LOUNGE BOHEMIA - by appointment — Restaurant in London

OK so first off - my rating is for the service, not the place and experience itself - that's a 5 star hands down. So me and my friends had booked a slot, which they give for 2 hours and we knew that. I literally travelled 1.5 hrs for a 2 hr slot so you can imagine how much I wanted to revisit the place. Without giving away too much of the experience, I'll just say our server took our first orders and all was fine. Then, they forgot about us. He came to ask us 10 mins into the drinks if all was OK, but thats it. Noone came to ask again, we went looking for them at the bar but noone was there,then we had to call another server from another table over. We had 30 mins of our slot left and he wasn't looking very happy either, and he tried to refuse us service saying we couldn't finish in that time! I've never been so angry in my life! Well long story short, we ordered, he brought them pretty quickly and we finished with 5 mins to spare. Point to note is that there was no other party waiting for our table at that time, as he said there was another booking. Then, after all this palaver, he brought the bill ( with service charge added btw, oh the cheek!) And that's when he told us their card machine wasn't working! I mean, literally the final nail. We were in no mood to go out looking for ATM machines, so we digged into our purses and managed to get the cash, enough to cover the complete bill + half of the service charge, which we shouldn't have given any of as we hated the service. If they had told this to us at the beginning, we could have got some cash then when we were sober and it wasn't as night. He did give us a little something extra to eat/drink (one of their specialities) along with the bill to 'apologise' for the wait, but the ship had...

A chill, edgy place you don't have to yell to hear each other AND inventive cocktails? This is the place.

I've been to Lounge Bohemia twice, and can't wait for the third time!

To book, you'll need to call between 10am and 4pm. I called Paul the week before I wanted to come, and it didn't seem to be a problem to find a table for 3 people on a Saturday night.

Now onto the fun things - the experience! You'll need to look closely or you'll miss the entrance. It's just a opening on the side of a building where you'll have to walk down a narrow hallway, down very narrow steps (try not to fall!), and finally to the bar.

The vibe almost felt like an older, mature Brady Bunch house in the best way possible. The seating is so comfy, I could have fallen asleep. I didn't don't worry!

Now to the drinks. There were 3 of us, so we each tried a different tasting menu. How to describe them? Imagine a normal cocktail bar, then imagine it was in Alice in Wonderland and Dr Seuss. I won't go into how delicious the cocktails were - they all were amazing tastewise and visually. Just have a look at my pictures! After the tasting menus, we just started ordering a la carte and were even more impressed.

One thing - do mention if you don't like certain flavors. My husband doesn't like tomato, he forgot to mention it, and got a bloody Mary inspired drink by accident. It absolutely was not the bar's fault, but when you go make sure to mention any allergies or dislikes!

One thing I loved - they kept bringing out popcorn 🍿 I'll...

Was excited to try this spot given its high ratings but this was genuinely the most off-putting experience I have ever had at a bar. First off, you walk into a basement that is both unsettlingly bright and quiet (on a Saturday night) to be greeted by a waiter who gave a disapproving groan when we mentioned we did not book in advance. After making us feel we needed to apologize, the waiter informed us that there was a table (so unsure what the need was for the guilt trip). The cocktail menu was impossibly pretentious-- while I can appreciate a conceptual menu, having no indication of at least the type of alcohol in the cocktails (or whether it would even be a liquid, apparently?) left us feeling more confused than excited to order. As we sipped our first round (in whispers so as not to disturb the atmosphere), another couple came in and was given a lengthy lecture by the mad-hatter-looking waiter about being late for their booking, followed by a seemingly racist "compliment" which we were as shocked to overhear (clear as day, again, given the silence) as the couple themselves clearly were. After all that, the waiter informed them that he did in fact have a table for them. A whole day later I am still mortified and unsettled by this experience. I don't care if your cocktails were made by the king himself, berating guests to paint the picture of exclusivity is pretentious, rude and unnecessary. Let alone microaggressions from a waiter drunk with power. Avoid...