- cocktails
- (103)
-
A monthly market (held every first Sunday) which takes place either inside or outside the Milgi bar on City Road (an eclectric bar/bistro with video art, squashy sofas, chandeliers and a good line in cocktails and homemade pop).
It's a bit of a hotchpotch of jumble, young designers, live music, DJs, the odd random performance artist, maybe a BBQ, maybe some nice hot soup...
It's genuinely really great for hand printed tees and pumps, jewellery, second-hand books, vinyl, vintage-rummaging, people-watching, cake-eating, cocktail-drinking... And sometimes it happens at night too, which can be very, very good.
Milgi, 213 City Road, Cardiff, www.myspace.com/northcotelanemarket
Umami is a unique experience, based on the philosophy of Japanese cuisine of natural, seasonal ingredients, accentuated by the substance and tradition of French cuisine. With an international flavour, Umami offers the very best in modern Japanese cuisine and interior design.
The bar is well stocked with the finest booze known to mankind and excellent cocktails.
St. Kongensgade 59
1264 København K
Tlf. +45 33 38 75 00
mail@restaurantumami.dk
10 best bars in LA and no Formosa? You've gotta be kidding! Elvis once tipped a waitress here with a Buick. Great bar, great drinks, great history and great margueritas.
Santa Monica & Formosa
www.worldsbestbars.com/public/venue_listing.jsp?categoryId=29¤tVenueId=353
The Born area is a lovely area of Barcelona, with loads to do, great boutique shops, cafes and general vibe that is hard to beat. Ate lunch in a small restaurant close to Santa Maria del Mar called La Luna which had a €12 menu which was a treat and great food. That night we wandered the Born again to bump into a lively joint called La Fianna, full with a great atmosphere and the best cocktails in the world! Oh I love Barcelona what about you!
Check out their websites...
www.lalunabcn.com
www.lafianna.com
The easiest, friendliest and probably best-looking bar/restaurant in BA with top cocktails supplied by a Geordie barman, barflys made up of artists and jovial locals and a kitchen that serves up delicious argie-based food with an often spicy twist (rare for BA!). Enough said.
san martin 941, BA
Best mojito cocktails on the planet. The restaurant was lively, great and unique atmosphere at a relatively affordable price and nice looking people too... Oh la la what a treat.
15 Banys vells Barcelona. The Borne barcelona.
www.lafianna.com
Circo just opened on the Albert Dock- it's a bar and restaurant with a really eccentric circus/freakshow theme - they have life-sized horse lamps and trapeze!
You can hire the private dining room for a night of karaoke- lots of fun! Try the Candyfloss Martini at the bar too...
Albert Dock, Liverpool
This hotel is an absolute gem of colonial history. For about £40 the Richard Executive Suite makes you feel like a visiting diplomat!
The building has a rich history and is located on the edge of the bund - within easy walking distance of Shanghai's main attractions.
It really made our visit to Shanghai, I can't imagine there is a better place to stay in the city.
I would also recommend a cocktail at M on the Bund - if you want to continue the glamorous feel.
www.pujianghotel.com/
15 Huangpu Road Shanghai,China ZIP：200080
TEL:008621-63246388
FAX：008621-63243179
E-mail: sales@pujianghotel.com
www.m-restaurantgroup.com/ for cocktails.
Two of the best places in the entire world to have a cocktail are the Moon Bar at Vertigo on the 61st floor of the Banyan Tree Hotel and the Sky Bar at Sirocco on the 63rd of the State Tower Hotel.
Both are in the heart of the city and have jaw-dropping views where you feel as close to the aeroplanes overhead as the ground below. The Moon Bar, especially, seems to hover over the city. Brilliant fun and very surreal — like sipping cocktails on the set of Bladerunner.
A tiny dark wood bar where the ageing white-suited cocktail barmen expertly mix all the classics. It has no menu so this isn’t the place to go for a passionfruit vodkatini, but if you want to experience all the understated glamour of a bygone era, there’s no better place. Go for its simple signature gimlet cocktail or a martini. Heaven.
Calle Rec 24 (metro Jaume 1
In the country that invented three classic rum-based cocktails (the mojito, daiquiri and cuba libre) it’s no surprise that you can get one in every bar in town. The bars of the city’s many historic grand old hotels are the best places for a pre-dinner sundowner (but eat in a paladar rather than the hotels — the food is rank).
Some of the best are the elegant garden at the Nacional and the rooftop bars of the Moorish-style Sevilla (the setting for Our Man in Havana) and Ambos Mundos (where Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls). The two more famous Hemingway haunts (Floridita and La Bodeguita) are just tourist traps these days.
Croatian design team Gharani Strok designed the interiors for the recently opened five-star Hotel Bellevue.
The hotel itself is like something from an old James Bond film with its lift to the private beach below built into the rock face.
The cocktails served in Vapor's bar are something quite special. The terrace is split in two with Vapor on one side and the other side being home to one of the best restaurants in Dubrovnik. The terrace has a wonderful view out over the Adriatic where you can sip your cocktail while watching a whole variety of craft from tall Pirates of The Caribbean ships to little island-hopping taxis moving in and out of Dubrovnik harbour framed by a glorious sunset.
