Punch Room

THE LONDON EDITION – FITZROVIA, LONDON.

Punch Room is one of London’s most celebrated specialty cocktail bars located in the heart of Fitzrovia, within The London EDITION hotel. The award-winning bar is an intimate hangout for cocktail connoisseurs, headed up by The London EDITION’s Bars Manager, Anthony Callegari. Punch Room is a contemporary reincarnation of London’s nineteenth-century private clubs, featuring furnished custom tufted banquettes in teal velvet, overstuffed mint green leather tub chairs, and dark brown leather club chairs, set to a soundtrack of vintage jazz, reggae, and soul through the ages.

Anthony, formerly of Mortimer House and The Ned, has cherry-picked a team with vast experience from world-renowned bars who have worked together to create an experience like no other. Featuring a daily changing punch, the bar’s ethos places heavy emphasis on the social aspect of sharing and discussion, with punch bowls available for one, two, four, six or eight people.

Punch Room, London sits within a global bar portfolio, with a total of seven venues at EDITION hotels in Shanghai, Tampa, Barcelona, Madrid and most recently Rome. Gates Otsuji, Director of Bars for EDITION, who leads the Punch concept strategy for the brand, comments: “As a brand we’re looking at Punch as a spectrum with classics on one end, and more avant-garde recipe structures on the other. All the Punch Rooms now will be focusing on different parts within that range.”

Over the last ten years, Punch Room, London has paid homage to the origin of cocktails, reinventing punch cocktails for a modern audience. The bar’s latest menu,

LIGHTS, aims to take that one step further, this time looking ahead at the future of punch in its entirety and cementing its longevity as a modern cocktail concept. Conceived by Anthony and his innovative team, the menu has been split into three chapters – Opaque, Translucent and Transparent – and draws inspiration from light and the effect it has on visible objects. Each cocktail is named after a light phenomenon around the world such as

“This menu takes its literal understanding of light and reflects on how it affects everything we do, including how we perceive something new. For example, common preconceived ideas of flavours – something clear is tasteless, something opaque is viscous or heavy, something dark is bitter – are just a few ways in which they pre-determine whether we like something even before we’ve tried it”, Anthony explains.

Punch Room at The London EDITION has a reputation for upholding classic punch recipes, however, this new menu showcases the underlying role that punch has played in the history of cocktail making. Punch is the foundation of all cocktails as we know them today, and the LIGHTS menu spotlights this with punches that look just as good in individual servings as they do in punch bowls.

The LIGHTS menu represents a forward shift of the physical menu to link conceptual engagement with a tangible experience where you can find interactions between additive and subtractive light. Each cocktail from the LIGHTS menu brings together visual and textural elements of mixology, where the specialised bar team continues to uphold their commitment to the authenticity of their craft whilst harmoniously combining it with their signature style, for which Punch Room is known internationally.

Anthony credits the bar’s specialism as a key to its success. By focusing on punches, which have gained popularity and piqued interest in recent times, Punch Room has managed to position itself as a frontrunner in this style of cocktail-making. What makes it work, however, is having a team that shares in the brand vision and values, holding the utmost respect for the intensive craft of cocktail prep and striving to make punch sexy again.

Anthony comments: “The best way to stay current and up-to-date with trends in the ever-changing bar industry is to connect with and listen to your customers. We adopt a philosophy akin to that of a Michelin-starred restaurant. We invest significant effort in preparing ingredients before the bar opens, enabling our bartenders to craft extraordinary cocktails with the same precision a chef would plate up a stunning dish. This meticulous approach guarantees consistency and allows our team the space to actively interact with guests, which is where we learn best what our customer is looking for.

“The most valuable advice in this industry is to invest in your team. Shared passion is what makes magic and great bartenders are only becoming more difficult to come by. My team and I are looking forward to taking Punch Room, London worldwide this year - with takeovers in Miami, Sao Paolo, New York, Berlin and Abu Dhabi.” www.editionhotels.com/london/ restaurants-and-bars/punch-room/

Instagram: @punchroomldn