Mayfair isn’t as stuffy as you think it is. Honest!! Take, for example, Wine Bar. Yes, a silly name. A somewhat impossible-to-Google name. But, an extremely apt one. Wine Bar isn’t out here trying to impress you with paintings of tigers and sofas made of gold (unlike some bars around these parts). Instead, it feels a bit like a kitchen in the Cotswolds; all white-washed brick walls, and a rustic, rural energy that seems ideal for eating large hunks of cheese and washing them down with big, bold glasses of red, or juicy whites with a hint of skin-contact.
Of course, Wine Bar’s credentials are covertly fancy. It’s part of the Artfarm family, the hospitality wing of mega gallerists Hauser and Wirth, who also run the glitzy Mount St Restaurant and tarted-up Audley pub across the road, as well Farm Shop upstairs, a kind of Marie Antoinette cosplay countryside store full of goodies from their outpost in Bruton, Somerset.
Down in the bright, airy basement the knowledgeable team will happily guide you through their 150-strong list, which features wines from their own estate and cider from their orchard. Better still is the cheese list, which comes from a temperature controlled room and is delivered to you alongside serious slabs of charcuterie. More ravenous than that? There’s also chicken from the in-house rotisserie. A very classy joint.