All Aboard! LCC Bethnal Green Has Arrived!

If you like cocktails as much as we do the opening of a new bar is good news, the fact that it’s a new venue of the London Cocktail Club is not just great news. It’s fantastic news!

The end of July saw the LCC moving further East and opening its 8^th bar at its 7^th location in Bethnal Green, just a couple of minutes walk from the tube station, fitting neatly into one of the railway arches on Paradise Row.

Sticking with the railway/tube idea, the bar has transport related art, posters and artefacts on its walls, but not too much for it to feel liked a themed bar. Just a couple of booths are decked out in textiles that look like the ones you find on trains (you probably can, but not on a line I regularly travel on) and the toilets are really easy to spot as they have moving messages displays above the doors to announce there whereabouts (comes in handy after a few Heisenbergs).

There is plenty of seating inside, with bar stools and loads of comfortable sofas, but this LCC has something different to offer from the others – a large out side terrace to enjoy your drinks in the sunshine. Perfect!

Of course there are several things that will always be the same, whichever LCC you visit (the others are in Covent Garden, Oxford Circus, Shaftesbury Avenue, Goodge Street, Islington and Shoreditch): an impressive bar with every spirit you could wish for, enthusiastic and knowledgeable bar staff who seem to know that they have one of the best jobs in the industry, good music, generous Happy Hours and the legendary JJ Goodman, the award winning founder of LCC – businessman, designer, mixologist, brand developer and life and soul of the party. He has got quite a few other strings to his bow and I could go on and on, but check this out instead.

JJ Goodman

Cocktails! I forgot the cocktails! (No, I didn’t, but they do deserve a paragraph on their own). For an idea of what’s on the menu, check out the Cocktails A-Z on LCC’s website. But there is plenty more where they come from, with monthly specials and new concoctions joining the classics and old favourites all the time. Our evening began with LCC Bellinis, followed by (in no particular order) Brixton Riots, Jam Jar Daiquiris, Porn Star Martinis, Heisenbergs, Boogie Nights and Bacon & Egg Martinis (minus the bacon, they had run out). And before you worry about our livers, we didn’t have one of each, but shared many of the cocktails with each other. Favourites? All of them! (Non-alcoholic cocktails are also available)

I know I have mentioned my love of cocktails repeatedly and I love making cocktails at home. Only today I made a really good Melon Margarita (even if I say so myself), but of course there is always something missing, something only a professional cocktail bar will have: a special liqueur, fruit syrup, exotic seasoning or herb and flower infused spirit and, of course the expertise of a professional bartender (I love watching them, a good bartender is like an artist. How they handle four bottles at the same time when I would have problems with two, is beyond me). This is one of the reasons why I won’t stop going to cocktail bars anytime soon, because even though I am able to uncork a bottle of wine and open a bottle of beer just about anywhere, serving a perfectly balanced cocktail with flair and imagination is quite a different matter and best left to the experts and it doesn’t get much better as the people behind the bars of the London Cocktail Club.