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That Liara, she’s a right bitch. She stole the summer romance sailor man from the arms of one of the Ladies, and appears not to be returning him any time soon. It has been a week of quite considerable heartache for the Ladies. We’ve already lost warm evenings, al fresco drinking and skirts with no tights. Losing the sailor was the last straw. Add the booziest week in the London art calendar, a fistful of private view invites and a voracious appetite for alcohol to this melancholy mix and it should be quite apparent why we’ve only risen from the fug a week later.
Of course, there are many fine reviews available for your consumption, whether Zoo does it for you or it’s Frieze that floats your boat (sob). Art is all fine and lovely, but what could we drink? Not gin, apparently.
At Frieze we got ourselves into an awful lot of trouble consuming approximately 47 Makers Mark cocktails between three of us. One Lady needed convincing that casual glassware theft would not be the best idea of the evening, while another perfected her stumbling technique with new addition of the ’100 meter shoe fling’. The Whitechapel Gallery was all Tovaritch Vodka cocktails, then at Zoo we hung out in a super cool way with our super cool artist friend Jason Wallis-Johnson and quaffed Perrier-Jouët Champagne. By this point more than 48 hours had passed by without so much as a sniff of mother’s ruin, so we were forced to visit the bar and BUY (imagine!) a few G&Ts to ease the pain.
Gin brands, where are you all? Save us from this whiskey and vodka absurdity!
We don’t need to tell you about Hawksmoor. We don’t need to tell you that they serve up life-changing, mind-bogglingly good steak. Steak so good, in fact, that one of the Ladies of the Lane, who describes herself as ‘practically vegetarian’ broke her life-long no-red-meat rule on the premises. No, we don’t need to tell you any of that. Although the temptation remains to re-brand immediately as Beef Lane, we want to tell you about gin.
Hawksmoor is one of the many fine establishments which participated in the Beefeater 24 & Time Out London promotion back in September. Tap your details in and get two free Beefeater 24 cocktails you say? Oh, go on then. The cocktail list at the unassuming bar tucked to the side of the equally unassuming restaurant is the equivalent of Gin Drinker’s porn, with a considerable lean toward the classics – gin, brandy and rum.
It was difficult to know where to begin, but when one finds oneself in such demanding situations, one must bravely soldier on. A quiet Thursday night cocktail soon turned into an impromptu masterclass, and we were gallantly helped every step/stagger of the way by the dashing barman Pete (vital gintistics: height - 6’4”; favourite gin - Beefeater 24, of course).
Particular favourites included the French 75 (gin, lemon, sugar, Champagne) which was dubbed ‘the perfect cocktail for getting engaged to a billionaire’ by one newly-carnivorous Lady, and a wet 24 Martini, which was borne from the challenge ‘make me the perfect Martini’, and skilfully created through the mixture of Beefeater 24 gin, orange bitters and Noilly Prat Ambre, finished with grapefruit and I’m fairly certain some form of actual magic. The roll-call of cocktails consumed also included; Aviation, Hawksmoor Fizz, Martinez, Lambeth Lemonade and then, we fear, some shots, some macaroni cheese, and, you know, some Chateaubriand. And after that we can’t remember.
Go there at once and order a Wet 24 Martini. And a medium-rare, 900g Chateaubriand on the side.
