Bar Termini

The bottled Negroni at the counter

A bottled Negroni leaves the cold and goes straight into a coupette at Bar Termini in Soho, London, where Tony Conigliaro works as co-founder. The gesture is small, almost domestic: glass, bottle, pour. It suits a bar built on restraint. Conigliaro came to the room from a London practice that joins bartending with drinks research, with 69 Colebrooke Row and Drink Factory behind him; at Bar Termini he tightened the work into a compact Italian register. The Soho bar opened in late 2014, made with coffee expertise at its centre as much as cocktails, so the day can begin at the espresso machine and end at the back bar without changing its discipline. The bar reads through the method he brought to it: a short list, controlled preparation, and drinks that arrive already decided. No long menu performs abundance. The bench-side work happens before the glass reaches the guest.

Four Negronis, one page

The program turns on a one-page cocktail list and four bottle-aged Negronis. Classico keeps to London dry gin, Italian vermouth and Campari. Rosato brings dried pink rose petals into the mix. Superiore and a fourth bottling move the drink through different intensities, and the fourth carries the more bitter line. Conigliaro’s Drink Factory practice sits behind the batching, chilling and sous-vide integration, so the pour can be served straight up without dilution and still hold its shape. The Marsala Martini gives the same argument in a different register: 50ml Beefeater gin, 10ml sweet Marsala, 5ml dry vermouth and three dashes of almond bitters, stirred and strained into a chilled coupe. The Espresso Martini leans hard into espresso rather than decoration. A Boulevardier, a Garibaldi, spritzes with gin and affogatos widen the pass, but the bar’s conviction stays narrow. Termini trusts repetition, not range.

Low light and Italian timing

The room is small enough that the counter becomes part of the method. Low lights keep the bottles and coupes close; the music sits behind the work rather than over it. Guests stand for coffee in the Italian manner, then the same surface turns toward aperitivi as the day changes. Staff knowledge matters in a room this compact, because there is little distance between the order and the making. A bartender can read whether a guest wants the softer Classico, the rose line of Rosato, or the bitter pull of the fourth bottling without turning the exchange into theatre. The atmosphere is lively, but the craft keeps its voice down. The drink arrives cold, measured and ready.

A small bar with a fixed argument

Bar Termini carries 6th place on The World’s 50 Best Bars list in a tiny Soho room organized around a few drinks that can bear repetition. Conigliaro’s program leaves little room for padding, which is why the classics have to carry the room each service. The next service repeats it, a bottle opened cleanly over Bar Termini’s Marsala Martini.