For years friends of mine who regularly travel to Paris for work (one an American) have talked of Harry’s New York Bar being their favourite of all the Harry’s. At no point had they really told me anything of the place other than it’s location and it being a great bar. When we arrived we…
Category: Drink
Dukes' White Truffle Martini
Let the choirs of archangels, angels, seraphim and cherubim (and all the others) cry forth “Hallelujah!”, for it is once again white truffle season, that time of year when we spend vast fortunes on an underground fungus that looks like a mummified testicle but, when thinly shaved, releases a transcendent and heavenly smell that takes…
Get to know London's Minimalist Tea Houses
Steeped in centuries of tradition, Japanese tea houses and culture have developed into a unique art form of ceremony, discipline, and eastern philosophy. Key to experiencing the art of tea is the work of Sen no Riky. A tea master born in 1522 who shunned the values of elaboration in favour of Wabi-sabi – a…
The Old Fashioned - Recipe
The name of this most classic of classic cocktails is as perfect for the drink as can be, as the oldest know reference to it dates back to 1806 and the early days of cocktails, when they were still to be defined and codified. Any half decent barman can make you one, and most bars…
The Boulevardier
2017 was unquestionably the year of the Negroni; it was hard to walk past a bar in London last summer and not see it listed as one of the cocktails on offer. Invented, as the story goes, for Count Negroni in 1919 when he asked the barman to make him a stronger version of his…
Ice, Water, Neat... Who gives a dram?!
As a whisky fan, desperately trying to achieve his lifelong goal of free whisky for eternity, I have spoken to many ambassadors, aficionados and connoisseurs of the ‘water of life’ during many tastings, shop visits and twitter tete a tetes. However one comment sticks in my mind from a tasting in Ronnie Scott’s bar a…