The opening of the Dover Yard bar located at the 1 Hotel Mayfair has been eagerly anticipated in the London bar scene. As London’s very first mission-driven luxury hotel it has set the standard for a new kind of luxury experience that aims to positively impact the planet. Dover Yard offers visitors an experience driven by the beauty and simplicity of nature, with a sustainable and conscious approach and AMAZING cocktails.
The Location
Dover Yard is very much a destination bar for hotel guests, the local Mayfair scene and London’s hospitality and creative industries alike, offering guests a welcome refuge from city life with modern, sustainable hospitality at its heart. Accessible via a newly walkable cut-through between Berkeley Street and Dover Street, Dover Yard is the latest great cocktail bar to open in Mayfair.
An Innovative Approach
Led by Director of Bars Matteo Carretta, the team at Dover Yard are super talented and include some bar legends like Head Bartender Marco Grisafi. The team have created the menu together that showcases the ‘underdogs’ of classic cocktails with fresh, intricate takes on their formulation. Dover Yard offers twists on famed classics and a wealth of low and no ABV options too. Everything listed on the menu, from ingredients to spirit supplier, has been carefully considered to ensure minimal wastage with many of the cocktails utilising repurposed ingredients from the neighbouring kitchen at Dovetale, led by Tom Sellers, and across the hotel.
The Sustainable Showstoppers
Served alongside considered bar snacks and larger plates, each intriguing cocktail from the split menu, ‘Repurposed Ingredients’ and ‘Seasonal Classics’, tells a story in itself. From a Cherry Manhattan, constructed using The Macallan 12 Double Oak and finished with a cherry brined in excess Pinot Noir offered from Dovetale, to a Champagne Martini made using ‘wasted’ champagne with a concentrate of botanicals to create a completely unique vermouth. This is finished with grape bitters and garnished with a pickled grape in an exceptional take on a classic.
The Rookie Bramble made with Boatyard Double Gin, lemon sour mash, British honey and Brambleberry is set to be the signature drink globally for all the 1 Hotels. This inversed Bramble is a clever take on this classic with repurposed ingredients such as in-house made Lemon Sour Mash, made from the daily leftover lemons husks for fresh juicing.
If a cocktail is not to your fancy, a generous wine list containing 14 wines by the glass across white and red is on offer as well as beer served only from the bottle with options from Sussex Brewery, Hepworth, and London producer, Toast. Toast encompasses Dover Yard’s sustainability ethos entirely, using surplus bread off-cuts to replace the barley element of their beers. Even the menus are robust and sustainable, crafted from recycled paper and peppered with unused hops.
Along with Kwānt, this is easily one of the best bar openings of 2023.
To discover more, visit: 1hotels.com
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All imagery courtesy of Dover Yard.