Twelve Seats Down a Shoreditch Alley You'll Walk Past Twice
The Umbrella Project's test kitchen hides behind an unmarked door in Cleeve Workshops. Book ahead, chat with the bartender, and drink something that may never exist again.
The door doesn't look like one. It sits down a cobbled alleyway off Boundary Street, in a 19th-century atelier in Cleeve Workshops, and the first instinct is to keep walking because surely the bar is somewhere more obvious. It isn't. Push the door and you're in a room that seats ten to twelve people on stools and a single bench by the window, with hay bales on the street outside doing overflow duty when the weather cooperates.
This is the test kitchen for The Umbrella Project — the group behind Discount Suit Company, The Sun Tavern, Parasol and the Umbrella Cider House. The cocktails here are being road-tested for those larger sister bars, which means the menu rotates weekly, sometimes daily, and the drink in front of you might never appear anywhere again. Past experiments have included a baklava old fashioned. The point is not the printed list. The point is talking to whoever is behind the stick and letting them build something for you.
The best cocktail bar in Shoreditch is a twelve-seat room behind an unmarked door where the drinks are prototypes.
Editorial Deep
Order one thing off the menu, then put it down and ask the bartender to make you something. That is the assignment here. The printed list rotates weekly and sometimes daily because the drinks are prototypes for Discount Suit Company, The Sun Tavern and Parasol — this room is where they get stress-tested before graduating. A baklava old fashioned has passed through. Whatever is on the list the night you visit will not be there next month.
The bench by the window is the seat to fight for — a narrow slice of cushioned wood against the glass, looking back into the room and out at the cobbles. Everyone else is on stools ranged along the bar, close enough to hear the bartender's shaker and close enough to hear each other's conversations, which becomes the room's condition rather than its flaw. The atelier bones are still visible: exposed brick, low warm bulbs, bottles ranked on shelves that also function as the off-licence stock.
The crowd skews to people who found the place on purpose — cocktail obsessives, industry regulars from the sister bars, and a rotating cast of Shoreditch locals who treat it as a neighbourhood stop. Nobody is here by accident, which keeps the volume conversational and the pace unhurried. The flip side is that when it's full it's full, and someone standing behind your stool waiting for it to clear is a real possibility on a Friday. Come Tuesday or Wednesday if you want the bartender's attention for a co-created drink.
The bottle wall reframes the tab: a drink you like can leave with you as a kit, and the vintage negroni is there for the customer who wants a birthday present rather than a nightcap. The bar is genuinely double-duty as an off-licence, and the maths only makes sense if you treat it that way.
Bring the friend who wants to talk to the bartender and taste something they can't get anywhere else. Don't bring the group of six — you won't fit, and the room isn't built for it. This is a first-drink or last-drink room, not a four-hour session, and the best version is a booked Tuesday at 7pm with a bench seat and a bartender who has time to build something. Come back for the menu you'll never see again.
Order this
Drink this.
Whatever the bartender wants to make you; then buy the bottle
“Book ahead, take the window bench, and let the bartender build you something.”
The Umbrella Project's test kitchen is a twelve-seat room down a cobbled alley in Shoreditch where the cocktails are prototypes for the group's larger bars. The menu rotates weekly, and the correct move is to talk to whoever is pouring rather than order from the list. Book ahead, aim for a quiet weeknight, and leave with a bottle of whatever landed. Skip if you're a group of more than three or want a long session in one seat.
The Verdict
