A 100 seat basement under Kingly Court where 60s Soho scandal gets retold one coded cocktail at a time.
Disrepute fills a 100 seat basement beneath Kingly Court, the courtyard between Carnaby Street and Beak Street. Time Out describes a bar built on 60s counterculture, in a space that once hosted the Pinstripe Club, where Christine Keeler and the Profumo set drank.
It runs as a members' bar that welcomes non member walk ins, per DesignMyNight, which still advises booking from Thursday onward. The Nightcap Group operates it alongside some of London's most awarded cocktail rooms.
Who would hate it? Anyone who finds menus as short stories tiresome. The drinks list is a deliberately lyrical puzzle, appendix included.
A long tunnel shaped room under vaulted ceilings, panelled in dark wood with low brass lit tables, per DesignMyNight. The original private vaults survived the refit as the best booths in the bar, and London x London calls the whole space one of the city's most handsome basements.
Cocktails arrive as short stories about Soho's heydays, with a separate coded sheet listing the actual specs; Time Out rates the theatre as part of the drink. Serves sit around £14.
Order whatever story you like the sound of and trust the appendix. Skip the gamble on a packed Saturday and book a vault instead; walk in hopes die at the staircase by 9pm.
Early evening leans members and media Soho; from 9pm the room turns to dates and small celebrating groups. Thursday to Saturday runs at capacity, and the vaults go first every night.