CityPoint,
1 Ropemaker Street,
London,
EC2Y 9HT
0872 148 1445
The ViewLondon Review
I daresay you've never spared a thought for the plight of the City bar-owner. I say this not out of a lack of trust in your nature – I've never met you: it's just that it's not the kind of thing people form pressure groups about.
Yet, in a modest way, City bars have been through a tricky time recently. 9/11 and the war have led to a square mile brimming with venues populated only by tumble-weed, and pins dropping audibly.
So I was glad to find Corney and Barrow, Citypoint jostling with real, live, drunken human beings. It might be the location – between Moorgate and Liverpool Street, so eminently accessible; it might be the fact that the punters are lawyers not traders. Whatever the reason, the party's still pumping here.
The look of the bar is, naturally, hard-edged city-chic. Cubic red chairs, dark red pillars, slate-grey floor, long, thin windows: imagine a squash-playing, suit-wearing City boy in bar form and you'll come up with this.
What makes this machismo so classy is the detail. Some nice stripey couches liven up the palette, and intriguing (though monochrome) artworks include a frame enclosing white zigzags and twinkly lights resembling a sort of Arctic jungle. Very cute, very cool and exactly what's needed to avoid corporate banality.
Prices are slightly above themselves, but you do get excellent service from professional and dedicated staff. There are sixty wines by the glass (house-points there) and fifteen styles of champagne (yum!), plus lots of exclusive beers.
Plenty of snacks are available to line the stomach for all that champers, including Mediterranean antipasti, Cumberland sausages and prawns in filo pastry. And that's before you get started on the canapé menu.
I'd wager that Corney and Barrow's continuing success is down to an excellent grasp of their market. These guys even understand the businessman or woman's need for undignified extra-curricular pastimes: they're buying in some giant party games for private functions. Well-researched, well-designed, classy good fun.
Corney and Barrow @ CityPoint has been reviewed by 1 users