Book review: Kitchen Cocktails – Recipes of the London Cocktail Club

The basis for Kitchen Cocktails, the 11-site London Cocktail Club (LCC) brand founded by JJ Goodman and James Hopkins, is a mixture of top-class, ingredient-led drinks and a quirky sort of anarchy.

Curated and created by co-founder, creative director and award-winning bartender JJ Goodman, Kitchen Cocktails manages to offer a greatest hits collection of the brand’s craziest concoctions.

The book is set out as a 24-hour romp through the bars’ menus over the last decade, from the midday ‘daytime summer punches’ section to 9-11pm ‘pudding’ and back around to a 9am-midday ‘retox’ of revitalising virgin drinks. The brand’s most notable creations are present: from the bacon and egg martini to the ‘Heisenberg’, a bright blue, tequila-based, Breaking Bad
homage and the Earl Grey sour, a white lady served with the tea’s unmistakable fragrance.

Each cocktail is presented with both the original recipe and the LCC creation, the thought process behind Goodman’s reworking and the history behind the drink.

Every drink is costed and features quirky ingredients that can be picked up from a supermarket - a key element of the LCC brand - making them easily accessible, despite the high quality of the end product.

The book is bursting with the frenetic energy for which the LCC brand and the man behind it have become known. The lush images, captured by Jodi Hinds, were the product of a frantic shoot of less than a week - but fit effortlessly with the style of the offering. Punctuated with snapshots of nights in the brand’s bars, the book conveys the chaos, creativity and cocktails of LCC, making it a rich living history of the creation of a brand - and, more importantly, really, really fun.

Kitchen Cocktails - Recipes of the London Cocktail Club, by JJ Goodman (RMC Media, £25)

Recipe of the week: Bacon and egg martini >>

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