Bars & Pubs

By Ben McFarland

By the beautiful and bucolic* Broadway of Hammersmith, just a few doors up from the late and once great Hammersmith Palais, lies the latest and largest outpost of the well-established B@1 kingdom of laid-back cocktail bars.

They're purveyors of affable bartenders and no-nonsense nights of unaffected imbibing and good times. Pleasantly pruned of pretention and female-friendly, it leads with high ceilings, chandeliers, low-lighting, exposed brickwork, cosy booths and classic party tunes. It's a fairly foolproof formula.

The drinks? Cocktails. Lots of cocktails. The menu makes for a weighty tome, packed with more than 150 libations put together by well-drilled, smiley bartenders. Our drinks, a couple of whisky-based classics and a non-alcoholic ice-cream effort, were all top-notch.

Don't expect a food menu, though. After all, eating is cheating, so drink responsibly. Although you might struggle given that happy hours run from 5pm-8pm Monday to Wednesday and 5pm-7pm Thursday and Friday. So midweek the crowd's mainly after-work drinkers wearing formal, flammable fibres. Expect chenin blanc-chugging chicks and chaps with their ties loosened chatting about iPhone applications. Fascinating if you’ve got an iPhone, but if not, let's hope some boffin comes up with an app that stops people talking about them.

Time Out Issue 2019 April 30-May 6 2009