This cocktail bar has always been on a spotlight. For two years in a row ( 2014 and 2015) has ended as a 2nd best cocktail bar in the world by worlds50bestbars.com ratings. Right after The Artesian. After Simone Caporale and Alex Cratena left this bar in London, The first place was free. And finally, after 2 years of being 2nd on the list, The Dead Rabbit has managed to move one position higher and for the 2016 they became the best cocktail bar in the world.
When You end up 2 years in a row behind the same bar and then You replace it on the 1st place, You will never avoid the comparison. And sadly for The Dead Rabbit, The Artesian bar in London has set my expectations very high. And I've got extremely disappointed. And no, it was not because I was waiting to see or to try something even better than in London...
The Dead Rabbit is not just a cocktail bar. It is a whole building with three floors and each floor holds one bar. In the ground floor You can find the The Taproom, 2nd floor is the award-winning cocktail bar - The Parlor and in the top floor there is The Occasional. A private cocktail bar. All of the bars - well, all building - is made and decorted in Irish style. That means the use of wood. I love wooden bars, already walking on a wooden floor inside a bar makes it feel good. Here is wood everywhere and it feels nice and warm here.
But when You have 3 bars in the same building and another cocktail bar few hundered meters away (we will talk about that one later), You also need to have a lot of people working for You and if You want to be the best cocktail bar in the world, You have to make sure that every single person in your team is absolutely excellent. Is that managable if You have that many bars?
After my experience here at The Dead Rabbit I must say, that it is not. What I've seen in this bar and what I experienced or what I could witness left me some serious doubts even about worlds50bestbars.com itself. Let me explain very closely.
One of the basic skills of a good bartender is precision. Barmaid serving me that evening was preparing all the cocktails in following way : She took the glass from the boston shaker first, she completely filled it with ice cubes and put it aside. Then she prepared the glass for the cocktail and just then she spilled the water out of the mixing glass. Then she poured the ingredients to the mixing glass and then she was stirring/shaking the cocktail, poured it to the cocktail glass and served it. What's wrong, you may ask.
Well, almost everything. First you should prepare the glass for the cocktail, then You should cool down the mixing glass by stirring the ice, throwing it away and putting new ice for the preparation of the cocktail. Leaving the mixing glass aside for 1-2 minutes does nothing. By the way, almost all other cocktail bars from the same category of the world's best bars are not using ice cubes, but ice shards, they melt much more slowly than ice cubes, leaving your cocktails less watery.
However those are still arguable details in comparison to her way of pouring. Yes, I didn't write measuring on purpose, because most of the times, she was not using any items for it. Straight pour to the glass. When You work in one of the best bars in the world, You should have the skill of being able to pour a perfect amount ''by the eye.'' That would not be a problem. The problem was, that every time she has finished her cocktail and served it to the guest, there was even 3-4 centiliters (1,5 oz) of waste! Yes, there is always a bit of waste after stirring or shaking, but the water from melting the ice down, would never ever reach this much of liquid! Precision is one the most important skills of a bartender.
Another key ability of a bartedner is hospitality. And The Dead Rabbit claims to have the greatest hospitality. I was lucky to witness an amazing example of it in 2 different cases. When I was eating my burger, which was probably the best thing in this bar (not kidding, the food was excellent) another guest entered The Parlor room and sat at the end of the bar. The same barmaid, who was werving me, served him and gave him the menu. He had just a quick look to the menu and said, that he was sitting in The Taproom and he was just curoius on the award winning cocktail bar but he is not interested in cocktails too much. He gave the menu back to the bartender and ordered a Long Island Iced Tea. Barmaid replied : ,,Ermm, You know we are doing very sophisticated cocktails here, so in case You will be interested in any of them, I will leave You the menu here. She opened the menu and left it in front of him. In meanwhile i finished my burger, I finished my cocktail and wanted to leave. Before I didn't pay much attention to the story. But now after almost 20 minutes, when he was still waiting for his Long Island Icead Tea, I started to wonder. I asked for the bill anyway. Barmaid said, that she cannot give me the bill now, because they do an afternoon shift and then between 16:00 and 17:00 they close the bar, change the staff and from 17:00 they open the evening shift. Alright, I will wait. Maybe the gentleman at the end of the bar will get his Long Island. Then finally the collegues of this afternoon shift have arrived. Without introduction to the guests or even greetings, they just started to work. I finally got my bill and while I was putting my jacket on, I heard how is the barmaid,serving me, asking her collegue : ,,Sorry how would You do Long Island Iced Tea?''
So she was waiting for her collegue to arrive to explain to her, how to do it. But it was not that easy. Because her collegue from the evening shift replied : ,, I don't know, I've never made a single one in my entire life.'' I will not write anything else at this point anymore. I will leave You just with these facts, to not influence You any further so You can make your own opinion about this bar, my experience or even this review. But I was not done with this bar yet. As I said before. There is another bar in association with The Dead Rabbit just few hundred meters away. It's name is The Black Tail and that's where we are going next.
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