You can’t beat a negroni. A simple concoction of gin, Campari and vermouth, the ruby red drink is bitter and sweet all at once, with a refreshing zing of orange bringing the whole thing together. The cocktail is so beloved it gets celebrated every year with a whole week dedicated to it. It’s Negroni Week in London right now, so we’ve put together a definitive guide to the capital’s best ones.
There’s a whole world of negronis out there. You have your trad ones, available at places like Bar Italia and Bar Etna. Then there are the experimental ones, made with mezcal, orange blossom or pink peppercorns.
To help you sort the overly bitter from the watery, the inventive from the overly ambitious, Time Out’s editors and writers put their tastebuds to the test to come up with the negroni matrix – an ultimate guide to the cocktail in London across four categories: mad, trad, cheap and pricey.
Coming in at both trad and cheap were Brutto and Bar Etna – both of these spots serve a slap-up classic negroni for a fiver a pop. At the other end of the scale was the Connaught Bar, which serves a vintage negroni for the eye-watering price of £130, made with Gordon’s Dry Gin 1970s, Campari Bitter 1970s and Martini Rosso Vermouth 1970s.
At the cheap and mad end of the spectrum were Bancone’s orange blossom negroni (£7), Bar Termini’s ‘Superiore’ (£9) made with pink peppercorns, and Hawksmoor’s cherry negroni. If it’s a mezcal one you’re after, Half Cut Market does one for a respectable £12, or head to Equal Parts in Hackney for the ‘Colorado’, made with rhubarb liqueur. And if you choose your negronis based on their strength, we recommend the St John ‘Fergroni’, which goes heavy on the gin.
Did you see that legendary Covent Garden martini bar Christopher’s is closing?
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