The Met Bar at the Metropolitan Hotel

Post-9pm you’ll need a member on your arm, a hotel key in your hand or a persuasive mouth to talk yourself in to The Met Bar, whose popularity was the precursor to the current craze for hotel-bar drinking. Faces-around-town-behaving badly, film stars looking so much shorter in the flesh than you’d imagined them & rap stars not quite as hip as they think themselves are an occasional talking point. Conspiratorial booths & a racy red-&-black decor set to a mix of retro, lounge, soul & rock music make for a heady ambience as spontaneous dancing breaks out, fuelled by uniformly good drinks & lubricated by meticulous service. ‘Met bites’ range from caviar to mini burgers & dim sum, & a constant source of amusement (or irritation) is the amount of grub & booze stick-thin models can down with no apparent adverse effect.