the-connaught.co.uk

By SEAN SHEEHAN