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Over the past few weeks we have written about the Negroni, the Boulevardier, sake and whisky, and the question that keeps coming back is the obvious one. Where do you go to drink these properly in London? This edit gives four answers, in four parts of town, at four different paces. The rules are the same as last time: drinks only, no food and no scores. The order below is not a ranking. It is the order you would drink them in over an evening: an aperitif, a cocktail, a seat at the counter, a late whisky.
7 Old Compton Street, Soho, London W1D 5JE
A nicely compact venue. Check opening times and book ahead where you can.
Bar Termini is the shortest route from our Negroni coverage to a glass in your hand. It is a miniature Italian bar from Tony Conigliaro, of 69 Colebrooke Row, and Marco Arrigo, the coffee specialist who spent years as head of quality at Illy, and it was built to celebrate the Italian aperitif. Negroni variations are what it is known for, including a Rosato made with a rose petal infusion. The Marsala Martini, gin with Marsala, dry vermouth and almond bitters when the bar opened, has long been on the list as a quieter way into the same idea. Julian's recipe and my own essay on equal parts both argue about how little you should touch the formula, and Termini is where you can test that against people who have been touching it for more than a decade. The room is tiny, so go early.
5 Kensington High Street, London W8 5NP
Check opening days, and ask whether the vintage list is on before you travel.
Despite the name, what Amaro is known for is not bitter liqueurs but classic cocktails rebuilt with modern technique. It opened in December 2021 under Elon Soddu, who previously led bars at the Savoy and the Beaufort Bar, and the team brings five-star hotel habits to a small room: a ten-seat black granite counter, with space for around twenty-eight more at tables. What makes it relevant here is the vintage list. The bar has offered drinks made from bottles decades old, among them a 1980 Boulevardier built from vintage Four Roses, Antica Formula and Campari. Our own Boulevardier recipe went live on 3 October, and this is the other end of the same drink: the one that asks what it tasted like when those bottles were new.
28 Scrutton Street, Shoreditch, London EC2A 4RP
Check opening days before you go. The cocktail list is served at the counter.
Waltz is where our sake coverage turns into something you can sit at. It opened in 2025 behind an unmarked door, and it is run by Gento Torigata, a Tokyo-born bartender who worked in Ginza, Singapore and at Kwãnt before going solo. The name comes from Bill Evans's Waltz for Debby, and at launch the bar said its jazz ran from Evans to Chet Baker and Nina Simone, with Japanese jazz and city pop later in the night. The seats that matter are the twelve at an eight-metre elm bar cut from a fallen tree in Gibson Square, where the cocktail list follows Japan's 72 micro-seasons, so the menu moves through the year alongside a permanent evergreen section. At launch the bar listed twelve sakes by the glass, and it has served drinks as unlikely as a sake Gibson and a matcha Old Fashioned. Anyone waiting for a seat is given a shorter menu of its own, so the counter is where the full list lives.
Rosewood London, 252 High Holborn, London WC1V 7EN
Check opening times. Live music runs through the evening.
Scarfes Bar is the whisky answer, and the long-evening one. It sits at the front of the Rosewood London hotel on High Holborn: a drawing-room bar with a working fireplace, more than a thousand antique books, and satirical paintings by the cartoonist Gerald Scarfe on the walls. The Nudge counts more than 200 single malts behind the bar, and live music runs through the evening. The cocktail menu changes regularly: this spring the bar launched a Heroes & Villains list of twenty serves, each inspired by a public figure. We will not pretend to know what is on it this week, but the room and the whisky are the constants, which is reason enough for a late nightcap after the quicker stops above.
Four rooms, four subjects, no scores. If you only have one night, match the bar to the glass you have been reading about: the aperitif, the Boulevardier, sake or whisky. Opening days vary and several of these rooms are small, so check before you go and book where you can. If a trip is not on the cards, the same subjects are on this site: the Negroni and Boulevardier recipes, and our sake and whisky features.
