Nine Lives

Finally putting us on level-pegging with the domestic cat, we the drinking public now have Nine Lives.

A subterranean drinking den on Holyrood Street, it comes to us from the cocktailing maestros behind Sweet&Chilli (a specialist drinks agency), and it proudly bears a zero-waste ethos.

The space itself is set in a Victorian basement near London Bridge, with colonial style chairs and wicker lampshades to round it out. On the menu, you’ll find signatures like the Moby Dick (coconut oil-washed grain whisky, with a salted caramel syrup), and the Ômu Kooler (Campari with a watermelon & cucumber home’ade).

And when they say zero-waste, they apparently mean it: the menu has a whole section dedicated to ‘Loops’, referring to drinks where the team have reused key ingredients and given them a new lease of life. Take the humble lemon: here they’ve used not just the juice, but the skin and the oils in cocktails; the pith is then distilled to release essential oils which can be used to make liqueurs and hand soap; and anything else possibly left over after that is neutralised and composted to help grow herbs in their back garden.

To stop you getting too wasted, they’ve also bussed in Tigre Tacos to provide a little ballast for the booze. And to top it all off, there’s even a secluded area with tabletop shuffleboard.

It’s cool for cats.

NOTE: Nine Lives is now open, and you can check out their website right HERE.

Nine Lives | 8 Holyrood Street, SE1 2EL

Making a night of it? Check out the best restaurants in London Bridge.