Teardrop Lounge

If you enjoy drinking cocktails, you’ll like the Teardrop Lounge. If you enjoy seeing them made, you’ll like it even more. It was pure fluke that when we arrived, the only seats remaining were the two barstools next to the wait-station, and we took them willingly, because we’d heard good things about this place from a gin-distilling friend in London. Speaking of gin and tonic, this place makes its own tonic water from scratch, and it’s a million times better than the anaemic stuff that comes out of a soda stream. What was supposed to be a place to kill some time before the cinema turned into an hour-long entertainment in itself. The mixologist was kept on his toes—the bar was at capacity and the orders just kept coming—and we didn’t see him slow or stop for a second. From Tom Collinses to Negronis to Long Island Iced Teas, not to mention the raft of house cocktails that the Teardrop is famous for, he was stirring, shaking, and sluicing incessantly. And if we’d thought that would make him too busy to talk to the likes of us—well, we were very wrong. He was charming, insightful, interested in what we were up to, and witty (at one point, looking a little exhausted, he told me “If you came in here and ordered a simple gin and tonic, I wouldn’t just make it for you, I’d buy it for you”). Seriously, I couldn’t recommend this place more highly. Go there. And give the barman a break.