Cocktails and 1940s Jazz in an Abandoned Tube Station

If you enjoy date night with a twist like I do, here’s a place I tried recently in London you might enjoy for your next clandestine soiree.

Along a little alleyway in Soho’s newly transformed Kingly Court off Carnaby Street, we stumbled upon Cahoots, an underground 1940s-themed cocktail bar, hidden inside a ‘disused Tube station-turned air-raid shelter’.

To find it, look for the sign outside that says ‘To the trains’… go down the old wooden ‘escalator’ (stairs), past the ‘ticket office’ (cloakroom) and stacks of sandbags and trunks – listening out for the old-fashioned London Transport tannoy announcement overhead, until… ta da! Moments later, you emerge into the air raid shelter set up for a big, wild underground post-war party (the bar!).

Nostalgic film and war propaganda posters line the walls, while tea chests double up as tables. All the staff are authentically dressed and in character the whole time, talking in old-fashioned British accents with their backstories prepared if you chat to them.

I personally think the best seats in the house are in the Tube train carriage…

I love that the cocktails are listed in an old newspaper called The Kingly Court Herald (which has funny sample headlines like “High spirits, scoundrels & swing! and Starlets & Sirens”).

Think: Ploughing the Field (Hendrick’s gin, British baby spinach, cucumber, green apple, ginger, celery, elderflower & lemon) and Vera Lynn (Tanqueray Gin, Stone’s Ginger Wine, apple juice, pear puree, lime juice and elderflower cordial). Some of them are even designed around ‘ration book’ staples like powdered milk and treacle!