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The japes from Mr Fogg’s are starting to wear a bit thin. What began as a fairly innocuous and rather lavish themed bar in Mayfair – a townhouse filled with wonders supposedly gathered from Phileas Fogg’s travels around the world – has become a London-wide bar group, the gimmick twisted almost 80 ways. The latest incarnation is a Broadgate Circle bar named after his wife with a British Raj vibe and a ‘maritime club’ in the basement. A group of middle-aged women had booked drinks in a dinghy, but we chose pouffy seats in a wing of the ground floor made to look like the inside of a posh steamboat. Awkwardly, a white woman in a sari took our order.
Cocktails are the menu mainstay. Although ours took a while to arrive (despite the bar being quite empty – our mistake for visiting the City at the weekend), they were decent enough. Running on Steam (£13) was a refreshing blend of gin, marmalade, apricot liqueur, assam tea and fruit, but Ta-Ta’s Margarita (£11) was on the astringent side from chilli and turmeric mixed with tequila, lime and grapefruit. ‘Lamb lollipops’ were fatty and inelegantly spiced chops.
So the quality has dipped and this execution of the theme feels a bit problematic. But I imagine in the week it’s heaving with office workers raring to get steaming in a steamer.