Cocktail Bar Review: The Blind Pig, London

When you take a handful of the hottest cocktail trends and blend together you risk the result being nastier than a Benidorm Miami Vice. Speakeasy retreat meets upscale cosmopolitan slick, and precise experiential meets cheeky pun-tastic disco is a big ask for a bar even in a city so darned good at the whole job lot. And so we must doff our hat to The Blind Pig for he is a seriously smart porker.

So good it is, we will forgive the Spanish Inquisition courtesy of the online booking process.  I’ll let you know when I’m there if I’ll be eating bar snacks, thanks. Presumably if we’d said a definite no, the table would have been unavailable; this is certainly a bar that can be picky about its clientele. Not that it seem so, from ‘cocktail destination’ tourists to casual post-work gatherings, this dark and moody-decored bar feels delightfully egalitarian.

Picture-perfect cocktails are delivered with honed precision by waiting staff so skilled at watching your every move you almost don’t notice their hawkish attention to your last sip, ready to whisk the glass away before you nick the cool garnishes/glassware. Which is no surprise, since smart-Alec drink naming is somewhat of a USP for this bar.  Name a drink ‘Robin Hood, Quince of Thieves‘ or ‘Slap N Pickle‘ and you’ve got my attention that’s for sure.

They might have chuckle-inducing names, but the mixing is no laughing matter. Faultless is a bold observation but this team are doing a darned good job of heading that way. The ‘Rye n Air‘, served in a plane-security friendly mini bottle combines rye whiskey, peach brandy, Campari, sweet vermouth, and grapefruit oils with just a little fizz to deliver a mysteriously tingly and complex Negroni-Manhattan-Old Fashioned-Americano hybrid. By contrast, the ‘Genever Lopez‘ complete with signed polariod takes the botanical-led genever and Chartreuse and whips them up into a frenzy of flavour with pinapple, coconut, lime, Falernum and clove bitters. Throw in an egg white and you have a silky, sour, aromatic, sweet, floral megamix that at first you think is awesome, then a bit weird, and then settle on utterly genius. This is flavour blending at its best. Not all are so wacky mind you, the ‘Rum DMC‘ is an altogether more restrained mix of walnut-infused overproof and regular strength rums, cynar, maple syrup and lime. Suitably punchy, with bucket-loads of fruit tempered only by the earthy nutty undertones of walnut and barely aroused from its slumbering peace-inducing sweetness by lime, this is a drink that looks way easier than it is to perfect.

Aside from the clever puns making tricky drinks look easy is really the essence of success here.  These are complex and tricky drinks to deliver, but they do so tongue firmly planted in cheek, lending the impression that this is a walk in the park.  Top marks for making it appear so.

 

The Cocktail Geek