The Best Town to Make an Upper Lip Stiff - Dick Bradsell

8/7/2019 The Best Town to Make an Upper Lip Stiff - Dick Bradsell

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February 7, 2007: The New York Times.

The Best Town to Make an Upper Lip Stiff

By KATE SEKULES

LONDON is the best cocktail city in the world right now, Audrey Saunders

said. I hate to admit it, but its true.

The confession is difficult because Ms. Saunders, an owner of the Pegu Club

on Houston Street, is seen as the torchbearer for New York Citys own

bartending resurgence. But she has sampled beverages from Paris to

Tortola, and she is convinced that London has more bartenders turning out

more sophisticated drinks than any other place.

Even though its coming along here, our talent is nowhere near as

widespread, she said. If I hadnt started Pegu Club, Id probably be in

London. I just love whats going on in the scene. The bartenders are so

extraordinary the professionalism and the skill level and the passion.

Ten years ago, with the opening of a handful of proper cocktail

establishments, London mixology was in its protozoan stage: the mere

appearance of fresh fruit juice in a cocktail glass was considered a giantevolutionary leap. Cocktails caught on, and soon lesser bars were seeking

attention with absurd drinks like bacon martinis. Which is why the explosion

of sheer quality and variety in the city now strikes connoisseurs of mixed

drinks as so fortunate and so welcome.

At certain restaurants Zuma, Roka, Hakkasan, Baltic the people behind

the bar are more of a draw than those in the kitchen. Recently renewed

hotel bars the Bar at the Dorchester, the Lobby Bar at One Aldwych,

Artesian at the Langham Hotel, Claridges Bar, the Blue Bar at the Berkeley

are irresistible again, from their soign dcor to their deep and focused

drinks lists. Stand-alone botes that look as if Bond just left (Milk & Honey,

Montgomery Place) or Barbarella is about to arrive (the Lonsdale, Trailer

Happiness) publish booklet menus with whole sections of rye, shochu, Pisco

and cachaa drinks alongside the gins and cognacs.

These bars squeeze and press their juices daily, partially defrost and

refreeze their mineral-water ice for density and purity and keep libraries ofprecious liquors. Bartenders outdo each other to corral the most outr
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bottles: Antica Formula, Dolin Chambryzette, Wokka Saki Vodka, Penderyn

single malt Welsh whiskey. Everyone keeps Martin Millers gin from Notting

Hill, liqueurs of violet and prickly pear (but not chocolate), Lillet and

absinthe (without wormwood).

Asked to nominate the most professional, skilled and passionate London

barkeep of all, Ms. Saunders gave the same answer as everybody else: Dick

Bradsell. Hes completely unassuming and so low-key, but hes one of the

greats, she said. Mr. Bradsell usually gets credit for founding the modern

era of London cocktails when he opened Dicks Bar in 1994. (In fact, his

tenure as founding mixologist goes back another decade to the semi-

legendary clubs Freds and the Zanzibar.) Not since the Art Deco era, when

Harry Craddock ruled the Savoy Londons premier classic martinidestination had a bartenders name enjoyed such cachet. As Ms. Saunders

put it, Any time you find Dick at a bar, thats the place to be.

Mr. Bradsell earned his renown with an exhaustive knowledge of classic

cocktails, precision and speed in constructing them, and, especially, a

cheflike ability to build on them continually. Hes a genius, said Claire

Smith, one of the successful young mixologists he has trained. So many

cocktails that we think of as classics in London were actually Dicks

inventions.

At Dicks Bar, in an era of tequila slammers and flavored vodkas, Mr.

Bradsells sophisticated, balanced drinks served in retro glassware hit a

chord. It became the hottest place in town, its status not exactly hindered

by its rare late-night license. Then, as with Alice Waters in 1970s Berkeley,

so with Dick Bradsell in 1990s London: his ideas, his trainees and his drinks

went forth and multiplied.

Three years after starting Dicks, Mr. Bradsell opened MatchBar with

Jonathan Downey, a former lawyer who found the call of the other kind of

bar stronger. One of the many things Dick said to me at the beginning was,

People will always buy quality, Mr. Downey said. And he was right. By

1997, cocktail bars were proliferating, but they were often more concerned

with style than substance a tendency Mr. Downey and Mr. Bradsell

deplored and set out to correct. Mr. Downeys Match Bar Group now owns

five London bars displaying both attributes. Were democratizing the

quality cocktail, he said.


