“That vending machine," says Chris Tanner, "shaved a decade off my life.” Tanner is looking sideways at a canned cocktail machine which will serve guests in the elevated poolroom in the new bar that he, Martyn ‘Simo’ Simpson and Jack Wallis have just opened at 7 Denmark Street.
Called Dram, the bar is the culmination of the three bartender-owners’ decades of experience running some of London’s best-loved and most-respected bars, including Milroy’s and Silverleaf. But this time, the three have broken loose from the shackles of creating bars for other people and opened a three-storey fun factory they're in full control of — and own.
“We’ve always wanted to do our own place,” says Simpson, whose shock departure from whisky shop and bar Milroy’s in February of this year has kept the capital's bar community waiting expectantly for his next move. Luckily for Londoners, Simpson, Tanner and Wallis were all ready for a new challenge, and they all knew that whatever it was, they’d be doing it together. As Simpson puts it: “Our forces aligned.”
They all bring their own distinctive forces to the Dram party: Simpson’s cool confidence; Tanner’s wide-eyed creative chutzpah; and Wallis’ controlled, thoughtful outlook. When I meet the trio ahead of last week's launch, they’re literally fidgeting with anticipation at unveiling the hard-laboured results of the intense months leading up to Dram’s opening. Simpson tells me it’s been a culmination of them sitting at bars and discussing what they do — and more often don’t — like.
While London is far from short of excellent bars, the rise of the high-concept, orchestrated opening has, for Tanner and co, taken some of the heart out of its drinks scene. “The pendulum is swinging a bit, and I’m more than aware that I’ve contributed to that,” says Tanner. “It doesn’t sit well with us.”
Democratisation has always been the name of the game in their endeavours, and Dram is the culmination of all of their work to make drinks more accessible in one place.
What they’ve created is borderline unheard of in central London, at least in in independent bar terms. The space — which is set within a 17th-centruy Grade-II listed building — is not only humungous but structured in an almost Russian-doll-esque fashion, where each area opens up or leads onto something new, with the ground floor having a direct line of sight from the door to the terrace.
The first bar is a coffee and food and kegged cocktail and spirits space, which transforms from day to night and opens up into a hangout retail offering. It's somewhere for chatting drams and s*** in equal measure.
“We want it be a place that people can enjoy in any way they want,” explains Tanner. “They can stand around, have a beer, have a whisky, have a rum, it just acts as this sort of hub space.”
Beyond that is the terrace, where more spritz-style drinks will be on offer, and behind that is a private room. Look up and the poolroom appears, which will operate on a token system for the vending machine and acts as a clever spot for people waiting to get a spot at the bar, or just to hang out while slinging cues.
Downstairs, there’s a dive-y basement bar (reminiscent of the ice bar in Die Another Day, and not in a bad way); walk through a tunnel and during the day is an experimentation lab for R&D and prep, while at night it turns into a 12-seater cocktail room — both spaces will be where more seasonal cocktails will be served.
The opening menu is simple but swoon-worthy. On tap, there’s the likes of a Mastiha & Aloe (Aloe, Axia Mastiha, El Gobernador Pisco) and a Strawberry Aperitif (strawberries from Newlands Farm and Carpano dry vermouth), while from the bar expect Woodruff Milk Punch (woodruff, Tequila Ocho, green tea and mulberry leaf) or a Plum & Whey (Kentish plums, High Weald whey, El Dorado 3 and aquavit).
It feels like a departure from what the trio have done previously, especially when it comes to looks. And it’s an aesthetic, says Simpson, that they’ve finally been able to orchestrate: “This is what we want it to look like.”
In place of dark spaces, high-concept design and neutral colour palettes, Dram feels lighter, brighter; the bar’s whisky glass logo is pink, there’s neon lighting downstairs, and its terrace is accented by pops of striped yellow. “It’s been a dialogue between us and the space,” says Wallis, “and wanting to move away from what we’ve done in the past.”
It feels unpretentious, unstuffy. No-one is trying to show off just how clever they are.
The drinks have been posed cleverly too, with rotating bottles of whiskies, rums, mezcals, and more (“Only those we love, we want to make sure that what we have on our shelves we can stand behind,” says Simpson). Downstairs is where things will get a bit more serious, for want of a better word. Saying that, if you have a “powerful lust for a daiquiri”, says Wallis, they can of course do that too.
They’re also sourcing from someone who works with vegetable farmers down on the coast to get some of their produce, although not everything is going to be “dirt from Brighton” says Tanner. Simpson also wants to avoid the tropes of changing menus seasonally, annually, or being bogged down in the so-called rules surrounding bar menus. He’s also vocal about staff working four-day weeks and giving staff a quarterly share of the bar’s gross profit. These lads grew up in the trenches of bartending, and they want its future to be different.
Ultimately, Simpson, Tanner and Wallis want Dram to be fun — an escape from the idea that serious drinks can only be imbibed in serious places. “I want this to be a shot in the arm for London’s bar scene,” says Tanner. Two words: let's go.
