Ten alcohol-free cocktails in a hidden Soho basement, three minutes from Oxford Circus. Made with the same care as everything else on the bar. Pour these for the driver, the not-drinking-tonight, and the curious.
Basement Sate is an underground cocktail and dessert bar at 8 Broadwick Street, Soho, with one of London's longest mocktail lists: ten alcohol-free cocktails at £11, from a 0% Passion Fruit Martini to a 0% Negroni, plus Lucky Saint for the beer drinkers. Every mocktail is built with the same technique, glassware and garnish as the main list, and served all night.
The whole list above runs all month, at the same price and the same hours: ten alcohol-free cocktails at £11, plus Lucky Saint at £7, served until 1:30am Tuesday to Saturday. No separate menu, no mineral water and a shrug. If you're bringing a mixed table, everyone orders from the same card.
The reason most mocktails disappoint is that there's nothing underneath them: juice, sugar, and whatever garnish was closest. Ours start the way the boozy list starts, with a spirit. Pentire Adrift, distilled in Cornwall from coastal botanicals. Tanqueray 0% for the gin drinks. Lyre's for the dark and nutty ones, Almave for the agave, Pathfinder for bitterness and depth. The 0% Negroni alone runs four of them, with Botivo and Roots Divino standing in for the vermouth.
They're shaken and stirred at the same station as everything else, in the same glassware, with the same garnish. When the round lands, nobody at the table can tell whose drink is whose. That's the point.
Most alcohol-free options in London are cafés in disguise: bright lights and closed by early evening. Basement Sate is a candlelit basement bar that takes its 0% list as seriously as its signatures. Low light, Chesterfields, a proper dessert list, and drinks until 1:30am at the weekend. It's also, by Soho standards, a genuinely quiet bar, which suits a drink you actually want to taste.
Which is why so many mocktail orders here come from mixed tables. A date where one of you is driving. A birthday where half the group is doing Dry January and the other half very much isn't. Everyone orders from the same menu card and every glass looks the part.
Ten alcohol-free cocktails at £11, from a 0% Passion Fruit Martini to a 0% Negroni, plus Lucky Saint alcohol-free beer at £7. It's one of the longest 0% lists of any bar in London.
No. The mocktail list is on every table, there's no separate menu to ask for. Walk-ins are welcome; on Fridays and Saturdays we'd book ahead because the room is small.
That's most of our tables. One of you orders from the cocktail list, one from the 0% list, and the drinks arrive looking identical. Nobody spends the evening explaining themselves.
Pentire Adrift, Tanqueray 0%, Lyre's, Almave, Pathfinder, Botivo and Roots Divino, depending on the drink. Proper 0% spirits, not juice and lemonade.
Until 1:30am Tuesday to Saturday, and until midnight on Sunday and Monday. Later than almost any alcohol-free venue in London.
A short kitchen menu and a full dessert list. Desserts and mocktails carry an evening surprisingly well on their own.
We're the basement under 8 Broadwick Street, three minutes' walk from Oxford Circus and five from Tottenham Court Road. Ten alcohol-free cocktails at £11, served all night.
From the journal: Mocktails in Soho, taken seriously →
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