You’re out, the night is still young but you’re feeling peckish. Where can you go, with your posse, to eat and pre-party? Enter the post-10pm menus. A slew of new restaurants is catering to revellers who don’t want a ‘sit-down meal’, but rather a fun space that combines pre-drinking cocktails and tunes with great food.
Hoi Polloi has been showing us how it’s done with their Thursday Late Suppers. From 10.30pm, expect anything and everything: from waiters on skates and rowdy book readings to gender-bending performances. Tunes blast out, and the bar is constantly abuzz; all this as the restaurant continues with its all-day menu served until 1am.
Newly opened 45 Jermyn St. has a posh-10pm supper menu, which includes monkfish curry, coq au vin and three kinds of rarebit but with fun cocktails – like Rickies and hard ice cream floats – from a soda fountain. In Soho, newly opened Shotgun is getting on the post-10pm menu using the kitchen’s leftovers. Every night, from 10.30pm -11.30pm, inventive ad hoc potato roll sandwiches (such Carolina pulled pork with coleslaw, fried bologna with Westcombe cheddar and pickle mayonnaise and smoked ox tongue with oyster mayonnaise) are made and listed on the specials board, and once they’re gone, they’re gone. Then, of course, there’s the drinks list by Matt Whiley aka The Talented Mr Fox.
And finally, Bo Drake is taking the pre-party menu seriously with the launch of Bó Drake Lates. Running from 10pm every Friday and Saturday, the restaurant has extended its hours until midnight, transforming itself into a pre-party den. During this time, harder drinks are devised coupled with a special after-hours grazing menu.
Chin chin.
