CityBird: Hawksmoor Bar, Spitalfields

Look no further than the Hawksmoor for your Friday night booze fix. The original and best City steak restaurant on Commercial Street launches its underground cocktail bar tonight, in a former underground strip club. Very apt, I might add.

Aficionados of the Hawksmoor (of which, unashamedly, I am one) will already love this place for its kilograms of flawless chateaubriand, the juicy rib-eye steaks and one of the best cocktail lists for a restaurant bar. You’ll be thankful to know that the intimate, slightly-dingy feel is replicated downstairs, with old-school wooden table tops and cosy alcoves, tiled with turquoise. I could wax lyrical about the Art Deco theme – but you want to hear about the booze, right?

There are some unusual bar snacks (think chilli cheese dogs, ‘short rib French dip’ and jalapeno coleslaw) and the cocktail list changes regularly. There will be five changing ‘desert island drinks’, as well as the nuclear banana daiquiri and red and green martinis.

From today they’re only taking bookings for diners, but swing by and, as welcoming as they are, they’ll try and fit you in. Drinkers, turn up and get stuck in at one of the coolest cocktail destinations of 2012.