Artesian — Restaurant in London

My daughter and I have always been close. From time to time we celebrate that, and last night was such an occasion. We would have enjoyed our precious time together anywhere, but it was just especially delightful to be hosted at a place with such incredible attention to detail. Her drink was served in a copper martini glass and garnished with a slice of white chocolate. When I looked at the ice in my highball I marveled at how perfectly stacked my ice cubes were, only to realize they weren’t perfectly stacked, but were in fact a single tall ice “cube” designed to fit the glass perfectly.

There’s a famous story of a concert violinist who played in the DC subway while distracted passengers hurried by. Don’t make that mistake if you visit this bar. Stop, pause, notice the attention of the servers, the pagoda shapes carved at the top of the bar, the every detail that someone has agonized over to bring this experience to you. Marvel at the many miracles that have brought you to this moment, to celebrate with this perfectly crafted experience and your brief time on this planet.

So yes, my daughter and I have always been close and we would have enjoyed a bottle of malt liquor from a paper bag on a park bench. And this is not exactly a review of a hotel bar. It’s actually more a thank you note. We deeply appreciated our evening at Artesian, and the exclamation mark they put on our evening, so many miles from...

After all the awards it has won, I was really expecting to be wowed by the cocktails here, but when I arrived, friends and family in tow, all excited by how I'd been talking it up, the initial impression from the cocktail menu was a little disappointing. A very plain menu with pretty plain sounding drinks, each composed only of two components (though admittedly many of the components I didn't recognise). Don't let this fool you. Behind the veil of simplicity lies world class Fat-Duck levels of culinary excellence and scientific creativity. Whisky and peach? Champagne and cream? Eugh. And most of them are plainly (if elegantly) presented, most just a clear ungarnished liquid. But then you try it. Anything but simple. Refined, distilled, centrifuged, redistilled, infused... The results are uniformly brilliant.

Having had the cheekiness to ask, we were also treated to a brief tour of the laboratory where they develop these inspired glasses of mixology genius. To our amazement, whilst it was densely packed, the lab was quite small, just a single room in the basement. But to see even just a little glimpse into the creative and engineering processes behind their award winning drinks was quite a privilege.

Yes it's expensive (£20/drink when we were there) but these are no ordinary drinks. Worth...

Absolutely fabulous experience from start to finish! We went on a Thurs eve around 8pm, there was a great buzz it was almost full but we were seated straight away. We hadnt booked and we were asked if we were residents of the hotel so they do keep tables available for guests which is fair enough. We were there for 30 minutes and during this short time i would say we interacted with around 5 of the staff whe were all without fail incredibly friendly and helpful explaining the amazing cocktail list and made us feel so comfortable and welcome really fantastic. And the cocktails we ordered were a complete adventure in themselves. Wow! If you like gin and maybe more for the ladies because of the butterflies but the Cocoon is exquisite and my husband likes Mai Tais so we were recommended for him to try the Mind Your Step which he says is the best cocktail he has ever had. Our bill came to 45 quid with a small bowl of queen green olives which were also delicious and what we believe were complimentary nuts and crisps. If you have a 50 pound note burning a hole in your pocket you cant go wrong...