Tayēr + Elementary
A fire has closed 152 Old Street and the team is pouring at 17 Mercer Street until 22 August 2026, so read the rest of this with that in front of it.
Why go
Monica Berg and Alex Kratena put two different bars behind one door in 2019, and by 2025 the pair sat fifth on The World's 50 Best Bars. The front is Elementary, described by the ranking body as an industrially designed diner-style front bar... where the draught cocktails form the bar's core and weekly-changing seasonal and collaborative menus are served in seconds alongside the own-label wine and beer
(50 Best Bars). Behind a concrete partition is Tayēr, where the drinking experience meets the chef's table
, built around an enormous hexagonally-divided bar station
with a daily-changing produce-driven menu
. A drinks list that turns over daily in one room and weekly in the other is the cocktail equivalent of a kitchen buying at market, and it is what separates this from a bar with a good back catalogue.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the One Sip Martini with a blue cheese olive, which the ranking calls
an almost pre-requisite jumping off point.
2 After that, whatever is on the day's list in the back. - Avoid: heading to Old Street before late August 2026. The room is shut and the pop-up is in Covent Garden.
What locals & experts say
- Diana Militski, co-founder of Kinkally, asked by TOPJAW for the best cocktail spot in London, named the front room:
Elementary. So bold, so innovative.
4 - The World's 50 Best Bars 2025, ranked No. 5, on the back room:
Here the drinking experience meets the chef's table,
on a menuas much a celebration of ingredients, often esoteric, always hyper-seasonal.
The bar also took the Disaronno Highest New Entry in the edition announced during lockdown.2 - Monica Berg does not appear here as a voice for her own bar. She is a voter in our London corpus, naming Satan's Whiskers, Three Sheets, The Marksman, Rinkoff and Japan Centre in December 2024, and the own-venue rule keeps her off this entry.
Good to know
- Right now: 152 Old Street is closed after a fire in the building. Casual by Tayēr runs at 17 Mercer Street, WC2H 9QJ, from 15 July to 22 August 2026, Wednesday to Saturday, 6pm to 1am, hosted with Cato Covent Garden. Re-check after that date.
- Which room: Elementary at the front is the walk-in, the quick one, and the one to bring someone to who is not sure they like cocktails. Tayēr at the back is the one to plan an evening around, and the one the world ranking is about.
- Where normally: 152 Old Street, EC1V 9BW, by Old Street roundabout.
- Hygiene: no FSA record was found on 30 July 2026 under the business name, the postcode or the street. That is an absence of a record rather than a bad one, and it is worth re-checking once the Old Street room reopens.
- Also from this team: Tayēr Studios, which the venue describes as "a platform for co-creation" working on ready-to-drink products.
Verdict
must-visit — Plan around it, and check where it is before you go. Monica Berg and Alex Kratena built two bars behind one door on Old Street in 2019 and by 2025 the pair sat fifth in the world. The back room, Tayēr, is the one the ranking describes: an enormous hexagonally-divided bar station in the middle of the floor and a daily-changing produce-driven list, which is a kitchen's relationship with a market applied to drinks. The front room, Elementary, is where most people should start, a diner-style bar running draught cocktails and weekly-changing collaborative menus served in seconds, and it is the room Diana Militski of Kinkally named when asked for the best cocktail spot in London: 'So bold, so innovative.' Start on the One Sip Martini with the blue cheese olive. The caution is current rather than structural: a fire has closed 152 Old Street and the team is at 17 Mercer Street until 22 August 2026, so this is a ruling on the bar and not on this month.