Following the huge success of the first – English country golf club themed – Swingers, located next to the Gherkin in the City, the Institute of Competitive Socialising (ICS) are delighted to announce the opening of their second Swingers – a 1920s English seaside themed venue in the heart of the West End, in Oxford Circus. Breathing new life and fun into 20,000 square feet of the old BHS flagship store (which closed in August 2016), Swingers West End takes all the things that guests love about Swingers City, predominantly the holy trinity that is street food, cocktails and crazy golf and reim...
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'I want something that will pick me up and f*ck me up,' Kate Moss asked famed cocktail maestro Dick Bradsell in the early eighties. And thus, the espresso martini was born, as the mixologist only had a coffee maker and some vodka to hand. We headed to the Bluebird in Chelsea to get a mixology masterclass from the restaurant's top bartending team. The espresso martini is one of the venue's most popular cocktails. The head bartender, Egzon Kastrati, revealed that the bar uses more coffee than the main restaurant for making the heady libations. In a month, they roughly rustle up 3,000 espres...
Read more →Sipping on a negroni with an olive to hand and the soft sun on my skin, I felt like I could have been in Venice where I'd been just the week before. It was only when I spotted a red London bus peeping over the top of the manicured garden hedgerow that my Italian mind trip suddenly veered off track. I'd stopped by at the 5-star Baglioni hotel's recently renovated restaurant, renamed Osteria 60. Nestled in the heart of Kensington, it's just a hop, skip and a jump away from Hyde Park and the Royal Palace - or for the shoppers, Harrods and Harvey Nichols are also within close proximity. A...
Read more →As we drift through this city, mere barnacles on the container ship of consciousness, it's sometimes advisable to shout at that captain up top (oi oi) and get him to moor up. Taking your time, relaxing: docking up at The Rib Room. A HQ for good time Gertrude’s and red trouser wearing Derricks, the venue boasts London’s widest variety of gins and bitters and devious cocktail menu designed only for sophisticated sipping. With a matrix of 19 different kinds of gins (Martin Miller’s Westbourne Strength, Fifty Pounds and Jensen Bermondsey Gin) and 10 bespoke artesian bitters, the maths say...
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