The Artesian: Despite the drinks, the magic's gone

1/8
David Ellis @dvh_ellis4 January 2018

The first time I went to the Artesian, years ago, it had its fair share of high-end hookers, curled up under chairs, sat in the laps of rich widowers, lapping at cocktails by the bar, playing with balls of wool.

Well, perhaps not the last one, but it's where I first learnt that pricey places draw expensive men and women looking for moneyed men and women. This has led to a childish little game where, in really costly places, I try to figure how who is paying for their date. The other thing I remember is that the bar also served the most extraordinary drinks and crackled and fizzed with everyone having a good time, so it made sense when it was named the world’s best bar four years in a row.

Then head bartenders Alex Kratena and Simone Caporale walked out of the door. A dozen staff followed them. So did the hookers. And so, sadly, has the magic.

On paper, it’s not clear why. After months of keeping carping journalists at bay, the hotel called in a team worthy of their predecessors: Remy Savage, who pushed Paris’ Little Red Door to number 11 on the World’s 50 Best Bars list, was put in charge of the drinks. Anna Sebastian, who killed it at the Savoy’s Beaufort Bar, is bar manager. The other waiters and waitresses all seem nice enough, too, apart from one who humiliated the Italian (my date, forever) by following her to the loo over a mistake – their mistake – regarding the bill.

That’s another story, though. The important thing is that the drinks are still magnificent little serves, only this time they're imaginative takes on the classics. The espresso martini looks so markedly different from any other in London that you'll think they've brought out the wrong drink. There’s no foam, it isn’t dark brown, there aren’t any coffee beans. Instead, it’s sunset orange, looking more like a watery whisky in a Champagne coupe; it’s quite beautiful in its way, practically glowing in the light. It’s also beautifully subtle, all coffee but no stickiness.

Eye-catching: the gorgeously presented Gimlet

Their Flip (bourbon, rum, port, yolk, cream) is rare proof that more really is more. 300 years of cocktailing have treated this sailors drink very well indeed; it’s just as warming and cosy and gorgeous as you’d imagine. The Japanese Cocktail (cognac, pistachios, bitters) is nutty and rich, the pistachios nicely drier than the usual orgeat syrup. A clever thought, an expert touch.

The one you should order, and everyone but us did, is the Gimlet. The menus listing seems like dry joke – “Plymouth gin, lime, lime, lime” – but it's a hint at the look of it; three gins each blended with a different type of lime. The shot glasses sit elegantly in an eye-catching carved block of ice that glints. People look and pretend not to be envious, then order one themselves.

While the stars on this page are for the drinks alone, if you knew the bar before, you’ll know these are all rather tame compared to what there once was. There are no floating garnishes, there are no bronze bugs serving little snacks. There are no dashes of Dali, no splashes of surrealism. It’s all a bit… ordinary. Bloody delicious, but hardly out there, not much different from what's in other top hotel bars. And, well, the Connaught sort of have that covered, don’t they? These drinks are good, they just belong somewhere else: everyone went the Artesian entirely because it was different. Change is good, certainly, but even if you prefer simple, understated places which pour out drinks with the minimum of self-serving show – and I tend to – spectacle was the spirit of the Artesian. There's none of it left..

Maybe it would be refreshing if all the small things here weren't wrong, and maybe those mistakes would be forgivable if drinks weren't about £20 each. But they are, so it’s not unfair to expect a basic level of decency. They could, for instance, provide water for the table. Or, when bringing food: napkins (you shouldn’t have to ask for napkins). It’s lip-curlingly cheap for a place this pricey to charge for olives – the best part of a fiver – and worse still to bring them to a table of two with a single cocktail stick. One. Stick. Between. Two. They do give you a palate cleanser, what they call a welcome drink, but 'welcome' seems entirely the wrong word for a shot of what the Italian appositely identified as chilled dishwater water. It is misleading, too, for the bar’s website to gloat about their previous awards and wins which were, in effect, for an entirely different place.

There is no fire anymore, no pretend-broken Martini glasses, no stunts, no illusions. They need to shake it up, give it some energy, make it exciting again. The bar needs a stiff drink. I’d recommend the first one on their menu, a Corpse Reviver.

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