Opium a cocktail bar themed around an old opium den. Split over three floors each floor has its own cocktail menu. Located in Chinatown London behind a simple green door. This hidden delight only open to those that can find it.
We found Opium on one of our trips to the City when our usual pre dinner cocktail bar, Blind Pig at Social Eating House was closed. We were hunting for cocktail bars that had something a little different about them. If you've been reading the blog you'll know that we like to search out different places to drink, Anonymous in Prague and more recently Bar 65 in New York.
On arrival it took us a little time to find the bar, the green door being harder to find when it's open. Once you are through the door it's up a narrow staircase, we went all the way to the top Academy bar, where we sat at the bar.
The drinks menu varies by floor, we've only visited the top floor. The first time we visited we sat at the bar, where you can watch the cocktails being creating in front of you. Watching the cocktails being made allows you to see all of them go out, we found ourselves asking what they all were and which one we fancied next.
So sat at the bar we started our first visit with what could be considered normal cocktails, a coffee rob roy for me and a cherry blossom Vespa for Lou. As I said early being sat at the bar allows you to see all the drinks being created. Now alongside the floor menus there is a special signs of the chinese zodiac menu where all the cocktails are based on the animal of each zodiac / year. As well as the flavours being themed so are the vessels that the cocktails are served in.
The fact that cocktails come in animal shaped vessels, should they be called mugs? they're not glasses. Anyway we'd seen these cocktails being made and going to other tables and just had to join in and try them out. We picked our drinks partly based on the year, we kinda cheated by finding a year that suited. Our birth years, parents birth years, nephews we had enough to be able to bend the idea. So far we've tried the Horse, Goat and the dog. I'd like to go back and try more years, but from the website it looks like this menu may have been discontinued.
We've not tried the Dim Sum, as we have always been going to have pre dinner cocktails when we have been eating out, next time we will try the Dim Sum as well. We'll probably be back next time we go to London provided we can get a booking. We are always looking for new places to try so if there's somewhere we should go then drop me a line.
Did you try this out? Comment here!