Food & Drink|Swans Bar

This title includes over twenty cocktail recipes, accompanied by text from award-winning spirits and hospitality writer Millie Milliken, offering readers the chance to recreate their favorite Swans Bar cocktails at home. In celebration of Swans Bar’s ten-year anniversary, this book captures the essence of the bar’s most beloved drinks.

The majesty of old Piccadilly still stirs ambitions of grandeur, glamour and a golden age still in reach. The playground of viscounts, prime ministers and the Rothschilds, it was—and still is—the North Star of London dwellers and visitors alike seeking the spoils of some of the West End’s cultural and historical bastions. And over the last ten years, Swans Bar at Maison London has woven itself into the contemporary tapestry of W1A. 

With an architectural renovation by Guy Oliver and interiors by Prosper , Swans Bar is nestled in a Grade II*-listed building designed in the early 1920s by revered British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. Maison ’s flagship bar takes its name from the moniker—“swans”— given to the jet-setting high-society women of America’s 1950s and 60s elite, of whom writer Truman Capote became the confidant.

Opened in 2014, when London was basking in a new dawn of cocktail renaissance, Swans Bar has been offering for ten years an array of exclusive cocktails in a tucked-away space surrounded by the store’s expansive bookshelves. Clean lines, aprons, impeccable uniforms and minimalist garnishes are mixed with five-star-meets-friendly-local hospitality, making it a true bastion of elegance and culture. Developed exclusively by on-site mixologists, many of the drinks are inspired by popular book titles, transporting guests to unexpected destinations with each sip.