New Order: Mind Your Step cocktail at Artesian

Samuel Fishwick serves up everything you need to know about the best new cocktail at The Langham hotel’s famous hotel
Shardcore: the Mind Your Step cocktail features edible pieces of “broken glass”

The drink

A Mind Your Step cocktail at The Langham hotel’s Artesian bar in Marylebone (£18, 1C Portland Place, W1, artesian-bar.co.uk). The bar’s Perception cocktail menu sets out to shatter expectations, and the Mind Your Step is no exception: a whistle-whetting, tropical cocktail made from Ron Zacapa 23 rum, Heron pisco, Sour Sop and orange blossom shards, served in broken sugar glass, as if the cocktail had been dropped on the floor.

The USP

Creative flair. It looks like you’re drinking shards of broken glass. “We asked the question: “What type of glass you would never drink from?” says Dino Koletsas, director of bars at The Langham. “And people came back saying a ‘broken glass’. The drink is a well-balanced, earthy yet refreshing cocktail with edible shards of glass, where the key ingredients allow the drinker to interpret the flavour based on their own experience.”

Koletsas came to The Langham in 2015, having honed his skills alongside the late, legendary Sasha Petraske at Milk & Honey in New York.

His Perception menu is bursting with innovation. The Calm Before cocktail comes in a fluffy cotton raincloud which glows, pulsatingly, for a lightning effect, and the drink itself is a smoky single malt, aged by the sea in Scotland, with Talisker Storm, unicum, vermouth, verjus, samphire and actual rain. “We recreated the taste, smell and ambience of a relentless storm that you can enjoy without getting wet,” says Koletsas.

Other cocktails on the 20-strong menu include optical illusions, pyrotechnics and a deconstructed pizza.

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The accompaniment

There’s a good “snax” menu at the Artesian, a tapas-style concept created by executive chef Chris King in consultation with Michel Roux Jr, boasting Cornish oysters (£11), prosciutto and bruschetta (£12).

If you’re looking to line your stomach further afield, Soho is a stone’s throw away, so head to Barrafina for croquettas, octopus with capers and Santiago tart.

The dessert

A “digestif”, rather than a traditional dessert, is in order here. The Perpetual Motion cocktail — Facundo Eximo, vermouth, artichoke and yacon — is aged in a shaking barrel on the bar counter, “So we can safely state that your drink has not stopped for a second since it started its journey from the sugar cane fields,” says Koletsas.

Next door, Roux Jr offers Caramelia mousse with bitter chocolate and Pedro Ximenez ice-cream, or a choux croquant with vanilla ice-cream and hazelnut Gianduja spread. Failing that, there’s always room service in one of the hotel’s rooms, from £324 per night.

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