The Adriatic's most friendly barman made us the perfect Vodka Martinis and told us tales of having to fight in the Balkan war and then finding work on a cruise ship where he learned the art of perfect mixing. My boyfriend and I spent a magical evening sipping amazing cocktails and watching the moonlight dance over the Adriatic. Bliss!
Hotel Bellevue - Pera Cingrije 7, 20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia
T +385 20 330 000 F +385 20 330 100
www.hotel-bellevue.hr
The views up here are like nothing I have ever seen before. You know that scene in Vanilla Sky where Tom Cruise is at the top of the building and the whole world is glittering below him? Drinking in Level 25 is every bit as mind-blowing as that because it's all glass and the atmosphere of the place changes with the weather, making it impossible to get bored of.
It takes on the character of the sunset, or of a starry night. The city sparkles in the distance and the sea glimmers and glints and you feel like you could be a movie star yourself.
I go to Miami once or twice a year to see my family and this is always where I take people for a drink now. It's really good for post-work drinks if you're working in the area because it's in the financial district. You could get drunk just on the atmosphere or, of course, on the menu of marvellous speciality cocktails.
25th floor of Conrad hotel building, Brickell Ave, Miami, Florida.
This was my closest ever brush with foot and mouth - a shot of Yukon jack whisky with a shrivelled human toe in the bottom.
To join the Sourtoe Cocktail Club in the Downtown Hotel, Dawson City, Yukon, I had to let its gnarled blackened nail touch my lip, a tradition that started in the 1970s when a local discovered the frozen tootsie of a rum runner who'd had to amputate it in a log cabin when he got frostbite.
Occasionally toes are accidentally swallowed by visiting drunks - they re-emerge painfully a few days later but they aren't really toes you can use again (unless you're really flying), so a steady supply have been donated over the years including ones from diabetics and people who decide to use a lawnmower while wearing sandals. Last time I went they had a full donated set of five toes, all preserved in salt.
It's not as bad as it sounds and you do get to become a member of the Sourtoe Cocktail Club, the only club I've been a member of in my life.
I’m not known for skipping in and out of cocktail bars, but swimming to one in a turquoise sea under a tropical sun is another matter, even I couldn’t resist the allure of the infamous Soggy Dollar Bar, so called because the only access is by water.
We had hired a little boat with some friends, talked my brother into being captain, and were sailing around the BVI in the Caribbean for an idyllic holiday. We had already discovered the potent Painkiller cocktail, an innocent tasting concoction of white rum and tropical fruit juices, served in half pint mugs. One before dinner the night before had left us giggly and strangely uninterested in the food put before us. The test was now whether we could swim ashore, have a Painkiller and return without drowning.
The bar lived up to all its hype; swaying palm trees, golden sands and hammocks to lie in while sipping and chatting. We eventually managed to doggypaddle back to the mooring and then lay out on deck gazing at the stars. We didn’t bother with dinner, strangely no-one was hungry – again!
Views of the city and its fjord to die for from this bar on the 21st floor. A stylish and suited downtown crowd gathers here at sunset to watch the light fade and the neons come on all over the city, supping sophisticated concoctions from a long (and, as it’s Scandinavia, suitably pricey) cocktail list. Male vertigo sufferers should stick to short measures: the urinals are built into glass walls looking out over the abyss.
Tiny cocktail bar (no tables, no chairs - just a bar). Though in the middle of Born still a very nice place.
Rec 24 (just off Santa Maria del Mar church) in the Born
Ten years old this year, makes the Gin Palace a venerable old man among Melbourne's hip young cocktail bars. It has lost none of its greatness though. Well trained bartenders, a bookshelf of cocktail books, hundreds of bottles (including dozens of types of gin) means that if you want to stray from the ten martinis printed on their cocktail list, you can have just about anything. Also, the chairs are stuffed with goose feathers, the music is never too loud and it is open every day of the year (including Christmas). I don't live in Melbourne any more but if I did, I'd be there right now.
Russell Place, Melbourne
Not really a cocktail bar, but a cocktail lounge in a lovely Italian restaurant. Makes the only proper vodka martini I've ever tasted in Ireland. Also has the best pasta.
The Mall, Waterford City. www.lapalma.ie
Now, I am not normally a cocktail man. But on a weekend in Chicago with my then-fiancee, we discovered The Terrace at the Conrad. You snuggle up on a sofa five stories above the rest of the world but feel like you're a million miles away, so it's perfect either for romantic drinks or for a relaxed night with friends (and not as pretentious as a lot of other bars we tried in the city). The unique cocktail menu was a really big hit with my other half and even I was a fan of the 'TerraceTini'. Go in the summer and soak up the atmosphere, or go now and soak up the alcohol whilst the exchange rate is so good... the lovely lady I took is now my wife so it must have been a reasonable success!
The Terrace, upstairs at the Conrad Chicago at 521 North RUsh St.
Chicago, Illinois, 60611.
Tel number 1312 645 1500
Send your feedback or queries to been.there@guardian.co.uk
Search Been there
