The Tiny Hackney Bar Making Weird And Wonderful Cocktails

Every Cloud ★★★★★

Helen Graves
By Helen Graves Last edited 84 months ago
The Tiny Hackney Bar Making Weird And Wonderful Cocktails Every Cloud 5
Drinks dude, Felix Cohen.

You'd be forgiven for walking right past Every Cloud, a teensy cocktail bar, squeezed into a sliver of Hackney Central's Morning Lane. Emerging from a taxi into the freezing night air, we're met by a space which is cool but understated — a few tables, twinkling lights, the main focus is the bar — it's immediately the cool local place you wished you lived next to.

Felix Cohen is the man behind the drinks, and he couldn't be further away from the macho 'mixologist' strutting behind a corporate-branded bar. When did people who make drinks start calling themselves something which sounds like a made up superhero power?

Felix would never use the M word, and that's not something we need to confirm by asking. The drinks at Every Cloud are very much his style, more of what we saw at his previous place, Manhattans Project; classics with a twist. Serious drinks with a huge injection of fun. Playful originals. The best way to approach them is to ask Felix to choose for you.

We start with a champagne daiquiri, unique in that it doesn't actually contain champagne, even though it tastes like it does. Felix has indulged his inner geek to produce an acid base which simulates the flavour, the point of this being, in his words, that he, "wanted something that was satisfying and fun in the same way as champagne but boozier and spirit led."

A Blue Moon.

A Blue Moon is described as being like "the awful child who turned into a blueberry in Willy Wonka". Bright cerulean, it's mildly terrifying and will bring back memories, depending on your age, of either nightmarish 90s experiments with blue curacao or WKD. Yes, ours is the former. In the mouth, it's got real clarity however, a playful fruit flavour that isn't juvenile or 'aimed at the laydeez'. Bravo.

A tomato Cowsmopolitan is great fun, and we do love it when bars go to the trouble to make tomato juice white — it's always a thrill. (see also: Bob Bob Ricard). The menu makes another great point in reference to this drink, which is that attempting to drink a bloody mary after midday is weird — you just can't do it, unless you're on a plane. This cocktail solves that problem.

The night wears on and we are still pre-dinner but it's hard not to work through the menu. A Sergeant Pepper is less 'self defence aid' more 'vegetal bite' and slips down easily, healthily, even. We love every drink we try.

There's something homely about Every Cloud. Although it's a million miles away from a 'proper old boozer', the feeling of being there is similar. It's somewhere you can imagine becoming a part of your life, like when you play a favourite album non-stop and it becomes your soundtrack. There’s a sense of being welcome, of being lucky to be a part of something. Sometimes you wanna go, where everybody knows… that mixing a cocktail inside a porcelain eagle of mystery origins is what the people want.

The Sergeant Pepper.

There was a time when you could drink straight from the eagle, apparently, but since they had 'an incident' that had to stop. We've no idea what happened; you'll have to go along and ask them.

Every Cloud, 11 Morning Lane, E9 6ND

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Last Updated 01 March 2017