Cahoots

Cahoots is a 1940's bar located in Soho's Kingly Court, offering live entertainment, dazzling cocktails & late night parties set in London's 'underground'

Cahoots | High Spirits, Scoundrels & Swing!

http://www.cahoots-london.com

London's New Whizzo Underground Bar | Cahoots, 13 Kingly Court

Inception’s Charlie Gilkes and Duncan Stirling have turned it into Cahoots – an amazing 1940s themed bar in an old air raid shelter disguised as a tube station, tucked away just off Carnaby Street.

The stairs leading down to the bar are those old wooden escalators banned since the Kings Cross fire in 1987, from which my dad narrowly escaped, which leads me to an oddly amusing story… My Turkish au-pair girl at the time of the fire took my father’s phone call saying that he was OK.

The cocktail menu is a staggering four A4 pages with 13 sections using ingredients such as OXO cubes and lemon curd with drinking vessels such as cans, milk bottles and thermos flasks.

I tried the Dunkin’ for apples (£10) with rum, cloudy apple juice and homemade salted caramel syrup from the ‘Tommies & Dickys’ section, this is a manly drink section so of course I was drawn to it like a shot.

As well as anything cherry-based, Ade is obsessed with sours so he had the Cahooch sour (£8) from the ‘In Cahooch’ section – drinks made with their homemade grog, a blend of Mount Gay Black Barrel rum, Bulleit bourbon, Cointreau Noir and Martini Rosso vermouth.

Cahoots | High Spirits, Scoundrels & Swing!

Book | Cahoots- High Spirits, Scoundrels & Swing!

Well fear not The Captain is up to speed with the newest technological advancements, no need to use the dog and bone, you can simply book online here!

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Cahoots | Cocktails in a Secret 1940s, Underground-Themed ...

Cahoots | Kingly Court Cocktail Bar Up until now, there have been two major problems with London’s most theatrical, vintage tube carriage-containing, live music-delivering, 1940s-style cocktail bar: 1) It hasn’t existed, and 2) Had it existed, it would have likely been located in East London; it might have been rubbish; and it would have certainly required hours of queuing to get in.

But thankfully it now does exist – in the post war, underground drinking den form of Cahoots – not in East London, but just off Carnaby Street.

Enter through the ticket hall and you’ll instantly find yourself in an intimate, buzzy and clandestine cocktail den containing a replica 1940s tube carriage complete with vintage adverts visible on the exposed brick wall through the windows.

Elsewhere you’ll spot railway tracks; modified steel bunk beds; old lampshades mixed with chandeliers; bartenders (in braces, of course) serving cocktails that mix champagne with garden peas, alongside black market liquor and post-war favourites; framed tube maps and polished white, underground tiles; old clocks that tick backwards; bunting, sandbags; luggage racks and – several times each week – a live band playing 1940s jazz and swing.

Cahoots | 13 Kingly Court, W1B 5PW Like being in the loop about London’s newest bar and restaurant openings?

Cahoots - bar review | London Evening Standard

GO London Newsletter What they say: Cahoots is a glamorous cocktail bar where it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing… once you’re in, it’s 1946, and you’re part of a party that’s trying to rebuild the spirit of post-war Britain.

Read our review of The Piano Works Press Image 3/80 Opso, W1 The drinks have a lot of care stirred into them, the bar nibbles are impossible to refuse, and everyone seems to know each other.

Read our review of Opso 4/80 Kansas Smitty's, E8 Some bars are about the drinks and some are about the experience.

Read our review of Kansas Smitty's 5/80 The Lucky Pig, SW6 When the weather is bright and the doors are flung open, walking into the elegant Lucky Pig feels something like stepping into a courtyard cocktail party.

Read our review of Black Dice 10/80 5cc, EC1Y The basement of the original home of Singer Sewing machines is now a sultry alternative to the dead-eyed City bars nearby Read our review of 5cc PR handout 11/80 Cahoots, W1B 12/80 Milroy’s The Vault, W1D 13/80 El Patron, SW15 14/80 The Fourteenth Colonie, EC1 15/80 Pinch Hackney, E8 16/80 The Dolls House, N1 17/80 Fontaine's, N16 18/80 Street Feast's Hawker House, E8

What's happening in Kingly Court, central London's hottest food hub ...

ES Food Newsletter In the past few years Kingly Court, a three-floored mini mall off Carnaby Street comprising 21 outlets arranged around a covered courtyard, has become known as the area's food quarter.

New Kingly Court bar Cahoots At Kingly Court, new restaurants are more common than boozy bar openings, and one of the latest is The Life Goddess (thelifegoddess.com), a 40-seater Greek food and drink place which sounds more like a wellness centre (or a Seventies shrink) than a modern eatery.

Lots of fun: barbecued meats at Peruvian joint Señor Ceviche Although Kingly Court doesn’t technically include Kingly Street Judy Joo’s Jinjuu (jinjuu.com), serving relaxed Korean food with alcohol in a pairing known as ‘Anju’, is worthy of mention.

Downstairs is more of a restaurant, with platters and barbecued Korean street food served at banqueting tables and a bar overlooking the open kitchen.

Bits and pieces: Anju selection at Jinjuu These additions join cutesy cupcake shop Crumbs and well-established Kingly Court stalwarts Pizza Pilgrims (pizzapilgrims.co.uk), American diner Stax (staxdiner.com), Caribbean joint The Rum Kitchen (therumkitchen.com), tonkotsu ramen specialists Shoryu (shoryuramen.com) and many other tempting purveyors of world food.

Cahoots Picnic Review: What We Thought

What: Cahoots is a disused underground tube station themed bar that transports guests back in time, to post-war 1940s complete with cocktails and sing-a-longs around an old piano.

On the Menu: A selection of home-made sandwiches, not afternoon tea sized bites either but the full sized ones you would find in an actual picnic.

Once through the door a train assistant calls downstairs to confirm there’s space and off you go down the stairs to this wonderful post-war 1940s themed underground tube station.

The Look: Besides the obvious nods to train culture like the train carriage section that runs up one side of the venue with train seats and various train signs you can also spy mismatched furniture, trinkets from the 1940s and a piano on a small stage opposite the bar.

What We Drank: We were greeted with a welcome drink made of vodka, berries and lychee syrup before settling down to order our main drink which comes served in a large, old fashioned milk bottle.

Cahoots | Bars and pubs in Soho, London

I really wasn’t expecting to like Cahoots, the vintage tube-themed bar that’s a bigger hit with tourists than Madame Tussauds.

From its ‘tally ho’ e-comms after making a reservation, to the awkward ‘train guard’ actor on the door and his sheer refusal to break Mockney character, it was more fear-inducing than rush hour on the Central Line, and that’s before we’d even reached the ‘platform’ (you know, the bar).

Once inside though, we quickly relaxed into cocktail hour thanks to efficient staff, low lighting and retro (read kitsch) underground paraphernalia.

It’s all aided by a list of drinks spread across a newspaper-sized menu – plenty of options to get in the mood but a bloody long read.

For more of an edge, the old fashioned (£11) was a jolly good show, its foundations made from the bar’s ‘grog’ mix on the clever ‘Cahooch’ section of the menu.