COBURG BAR

It’s fair to say that history is made in the Coburg. Well, to be accurate, lots of pieces of history – the cocktail menu is chronological, a canter through the saga of mixed drinks through the ages, from pre-1800 ancestors The Sours to modern classics. It’s a sweeping, technicolour epic peopled with a cast list of innovative bartenders, ambitious hoteliers and not a few celebrity soaks. After all, why have a star or a rose named after you when an eponymous cocktail will have thirsty swingers blessing your very name nightly? Would a Marlene Dietrich by any other name taste as sweet?

Fortunately, the display of cocktail erudition isn’t just theoretical; bartenders are hot on the practical side, too. Innovation and experimentation are fine, but the acid test is the ability to do the simple things well, and here the Coburg excels: the mojito is perfection, crushed ice, mint and sweet-sour tang superbly balanced.

They say true beauty is on the inside. They’re only partly right. Here it’s in the bartenders, the India Mahdavi-curated refurb (sink-in velvet wingback chairs, taupe walls, monochrome Julian Opie cameos, black lacquered fireplace) and, most eye-catchingly, in the party on the adjacent table to us – quite the most handsome array of people we’ve clapped eyes on.

And yet we’ve rarely felt so comfortable in a bar. Perhaps it’s the music, segueing from prohibition-era ragtime to piano and Latin jazz. Or the fat olives that keep appearing without pressure to scan the food menu. Or the smooth competence and lack ofpretension from the Holly Golightly-like staff.

The Coburg is the second-best bar in London, according to a recent awards list. We think they might be underselling it. Somewhere this special (with correspondingly special prices) has no right being so accessible to mere mortals – it could be the ruin of us.