The Key Room No.72

There are 71 rooms at Josh Hotel in Ari, and then there is the ‘seventy-second’. To get there, you do not head down a corridor looking for a room number. You go to the front desk, like any guest checking in, and ask for a key. The keycard comes with a small deposit and a half-wink from whoever hands it over, since everyone behind that desk knows exactly what you are really asking for.

The room itself, once you find the unmarked black wall that hides it, is tiny and red, lined with mirrors and lit like a 1960s den that never got the memo about the decades passing. Two small screens loop quiet, quirky films in the background. The whole conceit is built around a fictional character: Mr Josh, a globe-trotting bon vivant whose imagined travels provide the menu's throughline, each cocktail a postcard from somewhere he claims to have been.

Mr Josh's Journey makes the house style clear: a whisky-based twist on an Old Fashioned, topped with caramelised sugar flakes. A Drop of Tokyo runs lighter and stranger – vodka and Japanese sake cut with lemon juice and wasabi syrup, sweet and citrusy with a slow, creeping heat that catches you a beat after the first sip. Marilyn 1950s leans sweeter still, with vodka and Malibu rounded out by honey, cinnamon, lime and grapefruit bitters, often finished with a wisp of smoked cinnamon over the top.

No towering concept, no design pedigree to cite – just a tiny red hideaway that earns its place by being exactly as much fun as a secret room behind a hotel front desk should be.

The drinker this suits: anyone who wants the first round of the night to feel like they have gotten away with something. A good ice-breaker bar, low on pretension and high on theatre.

Josh Hotel, 19/2 Soi Ari 4, Phaholyothin Rd, Phaya Thai. Open daily, 6pm-1am.