Andy Loudon's Long Drawn Out Sip Runs the Room Now
Inside Rosewood London, Gerald Scarfe's cartoons watch over one of the city's best hotel bars — largely walk-in, jazz nightly, and the swivel seats are the ones to hold out for.
Push through the antique revolving doors off High Holborn, cut through Rosewood London's courtyard, and the first thing that registers is the fireplace — genuinely roaring, flanked by velvet sofas, with Gerald Scarfe's satirical cartoons looking down from every wall. The man who animated Pink Floyd — The Wall gave this room its personality, and the room has kept faith with him: it still reads as a proper gentleman's-club hotel bar rather than a mood-lit lobby annex trying to be one.
Andy Loudon took over as Rosewood London's Director of Bars in July 2024, and Long Drawn Out Sip — a menu built around the arc of Scarfe's own life — is his first here. The bar sits at #31 on the 2025 World's 50 Best list and was named Best International Hotel Bar at Tales of the Cocktail 2024. It is one of the handful of London hotel bars operating at that ceiling. It is also, and this catches people out, mostly a walk-in.
Loudon's Long Drawn Out Sip is one of the tightest cocktail menus in a London hotel bar right now.
Editorial Deep
The menu is Long Drawn Out Sip, Andy Loudon's first at Scarfes since arriving as Rosewood London's Director of Bars in July 2024. It is organised around Gerald Scarfe's life, split into Heroes and Villains, and it is a classics-remixed programme rather than a lab-coat one — recognisable spines with one or two moves you didn't see coming.
The fireplace is real, the velvet sofas are deep, and the Scarfe cartoons on the walls are originals — the same satirical hand that gave The Wall its animated schoolteachers. The lighting sits low and warm without going into cave territory, the panelling is dark wood, and the herringbone tile around the fireplace pulls the eye every time you look up from your glass. It reads as a gentleman's-club room without the stiffness a gentleman's-club room usually carries.
Rosewood hotel guests, Holborn lawyers finishing late, cocktail tourists, and a steady thread of Londoners who have been coming for years. The mix keeps the room from tipping either into pure hotel-lobby politeness or pure destination-bar performance. It gets loud on Saturdays — queues form, the jazz has to work harder, and the 1.5-hour table cap starts to bite. Weeknights before eight are the version of this room worth planning around.
Avoid rolling in at nine on a Saturday with four friends and no plan. You will queue, you will get separated across whatever tables open, and the 1.5-hour clock starts the moment you sit — which turns a leisurely evening into a rushed one. Pricing sits where top London hotel cocktail bars sit and the menu does not publish figures, but a round here lands in the same territory as the Connaught or the American Bar, which is to say not cheap and defensible for what's in the glass. The drinks and the room justify the number; the queue does not add to it.
Come back on a Tuesday or Wednesday at six, when the fireplace is on, the jazz is warming up, and the swivel seats are available. That is the version of Scarfes that justifies the Tales of the Cocktail trophy — a two-drink session at the counter with Loudon's menu in front of you and the Scarfe cartoons doing their work overhead. It is not the room for a big group hunting a late anchor; parties of six-plus should call ahead and accept that this is a bar built for the couple and the four-top, not the stag do.
Order this
Drink this.
Plummet Boulevard; Thane's Tipple as the follow-up
“One of London's top-tier hotel cocktail bars, and Loudon's first menu is the reason to book a swivel seat now.”
Go for a weeknight session at the counter with the Plummet Boulevard and the Thane's Tipple, arriving at or near 5pm to secure a swivel seat before the room fills. Skip Saturday nights with a big group — the walk-in queue, the 1.5-hour cap, and the split seating turn what should be a considered evening into a scramble. Parties of six or more should phone or email ahead; everyone else should treat it as walk-in and plan accordingly. Not the room for under-18s after 6pm.
The Verdict
