Hockley Cocktail Bar Crawl

After a couple of potions here, you might be inclined to stay.

Tilt is an intimate bar with live blues music and a long list of exquisite cocktails. Follow the staircase up to this two-floor venue and you will find a bar hidden under the stairs, serving an inventive collection of cocktails, and music funky enough to get all the hips shaking. Whether you fancy ‘Rum for a Little One’ or try to keep a straight face when you order a ‘Sexberryment’, Tilt has something imaginative to suit everyone’s taste buds. The big spenders can even splash the cash on the Barry Big Bollocks section of the menu, with premium ingredients from the highest shelves around.

Three floors means three times the fun.

If you want to look like you’re really in the know - this award-winning, multi-level cocktail bar tucked down an inconspicuous alley, is perfect. The ground floor is known as Stockholm - a Scandinavian-inspired space with deep leather sofas and warm carpets on hardwood floors. The top floor is an exotic, conservatory-style gin and prosecco bar (there’s a winning combination) and goes by the name of the Electric Garden, and sandwiched between these two spaces is Blue Rooms, where full table service is provided across intimate tables and private booths. The cocktail menu is eclectic and beautifully crafted, ranging from classics like the Espresso Martini to the mysterious Smoke and Mirrors. Creative garnishes range from a picture of Harrison Ford to an entire Twister ice lolly (yes, really).

Go in for a new combi, leave with an ever-so-slight stumble.

The fact that the Boilermaker’s ‘shopfront’ is a boiler shop that only opens at night might give the game away, and hint to the cocktail bar hidden behind. If you didn’t feel enough like a spy heading down the passage to The Hockley Arts Club, then you most certainly will when you show your IDs to the ‘shop assistant’ bouncer and proceed through a secret door into this well-disguised Hockley hideaway. Once inside, you’ll be greeted with a cosy space filled with eclectic vintage sofas, chairs and tables. The cocktails themselves are as inventive and quirky as anywhere else in the country, let alone the city. Imaginative vessels include a mock plastic biohazard bin (complete with booze-filled syringe) and cereal boxes, and each one’s listing in the ‘Boilermaker instruction manual’ (read: drinks menu) comes with a deliberately vague description.

Get down and sample the scientific scene.

Both the venue and the drinks on sale at Baa Bar have a scientific theme, and are so impressive that you wouldn’t be surprised if it did take a laboratory to come up with them. Serving their trademark conical flask cocktails and layered shooters from 5pm until 3am, this is a venue that can just as happily serve as the early-evening kickstarter as the early-hours dance floor. A modern design and big tunes keep the atmosphere bubbling (like the cocktails), and the massive menu of shooters ranges from delicious to devious, so can either be a trick or treat for the blushing bride-to-be.

Revolutionary tactics.

Notorious chain of ‘vodka bars’, Revolution, have a venue nestled into a beautiful red brick building on Hockley’s paved Broad Street. It has a light, expansive interior with a good mixture of booths, sofas and high tables to install yourselves in. This chain is most famous for their ‘trains’ of flavoured vodka shots – ranging from the tempting ‘Pear Drop’ and ‘Birthday Cake’ through to the slightly less appetising ‘XXX Chilli’. The expansive cocktail menu is mostly made up of ingenious originals but also has the classics you’d expect to see (round of Pornstar Martinis anyone?). We recommend the ‘Captain Coconut’ and the ‘Sourberry Blast’.