Four Times the World's Best, Now Built Around Kale and Crickets
World's 50 Best Bars #1 from 2012 to 2015, now serving cocktails built around kale, crickets and sweet potato inside The Langham. Come for the concept, not the classics.
The Mulberry arrives in a glass that looks nothing like a Margarita and tastes like the tequila has been through a rhubarb patch on its way to the shaker. This is the point of Artesian in its current form. The Ultimo menu — Volume 3 of what the bar calls the Futureproof Trilogy — is sixteen cocktails built around a single spotlighted ingredient each, with sustainability as the organising principle. Kale in a Martini. Crickets somewhere on the list. Sweet potato in another. Come expecting a themed tasting exercise, not a bar where you order a Vieux Carré and settle in.
The room sits inside The Langham on Portland Place, and the pedigree is the loudest thing on the wall — World's 50 Best Bars #1 four years running, 2012 to 2015, a team that once included Simone Caporale, a run that other bars in London are still measured against. Whether the current version of the bar deserves that ranking is a different question, and one worth answering with an actual visit rather than the plaque.
Artesian is a cocktail tasting menu with a bar attached, and knowing that before you sit down changes the night.
Editorial Deep
The Ultimo menu is the reason to come and the reason to hesitate. Sixteen cocktails, each built around a single ingredient the bar wants to argue for — the Mulberry rebuilds a Margarita around reposado tequila and rhubarb, the Kale drags a Martini into savoury territory with a dry, zesty kick, the Currant folds bergamot and champagne into a Paloma frame. The Cherry on Top, at Grey Goose with cherry pistachio cordial, Oloroso and champagne, comes in an alcoholic and non-alcoholic version — a distinction most bars this ambitious still treat as an afterthought.
The backlit mirrored bar is the first thing you notice and the thing that carries the room. Light bounces off it, the space feels open and clean, and there is real room to sit — a fact that reads as unremarkable until you've queued at the Connaught for an hour on a Thursday. Even on a weekend evening, a seat is usually findable, which changes the whole shape of the visit.
The crowd is Langham guests, Marylebone locals with money, and a steady rotation of cocktail-programme tourists who've come specifically for the Ultimo menu. It's a well-behaved room — no queue-cutting, no bachelorette energy, no one shouting into a phone at the next table. The trade-off is that the room rarely tips into the electric peak that the Connaught Bar or Tayēr find on a Friday. This is a place people come to think about their drinks, not to have their evening changed by the crowd.
The bar snacks are the line item that earns its keep — the Cornish crab on toast and the crispy soul roll are well made and cost less than a second cocktail. Order food. The drinks plus the snacks do.
Bring the friend who reads cocktail menus for pleasure and wants to talk about what a Margarita can be made of. Bring a date who'll be diverted by the presentation and the concept. Don't bring the group that wants a martini and a booth and a long loud night — Artesian isn't built for it, and the bill will feel punitive by the third round. The reason to come back is the next volume of the trilogy, or a specific drink that lands the first time and pulls you into the rest of the menu. Come once for the concept. Come back only if the concept moved you.
Order this
Drink this.
The Mulberry — the cleanest translation of the Ultimo concept; order bar snacks alongside, the Cornish crab on toast in particular
“A conceptual cocktail programme inside The Langham that rewards curiosity, punishes casual drinking, and no longer sits at the top of London's bar order.”
Artesian is a cocktail tasting menu with a bar attached. The Ultimo menu — sixteen cocktails built around single sustainable ingredients — is genuinely inventive, the David Collins room is handsome, and the walk-in policy is a real gift at a bar of this pedigree. Come for the concept, order the Mulberry, add the bar snacks. Skip if you want a martini and a long, loud night out — you'll pay too much for the wrong kind of bar.
The Verdict