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Though he just took over an additional bar at the Dukes Hotel, Londons

runner-up classic martini destination, he claims to enjoy the fun of working

with the customers far too much to disappear into back-room management.

Of course, lemon grass and ginger syrup in the hands of the wrong bartendercan lead to disaster. Few people understand this better than Robbie Bargh,

the creative director of the Gorgeous Group, the consulting concern behind

many of Londons splashiest new joints. An ebullient, opinionated former

mixologist and bar manager with 16 years experience, Mr. Bargh said he has

no time for egotistical demigods behind the bar who dont bother with

the fundamentals.

Were going through a big backlash to over-mixology, he said. I think likea chef. Like a chef, you cant deliver innovation without renovation. You

cant modernize without a basic understanding of what it takes to make a

great classic drink why a Negroni is so different made with Aperol rather

than Campari.

This kind of geekery is the last thing to strike a person visiting one of Mr.

Barghs establishments, where serious mixology is wrapped in luxury

frivolity. Take the Bar, an extravaganza just completed at the Dorchester. A

very camp Mephistopheles would feel right at home here, on a scarlet

banquette before a mirrored table, backed by a forest of six-foot red glass

spikes, sipping an Incas Passion from a giant glass with a three-foot stem.

This mixture of La Diablada Pisco, passion fruit and lime is definitely a

cocktail to drink, in the words of Harry Craddock, quickly, while its still

laughing at you. Craddock would probably have gotten a kick from the

Genesis of the Martini too: a history of that cocktail in three petite glasses.

Artesian at the Langham is a contrasting new work in the Gorgeous Groupsportfolio, designed by David Collins (who did the Blue and Claridges Bar)

with Regencyesque chandeliers, leather floors, grand classical proportions

and a milk-chocolate-and-ice palette. The list goes deep and broad on a

foundation of 54 rums, from stalwarts like Mount Gay and Appleton to

recent contenders like rums from St. Lucia and agricoles from Martinique.

Mr. Barghs personal taste runs more to the classic than his Gorgeous

lounges would suggest. Im a proper drinks man, he said. My desert

island luxury is Brian Silva and a bar. Mr. Silva, who comes from Boston,


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has been tending London bars for 25 years and is found behind a classic

mahogany number next to the grand piano in the underdecorated, old-

school Connaught Hotel. When I go back to the U.S.A. everything seems

sweet, he said. Flavored vodkas, flowers and bits and pieces pinkie-

raising drinks. No. All my cocktails are made with alcohol.

Of all the gin joints in London, Mr. Silvas may be the one with the most

inviting bar stools and some of the most creative drinks, like Le Blond, a

champagne cocktail involving absinthe, French liqueurs and pepper vodka.

Unfortunately, the Connaught Hotel will be closing the bar to revamp it this

spring.

But even bars without the solidly classic appearance of Mr. Silvas may haveequally rich and serious menus. Notting Hill has a deep seam of intimate,

high-style places: Trailer Happiness, a frivolous basement with solid tiki-

kitsch cocktails devised by Mr. DeGroff; the sexy, penumbral little

Montgomery Place with its Rat Pack in Havana drinks; and the space-age

Lonsdale, with a list by Mr. Bradsell in collaboration with the manager,

Henry Besant, and Claire Smith.

In the West End, theres Tony Conigliaro, widely viewed as the No. 1

Bradsell protg. At Shochu Lounge, you can taste his heterodox approach in

inventions like the Plum Plum (ume shochu, plum vodka, plum Tzu) and

Bellinis of green tea and pear, or of rhubarb and almond. Meanwhile, in the

laboratory of the Fat Duck restaurant just outside London, Mr. Conigliaro is

developing avant-garde cocktails in collaboration with the chef Heston

Blumenthal.

Of course, molecular mixology had to happen, but its not necessarily where

a cocktail lover wishes to go. So, following the citys mixological historyback to the beginning, it turns out that the London bar in which to be at the

moment is a smoky, strictly-members-only lair on Dean Street with peeling

paint work, a single bald banquette and artworks by current and former

members like Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

This is the Colony Room, and its where Dick Bradsell can be found these

days, out of the limelight not so much mixing as pouring and, by all

accounts, happy as a lamb.
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The Best Town to Make an Upper Lip Stiff - Dick Bradsell