 |
 |
|||||
|
|
Explore | |||||
|
|
Bars |
|||||
|
|
 |
Milk & Honey -
Moscow In central Moscow, close by the Lubyanka, the former KGB headquarters, is a new HQ for the city's glamorous intelligentsia. Newly reopened Milk & Honey is a unique retreat: a lounge bar in the grand style. But this is grand style interpreted through the fIamboyant filter of interior designer Hassan Abdulah, co-owner of London’s Loungelover. Ceawlin Thynn, British owner of Milk & Honey (which has no relation to the same-name bars in London and New York), explains that Abdullah's style is "new baroque decadent maximalism". It features antiques of all ages and styles, dwarfed by huge portrait paintings hanging on crimson or green walls, illuminated by chandeliers. Offering some of the city's best French food, Milk & Honey sets itself apart from the rest of Moscow's nightlife, with its civilized, sophisticated ambience. It has already become the venue of choice far visiting celebrities and has recently hosted after-show parties for the Pet Shop Boys, Marilyn Manson and The Prodigy. Soak up the decadent maximalism for a taste of Milk & Honey. Milk & Honey, Myasnitkaya Ulitsa 38, 101000 Moscow, Russia.
Loungelover - London
Loungelover, 1 WhitbyStreet, London E27DP, UK.
Berns - Stockholm
Berns Hotel, Nöckströmsgaten 8, SE-11147 Stockholm Sweden.
Pershing Hall - Paris
The luxury Pershing Hall hotel, located in one of the most fashionable districts of Paris, is the perfect antidote to hectic city life. Its inner courtyard, through which you approach the bar, features more plant life than a series of Garden’s World: a vertical garden with over 300 varieties of flora, it stretches up 30 metres and is lit at night by fairy lights. It's an arresting sight but a therapeutic one too. Renowned designer Andrée Putman, who was responsible for the interior of the French Concorde aircraft no less, has opted for plenty of natural materials and a muted color palette of beige and grey in her conversion of this 19th century mansion. But while the unfussy design might suggest tranquility, don't think for coming here for a quiet evening drink. Music pumps until 2a.m. attracting a young, hip crowd of Parisians who remain happy sipping Mojitos served up by waitresses who look like they’ve just stepped off a catwalk. Concorde may have been grounded, but nights at Pershing Hall continue to go supersonic. Pershing Hall, 49 rue Pierre Charon, 75009, Paris, France.
Supperclub - Rome
Supperclub, Via dé Nari 14, 00186Rome, Italy.
Innvilla - Milan
Innvilla, Via Pegaso 11, Milan, Italy.
18twintig - Amsterdam
18twintig, Ferdinand Bolstraat 18-20 , Amsterdam 1072 LJ, Holland.
Tretter's New York Bar - Praque
Tretter's New York Bar, V Kolkovne 3, Josefov, Prague, Czech Republic.
Shu - Milan Intriguing restaurant and design bar done in the style of a sci-fi film set. Two enormous golden fibre glass hands support the high ceiling and the floor is made from resin enriched with tiny chrome tiles. The hi-tech ambience is intensified by a permanent green light illuminating the white interior walls and furniture. All this and drinks. Happy hour is rich with fresh fruit cocktails, pasta and desserts from the restaurant. A Shu in for the best bar in Milan. Via Molino delle Armi, 20100, Milan, Italy.
Face - Shanghai
Building 4, Ruijin Guest House Gardens 118 Ruijin Er Lu, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
Oven - Barcelona
Nomads - Amsterdam
Cabaret - Paris
Bed Superclub - Bangkok
Green Tea - Rome
W Times Square - New York
Go Up Links between space and music
(source of the article is the magazine 'Fashion Week', the book 'Chill out', Feieder.... and the website http://www.worldsbestbars.com) |
||||
|
Bars |
||||||
 |
 |
|||||
|
|
||||||
| Play the Life! creation - 2005 mail: info@playthelife.com | ||||||
Stuffed
with any treasures and objects d’art, Loungelover reinvents the
definition of harmony. Among the doll's houses, Chinese lanterns,
chandeliers and stained glass is a large diagram of the internal
workings of the human form. You can sit at rustic farmhouse tables,
lounge on classic design pieces from Sweden or loll on chairs that look
like they've recently been stolen from the Palace of Versailles. Such
an eclectic assortment of objects assembled together shouldn't work.
But owners Hassan Abdullah, Michel Lasserre and Stefan Karlson - who
also run the neighboring restaurant Les Trois Garçons - have styled all
this inanimate eye candy to create a bar with a real lived-in feel;
it's a place for proper drinking, eating and talking, not just posing.
