Kwãnt Mayfair
The signature martini here runs gin through a langoustine distillate, fino sherry and sea oil, and the garnish on it was grown hydroponically in the building.
Why go
Erik Lorincz spent seven years at the Savoy as the tenth head bartender of the American Bar and oversaw its rise to World's Best Bar in 2017 (Europe's 50 Best Bars). He opened the first Kwãnt in a Heddon Street basement in 2019 and won The Best New Opening Award at The World's 50 Best Bars the following year. Then the room went, through nothing he did: the restaurant Momo, his sister business and lease partner, went into liquidation in 2021 and took the lease with it (The Spirits Business). Two years of pop-ups followed, including a summer residency at a hotel in Ibiza, and in 2023 the bar reopened on a Mayfair corner by Green Park, on the old Café Nero site, at ground level with glass on two sides. Europe's 50 Best Bars ranked it 40th for 2026. Inside there is a hand-painted Polynesian mural, a cane ceiling, palms in the windows and a custom bar with bartenders working three stations around it. One seat is kept for people drinking alone.
Order this / avoid
- Order: See the Sea, the house martini variant, which 50 Best calls
a clever, balanced and salty take on the martini
1. The Wallet, bourbon with black miso, barley vermouth, chestnut and salted maple. The Ryuku, rum and espresso with two sherries and awamori syrup. Ask what has come off the fermentation bench lately. - Avoid: turning up expecting the old basement, which closed in 2021. And do not treat a Mayfair corner bar on this list as a Friday walk-in.
What locals & experts say
- Europe's 50 Best Bars 2026, ranking it 40th, on the technique:
The in-house hydroponically grown garnishes and bespoke Rona glassware are minimalist, allowing the flavour of the varied drinks to shine... There's a focus on fermentation and unique distillates, as seen in drinks such as the signature See the Sea, made with gin, langoustine distillate, fino sherry, Cocchi Americano and sea oil.
1 - David Ellis, The Standard, on what the bar is doing:
I can't quite shake the feeling London hasn't had a bar this radical in years,
and the cocktails areutterly their own.
Quoted here as reproduced by Top 50 Cocktail Bars; the original review was not read at source.3 - Georgie Collins, The Spirits Business, 11 July 2022, reporting why the first bar went:
Kwãnt's original site on Heddon Street was forced to close in 2021 after its sister restaurant and lease partner, Momo, went into liquidation.
A trade report, not a verdict.2 - On the record for trajectory: Best New Opening at The World's 50 Best Bars 2020 for the first site, then 40th in Europe for 2026 with this one, and a forced closure and two pop-up years in between.
Good to know
- Where: 52 Stratton Street, W1J 8LN, a few metres from Green Park station, on the corner that used to be a Café Nero.
- Timing: no opening hours are published by any source found, and this entry does not guess at them.
- Website: none that works. The URL the guides carry returns a 404, so this entry gives none.
- Booking: worth arranging. There is also a seven-course tasting menu served to six guests with a chef, running from beef tartare with croustade, seaweed and chicory through scallops, cauliflower and curry.
- Drinking alone: there is a seat at the bar kept for exactly that.
- Hygiene: Food Standards Agency rating 5 with a clean sweep of components, inspected 18 September 2025 by the City of Westminster.4
- The other Kwãnt: the Heddon Street basement, 2019 to 2021. Any coverage older than 2023 describes that room.
Verdict
should-visit — Worth rearranging an evening for, if what is in the glass is why you go out. Erik Lorincz spent seven years at the Savoy as the tenth head bartender of the American Bar and took it to World's Best Bar in 2017 before opening his own room in a Heddon Street basement in 2019. That one won Best New Opening at The World's 50 Best Bars in 2020 and then died in 2021, not through any fault of its own, when the restaurant holding the lease went into liquidation. He ran it as a pop-up, including a summer at a hotel in Ibiza, and reopened in 2023 on a Mayfair corner near Green Park with glass on two sides, a Polynesian mural, a cane ceiling and a custom bar with three working stations. Europe's 50 Best Bars put it at number 40 for 2026. The house work is the reason to trust it: garnishes grown hydroponically on site, a signature called See the Sea that runs gin through langoustine distillate, fino sherry and sea oil, a slow-fermented mugi tea drink charged with nitrogen, and non-alcoholic drinks built with the same technique rather than as an afterthought. There is a single seat kept at the bar for people drinking alone, which tells you what the room is for. It holds here rather than higher because the only critic's verdict we have was read secondhand, and because nobody publishes the hours or a working website.