You may have walked down Newport Place, a minuscule thoroughfare leading from Chinatown to Leicester Square tube, 100 times without even knowing its name. Lined with tiny Chinese shops, cafés and restaurants, it’s now the unlikely home for an excellent ‘boutique’ cocktail bar.
Light Lounge has some input from Andy Mil, of the Cocktail Trading Company near Oxford Circus, one of the best bars to open in the past year. The input showed on two visits. First I popped in after work and asked for something non-alcoholic. Fruit juices flowed into a shaker, the shaker got shaken, the contents were strained into a martini glass. It was balanced and quite tart, as requested.
Second time round, two of us hit a Sipsmith martini and a Plum Fizz: gin, plum brandy and tamarind (both £10.50). The martini was straight from the textbooks; the fizz, bracingly sharp and fresh, made me wonder why tamarind isn’t used in more cocktails. Flawless, both.
Light features prominently in the decor, with sparkly chandeliers reflected on lots of glass; it looks a little disco-like. There’s also something retro about the revealingly dressed cocktail waitresses, who are smiling and enthusiastic about their work. On one visit the playlist was soul, on another tech house; on neither occasion was the music too loud.
There is glorious daylight if you go early evening, at least in summer. Bag a window seat, especially at the corner of the room where Newport Place meets Lisle Street.