The cocktails are inventive and very good. Try a Love Letter, which is
a blend of raspberry vodka, elderflower, white cranberry and grape
juice; or a Thai Breaker, a mix of coriander, ginger, passion fruit
juice and kalamansi juice (a Filipino fruit, similar to a lime), shaken
with coconut liqueur and cachaça. So pretty are your surroundings that
you could nurse one of these drinks with no one else in the bar and not
feel lonely - though you'd probably have to break in at 2a.m. if you
wanted to have the place to yourself. It’s full to bursting otherwise;
book a table in advance to be sure of getting in.
In
1999, Terence Conran and Grand Hotel Holdings, Sweden's leading
five-star hotel group, launched a dining and drinking venture at
Stockholm Berns Hotel. The Conran influence was obvious in the décor:
low-slung sofas and chocolate pouffes added a contemporary twist to the
ornate interior. The swish surroundings were complemented by superb
drinks, great food and a choice of different music in several rooms. It
was an instant success. Six years on and Berns is stilt wildly popular,
a superb multi-purpose venue that manages to be most things to most
people. The music policy is nothing if not eclectic: fans of disco,
house, funk, country and rockabilly are all catered for. Drinks in the
spectacular cocktail bar include the unusual but excellent Crystal, a
blend of Campari dry sherry, Cointreau and Martini Rosso, and the
fabulous Oriental Whisper made from Calvados and Poire William pear
liqueur. Upstairs the Red Room and the Mirror Room ere available for
private hire. In the basement the LE club entertains members until 4am.
But in the summer, the large terrace is the only place to be.
More
of a bedroom bar than a lounge bar, Supperclub in Rome offers the same
horizontal dining experience that the original Supperclub in Amsterdam
made so popular. There's something so Ancient Rome about sprawling on a
large bed with strangers, sipping libations, in a room of vestal
virginal white. But while Supperclub’s location may be historic, its
designers have given it an ultra modern twist: the venue looks like a
spaceship for angels. Hip DJ spin the tunes, video art is projected on
to the walls and dancers entertain between courses. After a drink in
theatrical Red Bar, choose between La Salle Neige, with its bunk-bed
mezzanine floor, and La Salle Baroque, which features a bed for 45
people and pillows galore. This giant bed concept doesn't work
everywhere. Chi in Birmingham, England, tried it but apparently had to
give up after too many pillow fights. Rome’s beautiful people -along
with a host of international stars -are better behaved. Kick off your
Ferragamo shoes (check your socks before coming), introduce yourself to
your bedmates, then lie back and think of Italy.
Take
a nineteenth-century villa in the green zone of St. Siro. Turn it
upside-down, furnish it according to the laws of the Nu Deco style. A
dreamy environment is to be discovered in its totality: three floors of
design with red carpet, white walls, the tonalities of the lacquered
walnut-tree, objects of design and artwork created ad-hoc on the walls.
Then, a garden that surrounds the villa and comfortable sessions for
pick raw specialty and finger food, from fish to meat. From the magic
hat of Vinicio Valdo a new creature is born, Innvillla (street Pegaso
II), that will know how to cheer those people who love the relax and
the refined spaces. Every day from 8 to 2.
Holland's
bar scene is one of the most dynamic in Europe at the moment and
established concepts such as Jimmy Woo's and Supperclub (both in
Amsterdam) have transferred successfully abroad, demonstrating their
widespread appeal. 18twintig is one of Amsterdam's more recent
additions, but it’s a good one. The name is Dutch for 1820, a take on
the street number, but it’s more like a futuristic 2020 inside. The
interior is bright and welcoming; purple banquettes, stools like large
squares of chocolate, chandeliers and plenty of warm wood are used lo
create separate areas in which you can lounge, snack or dine in style.
Even the ceiling is attractive, with beautiful art deco-style swoops
and curves. The venue's rather straightforward motto is “Food and
drinks, drink and food", and it certainly, does what it says on the
tin, with style and panache. The menu, which has an international
slant, includes tasty bar fare such as mini spring rolls with duck
confit and bruschettas with black olive tapenade. The cocktails are
expertly made, with the emphasis on classics, or twists on classics.
Sip a Saké Martini while nibbling on some grilled teriyaki chicken and
ponder your next move... Lunch or a visit to the Heineken brewery or
the Van Gogh Museum, both of which are just a stone's throw away.
