The Zetter Townhouse Clerkenwell

A bartender best known for laboratory work built the list here and then made it restrained, which is the opposite of what the room looks like it should serve.

Why go

The ground-floor bar at the Zetter Townhouse was set up as a collaboration between the hotel, Tony Conigliaro and the chef Bruno Loubet, in a Georgian townhouse on St John's Square done out like a collector's sitting room. Richard Ehrlich gave it five stars for Time Out and led on the room: "every surface has something old and lovely on it" (ref). His more interesting observation is about the drinks. Conigliaro is the name behind 69 Colebrooke Row and its upstairs lab, and here the list came out short and plain. The bar now trades as The Parlour and runs all day, from coffee at half seven in the morning to a last drink at half ten, with seasonal small plates and British wines alongside the cocktails, and live music on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings (The Zetter). The venue's own page credits the drinks to an in-house team and no longer names Conigliaro.

Order this / avoid

• Order: whatever the bar has made itself, because the house tinctures and bitters are what let a short list stay interesting. A spritz in the afternoon, which is what the room is genuinely best at. The small plates, which come from a hotel kitchen rather than a bar back.
• Avoid: planning a late night around it. Weekday closing is 10.30pm and Sunday is 10pm, whatever the older listings say. And ring ahead at the weekend.

What locals & experts say

• Richard Ehrlich, Time Out London (25 March 2015), five stars out of five: "In decor alone the Zetter Townhouse hotel is exceptional: every surface has something old and lovely on it, like an eccentric collector's country house. The result is one of the most beautiful and unusual bars in London." ref
• Ehrlich again, on the drinks, which is the line worth having: "The short cocktail list was devised by Tony Conigliaro, who is known for his experimental techniques and ingredients, but drinks here are fairly simple and restrained. And wonderful." He also rates Bruno Loubet's bar food as "a decisive cut above the norm". Both judgments are from 2015. ref
• The venue's own current position is worth reading against that: the drinks are now "curated by our expert team", with no name attached. What is in the glass today has not been assessed by anyone with a byline. ref
• No practitioner vote. places-db/london/data/chef-votes.jsonl was searched on 1 August 2026 and holds nothing for this bar.

Good to know

• Where: 49-50 St John's Square, Clerkenwell EC1V 4JJ, in the Zetter Townhouse hotel. Farringdon tube.
• Which Zetter: this is Clerkenwell. There is a separate Zetter Townhouse in Marylebone at 28-30 Seymour Street with its own bar, and a Zetter in Bloomsbury on Montague Street. Nothing here is about either.
• Timing: Monday to Friday 7.30am to 10.30pm, Saturday 8am to 10.30pm, Sunday 8am to 10pm. It is an all-day parlour, and it shuts early for a cocktail bar.
• Booking: recommended, and worth doing for a group or at the weekend.
• Music: live, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
• Hygiene: the FSA records rating 5, inspected 22 January 2026, with components 5, 5 and 5, where lower is better. ref
• Michelin: not recorded either way. Our cached Michelin data is stars only and a hotel bar sits outside the restaurant guide.

Jeff's take (his words)

Jeff has no note on this one. The saved-places export carries an empty Note for the row, so jeff_note stays empty and nothing here is attributed to him. The master spreadsheet described the cocktails as coming from the 69 Colebrooke Row team, which was true when the bar was built and is not what the venue says today.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

could-visit — The room is the draw and everyone who writes about it says so. Richard Ehrlich gave it five stars for Time Out and called it one of the most beautiful and unusual bars in London, a townhouse sitting room where every surface has something old on it. The bar was built as a collaboration between the hotel, Tony Conigliaro and the chef Bruno Loubet, and Ehrlich's useful line is that despite Conigliaro's reputation for laboratory work the drinks here are restrained. Read the timing before you plan around it: it now trades as The Parlour, opens at half seven in the morning for coffee, and shuts at half ten at night, which makes it an afternoon and early-evening room rather than a late one. Live music on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. It sits at could-visit because the last bylined assessment of the drinks is from 2015 and the venue no longer names who writes the list, so what is currently in the glass is unevidenced.