The Agave List That Goes Well Past Mezcal
Inside the old Bow Street Police Station, the NoMad's downstairs bar runs one of London's deepest agave programmes and a Latin American cocktail list that justifies its Covent Garden postcode.
A Pandan Negroni lands on the marble in front of you, greener than it has any right to be, herbal where the classic is bitter, and the bartender is already turning to explain the sotol on the back bar to the couple two stools down. This is the NoMad London's downstairs bar, occupying part of what used to be the Bow Street Police Station, a hundred yards from the Royal Opera House stage door.
Side Hustle is the London arm of the NoMad's cocktail programme, currently under bar director Liana Oster. The brief is Latin American: Mexican-leaning food, an agave spirits list that runs past tequila and mezcal into sotol and raicilla, and a room designed to hold both a pre-theatre round and a long Saturday session without noticeably shifting gear.
An agave programme this serious inside a hotel bar this comfortable is a combination London had been missing.
Editorial Deep
The agave list is where the programme separates itself from the rest of Covent Garden. Tequila and mezcal are the entry point; the back bar carries sotol (distilled from a desert shrub, not agave technically) and raicilla (the western Mexican cousin most London bars don't bother stocking). Ask the bartender to walk you through it and you'll get an actual walkthrough, not a script.
At six on a Tuesday the room reads as a hotel bar, which is what it is: warm lighting, marble-topped counter, deep green-leather booths, dark wood on the walls, music at a level that lets a pre-theatre conversation happen without leaning in. Sit at the bar — the view of the bartenders working the agave list is the whole point, and the booths take you out of the conversation the room is really having.
Opera-house spillover early — a jacket-and-scarf pre-theatre crowd that empties out around seven — followed by hotel guests, a Covent Garden after-work contingent, and enough drinks-industry regulars to keep the bartenders honest. The room is genuinely welcoming in a way London hotel bars often aren't; a solo drinker at the bar is treated as a guest, not a gap in the covers. The crowd rewards the seat rather than competing for it.
Against the Connaught Bar or the American Bar at the Savoy, it reads as the fair middle of that Covent Garden hotel-bar tier. Food is a bar-snack proposition and one to lean into rather than build a meal around; keep the churros and guacamole coming, avoid the pea-and-avocado version, and the bill defends itself.
This is the best pre-theatre drink in Covent Garden if you care about what's in the glass, and one of the more interesting long sessions in central London if agave is your thing. Come back for the back bar — ask what's new in sotol, work through the raicilla, let the bartender lead. Skip it if you want a scene bar or a cheap round; the room is composed rather than loud, and the prices are what they are.
Order this
Drink this.
Pandan Negroni; then the Chocolate Mole Margarita
“London's most serious agave programme, in one of the most comfortable rooms in Covent Garden.”
Side Hustle is the rare central London hotel bar that rewards a considered drinker rather than a tourist round. The Pandan Negroni is the calling card and lives up to it; the agave list past tequila and mezcal is what brings you back. Prices are Covent Garden hotel-bar prices, and the food is a snack proposition rather than a meal — order to drink, avoid the peas in the guacamole, and the room does the rest.
The Verdict
