Cocktails at All Bar One Reading

This time a year ago, I was like a little skinny rat; a size 4 dress would be a sack on me (anyone wanting to lose a serious amount of weight, go through a traumatising break up, seemed to work for me).  One year on and I've climbed up a few dress sizes (which I'm happy with) and whilst I can attribute some of this through becoming a normal functioning human being once again who eats, a lot of it is largely due to my slight addiction to cocktails and how the frequency has notched up since me being a southerner once more.


I was celebrating new year's eve in Reading with friends and we met up first at All Bar One (www.allbarone.co.uk) for a few cocktails before going to the white ice party at Sakura (http://www.sakurareading.com/). 

Low fat versions of anything are a bit pointless.  Even when I drink a diet coke, I know the full fat version is so much better.  My philosophy is usually to go big or go home.  Unfortunately as I'm getting a little too big these days following an obscenely indulgent Christmas, I thought I'd try a skinny cocktail on All Bar One's menu and had a skinny bramble.  This contained Bombay Sapphire (excellent) gin, Chambord, black raspberry liqueur, lemon juice and agrave syrup.  Looking at this list, it didn't seem like it was lacking any ingredients or using any low fat / low sugar versions.  However it was part of the skinny cocktail offering which confidently claimed that any drink on this menu contains less than 220 calories.  If 220 calories and below was considered low fat then serious alarm bells started ringing and I came to the realisation that I very likely have my daily allowance of calories in one cocktail session when I average 4-5 cocktails at one time.

The drink itself was good, I was worried it wouldn't be sweet if it had less calories but it was perfect. I was going to try another on the list but liked this one so much I had the same again.

Then onto Sakura club, no cocktails.  Just plenty of vodka and plenty of Moet.  A guy started chatting me up, I was impressed with his level of banter.  Although I'm trying not to, I seem to gravitate towards rugby players (which is why he had his arm in a sling) and the thing about rugby boys from personal experience is despite their initial gentlemen-like manners, they are far from being a gent underneath it all.  This one was no exception to the norm.