Geeklawyer for all his macho pretensions, and notwithstanding an embarrassing 30% heterosexuality rating on the Swedish Gay Pride site, enjoys a good cocktail. A hangover from his days as an indolent student, bedding impressionable Freshers, he feels the need to indulge himself once in a while. One of his Harem suggested cocktails.
So then, to the Artesian Bar at Langhams Hotel in Regent Street. This bar is the product of a recent general refit by the Langham: a favoured watering hole of BBC execs from across the road looking for something other than Reality shows to waste licence payers cash on.
The universal rule of cocktails bars is they must be 25% smaller than that needed to accommodate the drinkers. Shoehorned between several mock Ionic columns, and a toilet, the Artesian adhered to the rule: Geeklawyer could barely find a table at which to contemplate a decor so camp it must have been copied wholesale from Liberace’s boudoir. Were it any more camp it would have had guy-ropes and been on sale at Millets.
As you might expect the waiters hustled and bustled about. The head bustler, a ‘Francoise’ one assumed, on spying him, asked Geeklawyer, in the impenetrable French accent they affect, if he could help; all the while regarding him with the curled lip and superior airs of a man whose name was probably really Mike and who hailed from Toxteth.
Having said that the waiters ‘hustled and bustled’ the reader should not misconstrue this as being done to accomplish anything so bourgeois as service. No. Oh my, no. Nothing could avert these fellows from their own interests: nuclear explosions could devastate the town; police and terrorists could have fought running gun battles through the hotel foyer; patrons could expire in grisly screaming pain from Swine Flu before their eyes, but at no point would a Hustler and Bustler ever feel inclined, of his own motion, to ask if a cocktail would relieve the distress.
If the service was languid the cocktails, conjured after much importuning, were entirely sublime. The Geeklawyer Harem were as one in their praise. The ladies had Hemmingways, Blue Chillis, P’itini and Pina Coladas; indeed many more, and many times; all were consummately crafted, precisely presented and roughly demolished.
And then painfully paid for. For while the cocktails were fine, they were priced from an average of £14 each up to £1,865. Really, per single cocktail. Ouch. There is no justification for an £1,865 cocktail unless it comes in a 50 Gallon drum and is served by an accommodating naked lady.
Verdict: despite the unquestionable quality of the cocktails, the poor service cramped vulgar surroundings and excessively high prices ruined the Artesian. For Geeklawyer this Well was well poisoned.
*technically @catstress isn’t Harem member.
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