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With Drake and Morgan above the door you’d expect a bit more from The Otherist, a new watering hole in the heart of the City. This is a relatively small place with, as a friend noted, a ‘posh All Bar One’ vibe. Clientele is as you’d expect for the area – office girls nursing glasses of champagne and slick besuited lads prepared to pay that little bit extra to drink away from the crowded bars around Liverpool Street station.
Beer options are minimal, but our worst suspicions were realised when ordering a pear and ginger martini – the barman reading the step-by-step instructions as he went and the garnish sliding slowly down into the drink. ‘I don’t know why it does that,’ he said, apologetically. It was a poor cocktail even allowing for its shabby appearance. Food service was erratic, staff wandering up and down with plates, seemingly waiting for someone to say ‘I think that’s mine.’ Chicken satay came swimming in peanut sauce; a burger was thin and unappealing – most tables on our visit had stuck to sides of chips. The Otherist will doubtless be popular enough to keep ticking over, but there’s little chance of it becoming a destination bar.