Dime Bar - Doodle Bar - Street Kitchen

A very busy week of Battersea exploration is coming to an end but March is beginning - hooray! Three more great places to mention:

Friday 1st March: My evening was rapidly disappearing in a pub in Oval when my flatmate Maggie rang me looking for something fun to do. We decided to meet at Clapham Junction and investigate another place on Battersea Rise near Southsider Cocktail Club called The Dime Bar - a retro rock'n'roll bar/diner with private karaoke booths downstairs.  We headed straight for the main bar and pulled up two bar stools in front of Sam the bartender - our new best friend.

We worked our way through some of their fun cocktails, with Sam the barman providing us with free tasters of the more bizarre ingredients - e.g. Bacon infused Bourbon in "Porky's Revenge", Umeshu - plums steeped in alcohol and sugar, Pie Crust Syrup - a sugar syrup reduced from sweet pie crusts!  We also managed to blag a free shot of the Dime Bar Snood Shooter for checking in to their site on Facebook. When we first arrived we weren't sure it was going to be anything special but thanks to great, laid back service and some quirky cocktail ingredients we ended up having an awesome night there.  The cocktails are nearly all £7.50 and there is happy hour every day from 5-7 (until 9 on Thursdays).  Go down on a Wednesday night for "Man vs Chicken" - all you eat wings. Also look out for their Bottomless Brunch on Sundays which comes with unlimited Bloody Marys or Mimosas for just £16!

Free taste of Umeshu and Dime Bar Snood Shooter

Saturday 2nd March: Credit again goes to Maggie for the next two as she decided to have some birthday drinks at The Doodle Bar in Battersea, with pop-up food from the Street Kitchen team round the corner.  The Doodle Bar is special because of a simple, excellent concept which I wish I had thought of first - the walls, pillars and tables are all made of materials that you can doodle on with chalk (mostly blackboard at the moment).  The bar is round the corner from the Royal College of Art (in a strange building called Testbed1 that used be a dairy warehouse) but also pulls in some King's Road crowd so the doodles were varied to say the least. Our most successful doodle (courtesy of Livy) was a pair of angel wings that you could pose in front of.

We arrived early and held on to a table all evening which was useful but there is plenty of space in the bar and the atmosphere was relaxed even when it was busy at the end of the evening.  There are nice cocktails and beers on offer though they aren't trying to stand out in that department. The List "Fact of the Day" came from keen team list member Natalie who impressed Vangeli the barman by informing him that their mysterious skull shaped bottle was in fact Crystal Skull Vodka made by Dan Ackroyd from Ghostbusters, earning us three free shots in the process!

Dan Ackroyd's Crystal Skull Vodka

The bar itself doesn't serve food so you are allowed to bring in whatever you want to eat, but you should travel no further than the pop-up food van next door called The Hatch run by Street Kitchen (who can also be found near Liverpool Street and hopefully soon in a permanent residence in Shoreditch). Award-winning chefs Jun Tanaka and Mark Jankel are to thank for the tasty food on offer. On weekdays they serve gourmet food in takeaway lunch boxes from 12-2. They only currently serve food in the evenings on Fridays and Saturdays from 7.30-12 when they provide fantastic gourmet burgers and delicious skin on chips.

The burger banter from the guys cooking that evening was excellent and they were happy to let you experiment with various toppings but I highly recommend sticking to their incredible creations.  As soon as I had finished I was already craving another one (despite generous portions) so I will have to return soon. Next stop: Feast Food Festival next Friday! Also watch out for pop up Ping Pong, Hot Tub Cinema, After Hours Dessert and Lucky Chip at the Grafton this month.

Many people made it onto Team List this week - Maggie takes the lead with 5 List visits now to her name. Have any readers done more? Ali, Natalie, JB, Luke, Anna, John, Jenny, Lauz, Mary, Max K, Andy Murray (celeb bonus), Molly, Livy, Helen, Lauren, Andy, David Gray (double celeb bonus), Sara, Livia and possibly more? Let me know if you feel you deserve a Team List mention. Here are some more pictures of Street Kitchen food and Doodles. Thanks for reading!

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