It
might be stretching it a little to label Tretter's New York Bar, with
its classic Thirties feel, a lounge bar in the conventional sense, but
it makes the cut here simply because it's one of the best places in the
world in which to drink cocktails. There's an extensive list - more
like a small book in fact - of 200 creations, with 50 of them original
mixes devised by Michael Tretter, the award-winning Czech mixologist.
The bartenders execute these drinks perfectly. Tretter's inventions are
good but go for the classics - the décor demands it. They're all here:
the Martinis, Manhattans and Old-Fashioneds of this world; liquid
interpretations of the pictures on the walls: publicity shots from
Breakfast at Tiffany’s and black and white photos of Dizzy Giliespie of
the New York skyline. Yankie ex-pats can come over all misty-eyed in
here, while the rest of us can indulge in a dream. Adimittedly there
might not be any sofas to sprawl out on; but if a lounge bar is
somewhere you want to hang out in forever, Tretter's qualifies hands
down. 
When
summer's here and the living is easy, it's time for the Face. Located
in the heart of the city, behind bustling Mao Ming Road, it's a
gorgeous old country house with a huge lawn that makes you feel like
you're in some rural garden idyll. In summer, drinkers take gin and
tonic on the lawn or recline on the armchairs on the wooden verandah,
while two great restaurants inside specialise in tasty Thai and Indian
cuisine. The old-world interior décor includes ancient South East Asian
and Indian artefacts, arranged so tastefully you half feel you've
stumbled into a Country Life magazine shoot. Offset this with handsome
hardwood floors and the latest ambient techno tunes and you'll begin to
sense a certain melding of eras. Cocktails cost a bit but they are
strong, and a daily happy hour from 5pm - 8pm helps those with thin
wallets.
This
restaurant - bar, in an old industrial neighborhood in Barcelona, is
characterized by its flexible, multifunctional space. An old industrial
warehouse is the setting for a succession of spaces, including a lounge
that connects to the terrace, dining room, and the bar, where the
visitors relax on ample sofas. The red of the drop ceiling, rug, and
furnishing predominates, differentiating this space from the others. An
eye- catching methacrylate sphere creates a unique atmosphere with is
size and variety of colors. Here one can enjoy the resident DJ session
art exhibits or live performances that so often provide entertainment
for the guests.
This
restaurant - bar is inspired by Nomadic Arabic traditions that have
been carried over to an original space in downtown Amsterdam. The
visitors can enjoy resident DJ sessions as well as the elaborate menu
that include Middle Eastern flavors. The dark colors, subdued lighting,
lamps, inspired by the Orient, and Egyptian rugs covering the low
platforms, create an intimate and relaxing atmosphere.
Large
padded platforms, cushions, and low tables provide atmosphere in this
restaurant-bar in central Paris. However, the low ceilings are the
exceptional feature. A person cannot even stand up straight, and this
created a real feeling of intimacy. Most of the room is white and with
the low-intensity lighting any difference in tones is hardly
noticeable.
Standing
proudly in one of the most crowded, chaotic quarters of Bangkok, this
restaurant - bar offers a totally new alternative due to the style of
the club as well as the shapes and materials. It is an ethereal piece:
a white oval tube bathed in light, which, along with the shadows
reflected on the large glass sides, changes the external appearance.
The small building, made entirely of steel, a new material for this
city, has become an urban icon. The immaculate white interior is the
perfect remedy to the chaotic, crowded outside. the soft, light lines
of the interiors design, as well as the furnishing, fit perfectly
within the curve of the building. Visitors can have dinner or a drink
while sitting on modular sofas lining the walls, enjoy a DJ's session
or an art installation, or just mingle amongst the rest of the
clientele.
It
needs only to enter in this local for have the feeling of being in an
authentic Chinese tea house. The Green Tea of Rome is the twin of that
one of Shanghai. For the interiors, designed by the architect Pietro
Bongiana, they choose old furniture, small beds once used by opium
smokers with silk pillows. The local, open from eleven to midnight,
proposes for the lunch meat or fish, with rice and vegetables, or
vegetarians dishes. The tea ceremony “is directed” by Jiang Yan, master
of tea and wife of the owner Giacomo Rech. In the evening the menu goes
from turtle supper to Peking duck (three dishes with supper and clamp).
On Sunday there is Chinese brunch, with live music. Green Tea organizes
also courses, meetings and tastings, driven by famous Chinese chef.
The
public areas of this midtown Manhattan hotel become an actual refuge
from the urban hustle and bustle outside. Large surface areas, big
furniture, few colors and the dramatic lighting make this a calm,
subdued place.