& other places: Opium, Vagabond Wines & Champagne + Fromage

Three bars to whet your appetite.

Opium
This late night drinking den is found (where else?) in Chinatown. Like the Experimental Cocktail Club, Opium is tucked behind a nondescript door, marked only by the bouncer waiting outside. A quick nod and a climb up two or three flights of stairs and we found our place at the bar for post The Book of Mormon drinks, a couple of Wednesdays ago. The drinks menu sounds delicious - the Opium #6 with tequila, ginger, oolong tea for example, or the Golden Lotus with its Remy Martin, rye whisky and banana - but we continued our love affair with Kummel and ordered first a Silver Bullet, and then the much tastier and smoother (and papa-patented) Silver Streak with gin. We couldn't resist the excellent dim sum, so much so that we had to order more to sate our craving for the delicious dumplings. My favourites? The classic pork and prawn, the crab and samphire and the lobster, naturally.

Vagabond Wines
Vagabond Wines are making the art of drinking the grape a more casual affair. No lengthy list to wade through, just a few machines to hover in front of, deciding which to try first. They profess to having over 100 bottles by the glass - just load up your wine card with money, slide it into the slot, press for a sample (25ml) or a glass (125ml) and bottoms up. It's a great way of discovering new wines without committing to a bottle (although you can buy any you like) and with the prices ranging from 'impressively cheap' to 'impressively not so cheap', there's something for everyone. We headed to the Spitalfields one and while I think it's a little smaller than the others, it makes for a cosy post-work stop off. Bucket of wine optional.

Champagne + Fromage
Lovely. A place that does what it says on the tin. A tiny little space across two floors a stone's throw from Covent Garden, Champagne + Fromage is a great place to dip into mid-afternoon for a pick me up. We went for a flight of champagne each - three glasses of different grapes (who doesn't love a selection?) - and shared a cheeseboard - choose three from a range (something old, something new, something fruity and something blue...)  - and would have declared ourselves done, considering we had dinner at St John booked for later that evening. But, of course, we couldn't resist and had stayed for another bottle of bubbly. Sitting downstairs, the atmosphere's a bit lacking but nothing that the fizz couldn't combat.

Behind closed doors

Thursday has been the new Friday for a long time. Sore heads and lighter wallets accompany feeling-sorry-for-yourself statuses and tweets, but the draw of a drink (or many) to welcome in the weekend is too hard to resist. Last night I went on a jaunt and discovered some brilliant places behind some impressively unassuming doors.

After a couple of post-work beers at local haunt The Yard, I headed to the Experimental Cocktail Club in Chinatown. Sandwiched between two restaurants and hidden behind a very nondescript blink-and-you'll-miss-it door, the ECC is a haven away from the busy streets of Soho. The immediate staircase takes you straight up to the first floor where exposed brickwork and deep red walls give the bar a prohibition-era vibe; mirrors on the ceiling and a great half-moon window keeps the place from feeling a little too dark. The inspired cocktails were a welcome change from the standard menu - I had an Old Cuban, rum-based with citrus and ginger, and a Sage Advice, a twist on a mojito, topped with fresh sage. Definitely a place to return to.

From there, we went to Blacks on Dean Street; a place I walk past every morning on the way to work, and a place that gives nothing away. Opposite The Groucho Club, 'Blacks looks nothing more from the outside than an unassuming Georgian townhouse, yet behind its unmarked black door a heritage-packed, eclectically-attired bolthole awaits those in the know. You enter at basement level by descending a rickety steel staircase from the street into somewhere resembling a Dickensian tavern, all long oak benches and exposed beams with a deep fireplace, Farrow & Ball tinted-walls and enigmatic oil paintings.' We ate in one of the laybrinthine dining rooms - a sharer board of breads and olives before a pollock fillet with Romanesco sauce, grilled spring onions and sauteed potatoes - before finishing our drinks upstairs, lounging on one of the charmingly mismatched sofas in front of a roaring open fire. It felt deliciously cosy, and with the brilliantly lovely staff, it was a real treat.

After that, we went to The Box. Only in its first year, it's infamous - many celebrities are pictured tumbling out of its massive oak doors, and the cabaret shows are legendary (so I hear). A friend of a friend was DJing so we skipped the queue and headed straight upstairs, momentarily stopping off in the old theatre before dancing the night away in the loft. Despite two attempts, we didn't manage to catch any of the downstairs entertainment but the music made up for it. Plush and dark, The Box oozes hedonism, so it's easy to see why it's fast becoming a firm favourite - a little bit naughty, a little bit nice and right in the heart of shabby, sexy Soho.