Wylde For Liquor: Dickie's Bar at Corrigans, Mayfair

At this Mayfair trough, Keith Barker-Main is as a (broken-down) pig in clover.

Richard Corrigan gives good scran but according to the award-winning Irish chef, he’s "No bartender". Smart move, then, to relaunch the lounge bar at his eponymous Upper Grosvenor Street gaff, roping in Gregory Buda to design its drinks list. 

“Hoo dat?” As any globe-trotting cocktail-caner worth his salt will tell you (Île de Ré Sel Fou numéro 17 on a Margarita glass, the horniest rim you’ll ever experience) Greg, the bartender’s Buda, is star fixer-mixer at The Dead Rabbit Grocery and Grog, the postmodern Irish pub on Water Street, Manhattan –  recently voted The World’s Best Bar. 

All marmalade leathers, beaten metals and jazzy cobalt blue chevron-patterned booths, Corrigan’s made-over Mayfair lounge comes on like a Fifties postmodern hunting lodge in upstate New York. Track down Professional Stalker – an aged Irish whiskey, fine Cognac and fig Manhattan, and tequila, rhubarb, Aperol and Pisco rinse, Fairy Port  from a gutsy selection of blokey booze, and fruited highballs whose ingredients are ported over, fresh daily where possible, from Corrigan’s Emerald Isle farm.

Big baaad blokes in hide aprons who might work for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s human flesh-carver, Leatherface, peddle butch bar bites - our smoked ham hock and black pudding croquettes (see below), described by a foreign waiter as ‘basically, broken-down pig’ - fancy fishy thingys - Cornish crab salad in brioche - and oyster croque monsieur.

Less Dickie beau, are prices that reflect the location… the priciest square on the Monopoly board.

Dickies Website

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