The first photo I ever posted to Instagram was of a cocktail (of course) at The Blind Pig on Poland Street. It was late 2013, so the cocktail came in a tiny apothecary’s bottle and the photo was Hipstamatic-filtered to within an inch of its life. Over a decade later, the same first-floor site has reopened as Kamara, and instead of ‘opticians’ signs and blindfolded doorknockers, Cretan amphorae abound. Here they are, hulking behind the bar and labelled with the ferments they contain, or appearing to be embedded in the wall halfway up the stairs. The room is dark — very dark — and arched like a cave, despite stubbornly remaining above both the ground on this Soho wannabe backstreet and the ground floor, which hosts its filial Eastern European restaurant.
Before the lights dim further, a group of three peers at the short menu and opt for one each of the first week cocktails: heavy on descriptors, details, and interesting flavours. When they arrive, the most interesting is the Yoghurt Cosmo (aka Yosmo as the menu explains, perhaps in the hope that the name might stick): “That’s sexy Ribena,” enthuses one guest, expanding further: “That’s a headfuck of a drink,” while the Coffee & Honey Old Fashioned smells like a burnt-out roastery — in the best way. Only the Apricot ‘Champagne’ falls flat, trying for levity and bubbles, but landing as a syrupy short serve that could do with a touch of something fizzy to lift it. The table moves on to pitching Christmas cocktail recipes with a Caribbean twist of sorrel, and everyone nods along, as if this is the most urgent problem in Soho tonight. Maybe it is. As we leave, remarking on how different the space feels, I instinctively pull out my phone to snap a photo. Round here, it seems, some things change, some things ferment, and some — mainly the urge to capture everything — persist across decades. (58 Poland Street, London, @kamarabar).