That Natural Philosopher is a charming, ramshackle little
cocktail bar that I liked very much. It’s just a shame no one else seems to. Or
perhaps they just don’t know about it. Even though it isn’t hiding itself you
could probably walk past it and not quite realise it was there. It looks
humble. Inside it is split into three levels with the bottom one being nothing
more than a cubby hole where you and a small group of friends could hide away.
It’s done by the same people who ran Manero’s (now closed) and it’s just as
cool with the same kind of ‘being in someone’s house’ vibe. But as there was
only me, my friend and two other people in there when we went at 10pm on a
Friday night, it rather lacked atmosphere. A girl and her mum turned up when we
were halfway through our drinks but I would hesitate to guess that was it for
the night.
It doesn’t help that it’s not near the other bars on Hackney
Road – I expected it to be near Mr Buckley’s but it’s very much the Cambridge
Heath end. Our cocktails were very nice and the sausage roll menu sounded
delicious but we moved onto other pastures after just the one drink. That one
drink being the Zabarella, a cardamom-infused tequila with lime juice, vanilla
sugar syrup and pomegranate. An interesting blend – I don’t usually like
cardamom that much but this was really nicely balanced. My friend had the special (I can't remember what it was called) which came with an ice lolly to dunk into the cocktail!
And I appreciated that
the menu was short enough not to cause total choice paralysis, even though
every cocktail sounded intriguing.
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Please feel free to add your views, or maybe suggest somewhere I should put on my list!