Spend a Penny on Silliness and Snuff
Talk of hidden gems. Cellar Door in Covent Garden can not only boast the enviable address of Zero Aldwych, but has also been voted London’s top hidden treasure by Time Out and Vodafone. And you will probably have walked past it hundreds of times and not even noticed it’s there.
Decending down the armadillo-like staircase you enter one of the most compact bars in the capital. The tiny space is decked out in retro burlesque style, with room for about 60 punters, and regular burlesque and cabaret evenings – think 1930s Berlin meets New York basement dive. Open until 1am nightly, with live acts from 9pm, they also have the UK’s first SMS jukebox, Hang The DJ.
Cellar Door’s website boasts that Oscar Wilde, Joe Orton and Sir John Gielgud used to be regulars at their establishment. How exciting! Until you realise that up until fairly recently, this glamourous bar was Theatreland’s most famous gentleman’s lavatory. Oh, so they were…oh, ok. In homage to this fact, the bar still has the most avant-garde bogs in town, with plain glass doors that frost over when a magic button is pressed. A little intimidating, and not one to be tried after one too many cocktails, but a good party trick nonetheless.
The astonishingly well-stocked bar can create any beverage you can think up, even if it’s not down on the cocktail lists, plus lager from Peru and real ale from the Dark Star brewery in Dorset. And with an innovative but retro way of getting around the smoking ban, they also sell lines of variously flavoured snuff. Immeasurably less anti-social than smoking and, if only someone had the foresight to ban it, infinitely cooler than any illegal substances.
Cellar Bar. Zero Aldwych, WC2E 7DN, 020 7240 8848
by Agnes Frimston
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