Chinatown: door after door of culinary Eastern promises, roast ducks spinning away in neon lit restaurant windows, and the annual colour-explosion of Chinese New Year - an incredible part of London’s cultural life, but not one I would go to expecting anything more than a belly full of tasty egg-fried rice. So when a friend told me to go to a bar, located at 13A Gerrard Street in the heart of Chinatown, I wasn’t that surprised to find that there was no visible bar anywhere along this road. To find the Experimental Cocktail Club, you need to pretend you’re in some kind of magical world. Somewhere between number 13 and 14 will appear to the very keen eye a small black door, the platform 9 and 3/4’s of cocktail magic. And my goodness, what a well-kept secret this world is. The ECC is a decadent melange of a 1920’s speakeasy and a cocktail bar straight out of elegant Mad Men Manhattan. It’s a three storey converted Victorian house, with a baroque-meets-bohemian décor and an elite (mostly French) clientele to match its flashy cocktail menu. The downstairs main bar is classic and regal, whilst upstairs is smaller, and more intimate, with a piano decorating it’s bar and Chinese style prints to complement its Chinatown location. The drinks are certainly not cheap, especially with the compulsory service charge added to each bar trip, but the cocktails definitely live up to the bar’s name. With ingredients such as smoked pineapple syrup and lavender-infused gin, you are guaranteed to find something to excite you. Owned by a French trio, who have a few very popular bars in Paris, this place is fairly new on the Soho scene, having opened only a few months ago. But judging from a packed Thursday night, it is doing very, very well. And why wouldn’t it? It is exactly what you want from a classy night out. Exclusive, but not pretentiously so, expensive but not unnecessarily so, and so very beautifully hidden, the ECC is one of London’s most brilliant little secrets.
No comments:
Post a Comment