Bye bye, Dry January: Where to go drinking in London this February

In the mix: bars across London are raising a glass to the end of Dry Jan
fabiovh.co.uk

Strap on a pair of beer goggles and hold tight onto a prosecco float: Dry January’s finish line is within sight. Whether you’ve been off the sauce entirely, mostly off the sauce (weekends don’t count, right?) or drinking like it’s still December, the end of the year’s most boring month is undeniably a cause for celebration.

Moreover, the capital hasn’t been resting: while you were at home a raft of buzzy new bars have been waiting for your patronage. So raise a toast to February, and start a bar crawl.

Start with the new Ladies and Gentlemen bar in Camden. The first one, a subterranean cocktail den built into an old public lavatory in Kentish Town, has a menu of seriously strong spirits, and lock-ins that are the stuff of legend.

The new outpost opened in Camden Road a fortnight ago, also in an old loo, complete with original Victorian flooring, ironwork railway tracks — and the same, superlative cocktails.

Homeboy opened up in Essex Road in the tail end of December, when you were too busy drinking DIY mulled wine to notice. Head to this Irish cocktail bar for Guinness on draft and a cocktail menu including the intriguing Champagne Paloma: a tequila-grapefruit tall one, topped with a glug of champagne.

Drink me: A Brigadoon cocktail from Heads and Tails

Immerse yourself in the Lost Lagoon, the latest extravaganza from madcap magicians Bompas & Parr, who have constructed the world’s biggest under-ground boating lake below West 12 shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush.

It is an unlikely setting but worth a visit: it has its own weather system, a vast pirate vessel and a bar created in association with Hackney’s Scout, the zero-waste venue dealing in imaginative foraged cocktails. It opens at the end of the week, and runs until April.

Spiritland has a fresh site in the Royal Festival Hall, an 180-seat venue presenting a menu of dangerous cocktails to SE1: the Killer Joe — quince, malt, lemon, bitters and ginger ale — will leave you reeling (in the right way). Meanwhile, Heads and Tails in West Hampstead is set over two storeys.

Heads is the airy bar dealing in aperitivos, and Tails, the subterranean drinking den dealing in — you guessed it — whisky cocktails. If you want to return in a blaze of glory, make a beeline for Croque Monsieur, which opened in Camden in late December: tables are made from repurposed church pews, with an absinthe fountain on each table.

The special cocktail is a Death in the Afternoon, a decadent combination of absinthe and champagne reputedly invented by Ernest Hemingway.

February fix: The Ottoman Old Fashioned from the Mekan Bar

Provisioners at The Dixon, the new boutique hotel in Tower Bridge, is situated inside a refashioned courtroom, replete with an impressive marble bar. Try a Short (a Calvados sour with lemon, vanilla and orange bitters) .

Or head to Jack Speak in the new Lincoln Plaza hotel for steeling gin cocktails. The new Mekan bar at Ruya London, which opened at the tail end of last year, is mixing up Old Fashioneds and Turkish Coladas.

And looking ahead, stellar bartender Ryan Chetiyawardana is set to re-open Dandelyan — voted “the world’s best bar” at the 2018 World’s 50 Best Bars Awards — as Lyaness inside the Mondrian hotel in late March.

Charge your glasses — it’s finally time to have fun again.

The best bars in London

1/48

Tips for mindful retoxing

Rosamund Dean

If you’ve managed to make it drink-free through January then, by now, you’re either smugly feeling like the peak version of yourself, or limping to the end of the month, hand grasping blindly for the first drink of February 1.

Either way, I salute you. The trick now is avoiding sliding into Wet February with a binge to make your recovered liver wince. Moderation’s not easy. I spent my twenties at the bottom of a glass of white and only cut back when I realised my skin, waistline, energy and anxiety levels needed it. Now I think about alcohol as I do about cake: a treat to enjoy, but not every day; certainly not five slices in one go. Here are four ways to ease out of Dry January in a way your body will thank you for...

1. Change your mindset. Moderate drinking is not about deprivation, it’s about freedom. Focus on the benefits of drinking less: everything from more cash in your pocket to a reduced risk of cancer.

2. Have more alcohol-free days. As a glass-of-wine-with-every-dinner kind of girl, this was the hardest lesson for me, but it’s vital as after one or two drinks your decisionmaking and self-control are not firing on all cylinders.

3. Explore high-end soft drinks: non-alcoholic spirits like Ceder’s or Seedlip, No 1 Rosemary Water, Shrb Prohibition soda, beer from Nirvana Brewery or Big Drop Brewing Co.

4. Ask: “Will I look back on this drink with joy or regret?” Fizz with to celebrate a friend’s promotion is joyful. The third cheap, tepid wine at a work do, not so much.

The good news is, once you’re drinking less it only takes one or two drinks to make you feel nicely squiffy. Cheap date, anyone?

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in