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Après

Après

Après says:

Welcome To Après; central London’s best bar & cocktail lounge. Located just off Oxford Street and minutes from Marble Arch, with a smoking terrace, boutique cocktail bar, premium winter lounge and VIP areas, Après is the perfect place to come and drink in style.
We specialise in offering our customers a bespoke and welcoming service. Whether booking an intimate table for intimate cocktails or hiring the whole venue exclusively, our professional team ensure your evening here at Après will be second to none.

Social and Cocktail says:

Oxford St is a peculiar place; so many people and yet so few reasons for them to be there. Sure, there is a Selfridge’s, but I’ve not come across much else worth the trek from the far more pleasant Regent St, Bond St and so on to the South.  Still, people do go in their droves, so it would make sense that a bar or too services their lubrication needs.  And yet, this is an area which is as devoid of quality drinking establishments as it is decent shopping opportunities.

With interest therefore did I stumble across Après Bar. It wasn’t the description that perked my interest, the website is full of the usual fluff about being central London’s best bar, and catering to Europe’s finest clientele. Usually a bar that feels the need to puff its feathers like that isn’t worth crossing the road for. Unusually though, the cocktail menu stood out for not being full of sordidly-named vodka heavy syrupy cocktails, but instead a diverse list of mixed potations that inspired a peek.

Being a late-night sort of joint, an early evening visits wasn’t the best of decisions to experience the full atmospherics on offer, but it wasn’t hard to imagine that with a bit of a buzz you could overlook the seemingly hastily-conceived rough wood panels a la apres ski bar, decorated with some odd wall features. The hatted chap crouched over his acoustic guitar, strumming away catchy melodies was a nice touch meanwhile, even if it did take him 10 minutes work out that he needed to turn the amp on if we were to hear him.

The cocktail menu falls foul of a problem that pervades too many bars; the need to spread it over a dozen or more pages, with just a few drinks listed on each side. Such an approach is all well and good in the really top notch places, but I can’t help but think that those in the middle ground would be better off keeping it nice and simple. By the time you’re on the third page, that first drink that caught your eye is a distant memory, and it all seems a bit of a hassle. ‘Essential’ cocktails include the far too infrequently listed Paloma but here they do it proud. Just enough tequila bite, but with a wonderful savoury-sour balance that is refreshing yet complex. Feeling confident that this is a bar that knows it’s flavours, I accepted a challenge that I would otherwise have refused. The ‘Double Dirty’ Martini uses olive-infused vodka couple with caraway and black pepper infused brine to deliver a drink that is about as dirty as you’d ever wish to swallow. The caraway and black pepper are there, but this is all about umami, salty olive.  Whether this is a good thing might be open to debate; I certainly wouldn’t order another but that’s not to say it didn’t intrigue. And intrigue is something I’d always plump for over dull, which sadly was the best the ‘Suburban’ could deliver. Bourbon, rum, port, bitters and cherry syrup need a skilled hand to pull together and Après isn’t quite there. Muddy is never a desirable characteristic and this is for sure that.

Après tries, and for that credit is due, few others are bothering in this area. If they’d just tone down the aspiration slightly they’d be better for it.  After all, who doesn’t like an awesome Paloma?

The Cocktail Geek   the cocktail geek

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Pink Panther

Pink Panther Cocktail Vodka, Mozart White Chocolate Liqueur, Watermelon // Shaken & served Martini Style
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Cosmo £8.00

Mojito £8.00

Margarita £8.00

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