Barsmith
If you’ve ever been to St John Street you’ll know it isn’t the loudest area, it’s really quiet and the busiest you see it at night is when all tag ravers come out to drink Milkshakes at a very well-known American diner. So I was pleasantly surprised to walk into what was a busy vibrant Barsmith, and what turned out to be the perfect weekend hangout.
I was first hit by the friendliness of everyone in there and I don’t mean just the bar staff. It felt like I had walked onto the set of Cheers (showing my age). Everyone was smiling and laughing and I felt like I was home.
Barsmith is a unique concept. The beauty is that they distil their own unique flavours of alcohol. I tried the marmite vodka, you either love it or you hate it, but it literally tastes like liquid marmite. The mango rum they distil was amazing too. Seeing as I’ve started with the alcohol I have to talk about the cocktails they serve, yum yum yum!
On a Saturday you get 2 for 1 cocktails and 2 for 1 pizzas! I’ll get onto that later. The cocktails we tried were The Basil Fawlty, Apple Cider Mojito, Red Light Martini and the Wild One. My favourite was the Apple Cider Mojito; to give it a little kick Barsmith adds their own apple cider it was lovely. To be fair all the cocktails were amazing AND they were affordable and when you get 2 for the price of one, it is even better. It really set off our night.
I said pizza right? Well think of the best pizza you’ve eaten and then you’ll be spot on. Barsmith’s pizza king (that’s what I’ve named him) makes pizzas on show for everyone to see in the bar. The guys have a specially? stone baked oven and it really made a difference. I ate the Prosciutto pizza and my friend the Nduja pizza. Both were filling and full of punchy flavour. I think they probably helped in stopping us both from getting wasted too.
As I love a good salad I thought I would order us a side salad. It had avocado, pine nuts and rocket inside it and it was no side salad. The waitress dubbed it a super salad, I clearly didn’t read it properly. The salad was huge!!!! Full of flavour and weirdly enough made me feel healthy after stuffing my face with pizza and cocktails.
I loved Barsmith and the team and manager have become my favourite people. If you love a good night and want to spend time in a great bar, listen to good music, drink amazing drinks and eat fab food then look no further.
We would highly recommend that if you haven’t booked your Christmas party yet this place is perfect!
Here’s there website and address:
Barsmith
18-20 St John St, London EC1M 4AY
020 7336 6099
