Top 5 places to lounge
The drop-dead gorgeous Floridita
11 April 2012
Want to know where Frank Sinatra used to sip dry Martini and tinkle the ivories? Or simply looking for cool-as-you-like, high-class urban style? We reveal the top five London bars where Frank, Dean, Sammy and the gang would feel right at home...
- American Bar at the SavoyStrand, London WC2R 0EU. Tel: 020 7836 4343This was apparently Frank Sinatra's favourite London watering hole so lays claim to some bona fide Rat Pack history. The jackets and tie rule was relaxed and now the atmosphere is far from stiff. Lean nonchalantly against the grand piano with your dry Martini while the pianist launches into 'Fly Me To The Moon' and scrutinise the the scratches said to have been left when Sammy Davis Jnr tap-danced while Frank played!
- Floridita100 Wardour Street W1. Tel: 020 7314 4000This new bar and supper club on the lower-ground floor of Conran's former Mezzo restaurant is reviving the 60s-style supper club. It's an exercise in unrestrained glamour, with shiny, shimmering decor and more than a touch of class. Customers tap their feet to the jazz beat, some seated at smartly napiered cocktail tables surrounding the dancefloor, others cocooned in well-upholstered booths, and more in an attractive, almost secluded lounge area at the back of the venue. This drop-dead gorgeous venue exhibits high-class urban decadence at its very best.
- La Casa del Habano100 Wardour Street W1. Tel: 020 7314 4001Another classy venture from Sir Terence Conran, his Mezzo cafe and flower shop has been replaced with La Casa del Habano, a cool-as-you-like cigar bar with dark wooden panels, soft leather seats and a splendidly stocked bar serving as exciting a range of quality daiquiris as you're likely to find anywhere in the world. But cigars are what this place is really about, and the relatively peaceful, elegant surroundings are already attracting healthy numbers of cigar aficionados enjoying a good pull on something long, fat and flavoursome.
- Kingly Club4 Kingly Court, Soho W1B 5PW. Tel: 020 7287 9100This intimate subterranean venue was bought by brothers Dez and Gary McCausland, aficionados of New York venue design, who wanted to create "a Manhattan atmosphere in the heart of Soho". No expense has been spared in order to achieve the Manhattan look and there's a cocktail menu as long as a telephone directory. Stylish guests gather in intimate side booths to sip their Manhattan-style cocktails as giant iconic portraits of models stare down from the walls.
- Berkeley's Blue BarWilton Pl SW1X 7RL. Tel: 020 7235 6000One of Madonna's favourite watering holes, this David Collins-designed annexe is definitely the place to swing, modern-style. Impeccable clientele can be found downing champagne and cocktails (think strawberry and cream martinis and ginger cosmopolitans) with reckless abandon in the ultra-cool, very chic and very, er, blue bar.
