London Connect

I'm standing in the boiling hot attic of the winner of the Time Out Eating & Drinking Award for Best Bar 2009, 69 Colebrook Row, and I'm surrounded by gadgets. There's a bain-marie (hot water bath) for cooking sous-vide (at low temperature vacuum-sealed in plastic), a vacuum-packing machine, a vacuum still, a cold smoker, a top-of-the-range juicer and a slicer, digital scales, an electronic brix meter for measuring sugar levels, a centrifuge, a pH probe, and a magnetised rotation unit. But right now we need to open a bottle of water - and we can't find a bottle opener for love nor money.

'How can I have all this stuff and not have a bottle opener!' laughs Tony Conigliaro, owner of the assembled equipment, and the man responsible for this tiny bar's superlative cocktails. Not that things were always so hi-tech. 'It all started out with me in my kitchen with pots and pans and plastic bags and elastic bands,' he adds, before flicking the top off the bottle with a cigarette lighter.

The creator of highly-wrought, often playful drinks - the Somerset cider brandy sour on his new autumn menu comes complete with a miniature hay-scented 'bobbing apple' - Conigliaro is often compared to El Bulli's Ferran Adrià, or to Heston Blumenthal. He's crossed paths with both, but Conigliaro winces at the idea that he's in any way 'molecular'.

'Don't use that dirty word in here!' he smiles. 'It's just chemistry. We don't just take inspiration from gastronomy, we work with designers, perfumers, a whole range of people. To call it molecular mixology is very narrow-minded.'

Whatever. The important thing is that his drinks are some of the most imaginative, subtly turned and delicious tasting in the capital (and by no means the most expensive, at around £8 a throw). Take the Gonzales, a blend of tequila, caramel liqueur and essence of honey water and tuberose (a scented plant used in the perfume industry), a dizzying layering of flavours inspired by his research into perfumery. Or the scented Almond Ramos, that carries Beefeater gin, almond milk and orange blossom on a cloud of fluffed egg white. And if that's not hard-hitting enough for you, there's a martini spiked with a mysterious 'dry essence'. 'That drying effect makes your mouth produce saliva, which in turn gives you more flavour,' he explains. 'The result is that the olive becomes like the prize after the insane journey of dryness - it tastes more like a fruit.'

Having said that, on the day we meet, Conigliaro is drinking Cherry Coke. But then again, his bar isn't pretentious either: tucked down an Islington back street, it is home to little more than an upright piano, a few hanging lamps that look like they came from an air-raid shelter, and half a dozen tables and chairs. Upstairs in the 'lab', where the essences, liquors and infusions are painstakingly created, the machines share the space with his bow-tie collection, a toothbrush, tins of lychees and multitude of mysterious bottlings - all under a ceiling that's less than 6 feet high. It's the cocktail equivalent of floor seven-and-a-half in 'Being John Malkovich'.

But the best thing I learn all day is about smelly eggs. Not the kind that smell bad. The kind that smell of, well, anything you want. 'Eggs are porous, so they can absorb smells,' explains Conigliaro, who then shows me how you place them in an egg box impregnated with a hydrosol (a water, rather than oil-based essence) and seal them in Tupperware for a few days. The result is an egg white with none of that unpleasant 'wet dog' smell that so often spoils a good sour. In this instance he's infused some eggs with a grass essence designed for his Somerset Sour - and blow me if they don't smell like a goddamn roll in the hay.

69 Colebrooke Row, N1 8AA (07540 528593). Angel tube / Essex Rd rail. 5pm-midnight Mon-Wed; 5pm-1am Thur, Fri; 5pm-1am Sat. Booking ahead advised. For reservations, email drinks@69colebrookerow.com or text 07540 428 593.