Monday 8 April 2013

Nightjar Cocktail Bar Review

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but I am pretty sure we're not going to get a summer.  I feel like I should get this out in the open so that we can deal with it now, rather than pining for something that will never arrive.  Wear your summer outfits indoors with the heating on, make cocktails with little umbrellas even if it's lashing with rain outside...or do what I'm doing and blow all my money going to Thailand and Ibiza this year so I can have at least 3 guaranteed weeks of being in sunshine.


In the interim, I just have to deal with the rubbish weather by drowning my sorrows and having a pay day cocktail club meet up at Nightjar, 129 City Road, EC1V 1JB (www.barnightjar.com).  Nightjar is a tucked away modern-day speakeasy off Old Street tube, that only takes bookings, is entered through a discreet door next to a kafeteria (yes with a 'K'), is romantically lit with fake tea lights (they look so real!) and smells kind of like a cake, except that it's probably the small bowl of popcorn they give you when you arrive.

I tried a Sweet Dream.  Appleton Estate V/X rum, cocao butter, Mozart Dry (chocolate liqueur), banana blossom infusion, pineapple juice, coconut yoghurt, coconut blossom sugar and plantain foam.  In my wistful state for some sunshine, anything that has coconut or pineapple instinctively makes me feel like I'm abroad.  Although it arrived in a tin cup, the kind you'd probably take camping but the yoghurt was frozen and served in some sort of tropical looking leaf.  The coconut and pineapple made it so tasty and I used my imagination to pretend I was on some tropical island.

Nightjar Cocktail Bar Review

The other cocktail I had was called a Delicious Sour.  Hennessy fine cognac, crab apple infusion, nightjar umeshu (although Google didn't come up trumps to explain this and I forgot to ask), lime, bee pollen syrup and buttered oolang foam.  I was distracted by the bee pollen syrup and oolang foam that afterwards I realised it had cognac and then I started to dread the arrival of it.  The drink itself wasn't as pretty as the first one.  It looked like a sweety at the top and biting into it, was not at all enjoyable.  However despite the cognac which made the cocktail very alcoholic, it managed to claw back some of my distain for ordering it with the apple and lime which made it more refreshing.

Nightjar Cocktail Bar Review

Nightjar is an atmospheric place where the drinks border on pretention (why is there some sort of dust on the outside of my drink when I clearly can't taste / enjoy it) but they are made with skills and also with some flair.  Definitely one to tick off your list.

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