Cocktail Bar Review: The Bedford and Strand, London

It started well enough; the steps leading down to this subterranean venue were just steep enough to instil a mildly thrilling sense of trepidation, and the decor reminded me of my favourite Parisian bistro.  Had I known this was as satisfied as my senses would get, I would of course turned on my heels and enjoyed the equally thrilling walk back up the stairs.  Regrettably however, I must have missed the sign informing me that this was not a cocktail bar.  Sure, it has a cocktail menu, but Bedford and Strand is not a cocktail bar; Bedford and Strand is a wine bar/restaurant and probably a very good one at that.

 

A cocktail bar you see, is one that takes pride in such a status. It trains its staff well so that they smile at the customer, make an effort to pretend they wouldn’t prefer to be anywhere else but at work, and know how to make the drinks they serve. A cocktail bar has a menu that reads as if some thought has gone into it, and it makes an effort to serve them to a standard that doesn’t infer that you should have chosen the wine.

 

When my first visit included a very confident-looking bartender pretending he wasn’t reading the spec sheet before making my Manhattan, then proceeding to shake it to death, I thought I had just struck unlucky.  When my second visit included a downtrodden bartender serving me an Aviation tasting mostly of Maraschino and without even so much as a whiff of the creme de violette listed on the menu, I thought perhaps they just didn’t like me.  But when my third visit included a lumbering bartender serving me a Sidecar that I believe was purse lemon juice I concluded that this wasn’t a cocktail bar at all.

 

Really I can only blame myself for being so foolish as to order the cocktails, as a glance at the menu reveals this is in fact a wine bar with a very decent selection. It even has a few tasty fortified wines to boot, and I’m told the edible offerings are respectable too.  What they seem not to have realised, is that you simply can’t get away with randomly listing a dozen or so cocktails, fail to properly train your staff and expect to get away with it.  I can only hope someone will nick all their cocktail menus so they can focus on their core offering of wine and food.

The Cocktail Geek