Two Rooms, One Door, Zero Reservations
Kratena and Berg's two-room Shoreditch bar ranked in the World's 50 Best Bars top five in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2025. It's also walk-in only and, right now, closed.
A cocktail arrives at the central island bar in Tayēr with holy basil, sesame, Roku gin and Noilly Prat, and the menu names none of it as a cocktail — just the ingredients, in the order the bartender wants you to read them. That is the house tell. Alex Kratena and Monica Berg spent years at Artesian dressing drinks up as theatre, and at 152 Old Street they took the theatre out and left the technique.
Elementary is the front room — classic cocktails poured on tap into one glass over one cube of ice, minimalist and quick. Tayēr is behind the partition, dimly lit, built around the island where the daily-changing menu is mixed in front of you. The bar ranked #2 on the World's 50 Best Bars in 2021 and 2022, and #5 in 2025. Both are walk-in only. The room at 152 Old Street is currently closed following a fire in the building, with no reopening date confirmed — this review describes the bar as it trades in normal conditions, and the scoring reflects the product Kratena and Berg have built over five years, not its current dark status. Check @tayer_elementary before you cross town.
The most decorated cocktail bar in London takes no reservations and, at the moment, no customers either.
Editorial Deep
Start in Elementary with the Yuzu Gimlet — a short, clean citrus-and-floral hit built on Roku, served in the house format of one glass and one cube of ice. It is the fastest read on what Kratena and Berg do when they strip the ceremony out: the drink is dense, the presentation is nothing, the balance is the whole argument. The Cedarwood Old Fashioned and Vetiver Negroni are the other Elementary classics worth ordering blind. The Frozen Yuzu Margarita is the crowd move.
Conversation carries at a normal volume in Elementary — it is a minimalist industrial box with floor-to-ceiling windows, a long wooden worktop, and a sharing table that runs the room. Sound is soft, glassware and tap-pour, nothing amplified. You can hear the person next to you without leaning in, which is not a given in a Shoreditch bar at nine on a Friday.
Elementary at seven on a weekday reads local — Shoreditch and Old Street tech workers, Hoxton design studios letting out, a fair number of drinks-industry regulars who know Kratena and Berg's résumé. Tayēr past nine leans further into that last group and into the cocktail-tourism crowd who have flown in with the address in their notes app. Both rooms fill and stay full. Nobody is loud, nobody is waiting on your stool with visible impatience, but the small footprint means a slow round holds up the room in a way it would not somewhere larger.
While the bar is closed, Tayēr sells bottled cocktails on its website. Prices at the bar are not confirmed; check them when it reopens.
When it is open, this is the best version of the two-room modern cocktail bar in London, and the format is the reason to come back — Elementary for a fast, clean opener before dinner in Shoreditch, Tayēr for the longer sit after. Come back for the island, on a Tuesday or Wednesday, early, before the cocktail pilgrims land. Do not come back if you need a table held, or if you cannot be at the door at opening. And do not come back yet at all — the building is closed after a fire, with no confirmed reopening. Check the Instagram before you cross town.
Order this
Drink this.
Yuzu Gimlet at Elementary; whatever the island bartender recommends at Tayēr; the croquettes from the shared small-plates menu.
“The most decorated cocktail bar in London — when the door is open.”
Kratena and Berg took the theatre out of the Artesian playbook and left the technique, then split the operation into a quick front bar and a slow back room built around a working island. The Pour is genuinely top-tier for the modern-cocktail format; the pricing is the friction. Walk in to Elementary, work your way to Tayēr, sit at the island. Currently closed after a fire — this scoring holds for the bar in normal trade, and the door is what changes it.
The Verdict
