Michael Sager's Hackney Road Follow-Up Puts the Records Louder Than the Room
The sage-green cocktail bar next door to Sager + Wilde runs equal-measure drinks, unusual spirits and a vinyl programme that would rather be heard than talked over.
The Flor arrives cold enough to fog the glass — olive oil-washed Haku vodka, fino sherry, distilled tomato, and no garnish to hide behind. It is a martini stripped to its savoury bones, and it is the drink that tells you what Michael Sager built this room to do. Precision poured over volume. Fifty millilitres of restraint on a street that mostly does the opposite.
Equal Parts opened in 2023, a few doors from Sager + Wilde on Hackney Road, and in 2025 the World's 50 Best Bars named it One To Watch. The menu splits in two: a short section of equal-measure builds where every component gets the same fifty ml, and a longer section that leans into agave, amaro, fortified wine and the spirits nobody else is championing. A Grade II-listed shell wrapped in sage-green tile, raw plaster and Japanese wood panelling. Vinyl spinning at the bar, not piped in.
A cocktail bar built with the discipline of a chef's counter and the volume of a record shop that will not turn down.
Editorial Deep
The menu covers more ground than the room's size suggests. One side is the equal-parts conceit — fifty ml of each component, no hierarchy, the drink standing or falling on how the parts read together. The other side is where the bar's real interest lives: agave, amaro, aperitifs, fortified wines, and the spirits most London cocktail programmes still treat as garnish. What the bar leaves alone is the tiki-adjacent, the dessert-cocktail register, the sugary crowd-pleaser. Nothing here is trying to charm you at the first sip.
The crowd skews late-twenties to mid-forties, dressed with intent rather than effort — the Hackney Road uniform of well-cut outerwear, considered eyewear, and shoes that cost more than they announce. On a Wednesday at ten, most seats at the bar are taken by pairs, with a few threes standing behind them waiting for a stool to clear.
The crowd is the industry-and-adjacent set — bartenders on their night off, wine trade, design people from the E2 studios, a steady thread of visitors who made the trip for the drinks. It is not a scene bar and it is not a tourist bar. Midweek it hums; by Friday at ten the volume climbs and the record wins. If you are here to talk, that crowd is the cost. If you are here to drink and hear the music, it is the whole point.
Do not roll in with six people expecting to hold the ground floor — parties of six or more get seated downstairs, and if the point of the evening was watching the bar work, you will spend it looking at a different room instead. Come in twos or threes and take the bar. Cocktail prices are not published, but the Top 50 tier and the spirit selection put a round of two firmly in London's upper cocktail bracket — call it in line with what Tayēr and A Bar With Shapes For A Name charge for comparable work, which is defensible for what lands in the glass and harder to defend if you are ordering four rounds deep. Service is discretionary and included; check the bill.
Come back on a midweek evening between seven and nine, take a bar stool, order the Flor, then let the bartender pick the second round from whatever agave or amaro they are pushing that month. That is the version of Equal Parts that justifies its ranking. The version that does not work: a first date where you need to hear each other, or a group of six hoping to hold court on the ground floor. Send those nights next door to Sager + Wilde and keep this room for the drink.
Order this
Drink this.
The Flor — olive oil-washed Haku vodka, fino sherry, distilled tomato
“Go for the Flor at the bar on a midweek night. Skip if you need to hear the person across from you.”
Equal Parts is the drink-first, listen-first cocktail bar Michael Sager has built next door to his wine bar, and the programme carries it more than the room does. The Flor is one of London's best savoury martinis. The vinyl is loud enough that conversation is negotiated around it. Take a bar stool on a Wednesday, order two rounds, and let the bartender pick the second. For a talking night or a group of six, go next door to Sager + Wilde and come back here another time.
The Verdict
