It was in New York that I learned to sit at the bar and drink. It’s not a thing you want to do in most English pubs because you get jostled by customers trying to attract the barman’s attention, and then they spill their beer over you as they carry it away once they’ve been served. But finding ourselves in Sloane Square, and seeing a watering hole called The Botanist (a small chain priding itself on its ‘elegant atmosphere’) that had a couple of empty stools at the bar, we thought what the heck.
It looked pretty much like the image above and those empty stools are the very ones we sat on, though the picture is from a website called designmynight.com.
The cocktail menu looked good and so we ordered two Sipsmith Gin Martinis. That didn’t seem too much to ask but it was. There was none behind the bar, and some lad was despatched to the cellar but came back empty handed, so we had to settle for a Sipsmith Vodka Martini. Who says I’m afraid to try new things?
The ritual of the martini-making was everything you could have asked for, and our barman certainly had a sense of the occasion – no cocktail shaker for him, more a sort of glass vase.
And the resulting martinis were absolutely fine, if expensive and a bit small. But heck, we were in Sloane Square.
You will have noticed that the drinks were served on black napkins, ‘Black Napkins’ being a composition by Frank Zappa which I always use to say I wanted played at my funeral. Or if not that, then perhaps Zappa’s ‘America Drinks and Goes Home.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUwwj4rvakI
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