Find the red light. Pick up the phone. Enter.
This is Red Light, Bristol’s newest and most secretive cocktail bar, opened by Richard Tring, formally head bartender at the Milk Thistle, that other bar hidden in plain sight.
Located on Unity Street off the bottom of Park Street, Red Light was once upon a time Nocturne and most recently The Tube, owned by members of Massive Attack.
No longer, however, do the walls sweat.
Instead, 100 people can be comfortably seated in a surprisingly spacious bar, where men in braces make the drinks and your orders are taken by women who could have stepped from the vintage adverts in the drinks menu.
Tring’s aim here is to create the feel of a 1950s brothel.
A neon sign spelling ‘Sex’ is the first thing that you see when walking down the stairs, but other than the scantily-clad ladies in those scandalously sexist adverts for cigarettes and boot polish, it’s all decidedly classy and above board.
Cocktails here are divided into ‘Fortified and aromatised’, ‘Eye openers and bracers’, ‘Highballs’, ‘Sours and similar’ and ‘Nightcaps’.
There are also the ‘Take Six classics’, the likes of a Moscow Mule, Margarita and Martini. Each is available as house, hip or daddy-o, at £8, £10 or £12 dependant on your preferred spirit or budget.
A choice from the nightcap selection is the delicious Bristol Connection (£8.50) – Appleton 8, dubonnet, cider syrup, orange bitters.
My splendid house Old Fashioned came in a Kilner jar, rather like some of the dishes at nearby Meluha, to be poured into a glass containing a slab of ice the size of iceberg that sunk the Titanic.
Cousin Jeremy meanwhile was defeated by his third and final drink of our Friday night visit, a Bullseye, Red Light’s take on the Bloody Mary that perhaps could have come in a glass half the volume.
Cocktails may be the drink of choice here, but other options include red and white wine by the glass or bottle, sparkling (the most expensive option is a £225 bottle of champagne, Pascal Agrapart Grand Cru 2006 Brut Nature ‘Venus’), a beer selection including bottles from Brew Dog and Flying Dog, and regularly changing bottles of cider.
Find the red light. Find it as soon as you can.
Red Light, 1 Unity Street, Bristol, BS1 5HH. 0117 9291453.
