by Genuinely stunning view. Genuinely alarming prices. A properly London combination.
Went to the rooftop bar everyone in my group chat has apparently been raving about for the better part of two months, finally, after several failed attempts to actually get a booking, and I have returned with a genuinely mixed verdict that I feel obligated to report honestly rather than simply performing the enthusiasm everyone else seems to have settled on collectively.
The view, I will say without any hesitation, is genuinely spectacular, the kind of proper, sweeping London skyline that makes you understand, briefly and expensively, why people pay the prices this specific venue charges. We arrived just as the light was starting to properly turn golden, and I spent a solid five minutes simply standing at the railing not talking to anyone, which is not a normal thing for me to do at any social occasion, let alone one I had been looking forward to for weeks. The city genuinely does something to you from up there that it does not quite manage from street level, however many times you have already seen these same landmarks from a dozen other angles.
The prices, meanwhile, are genuinely alarming in a way that no amount of advance warning from friends who had already been fully prepared me for. A single cocktail came in at a figure I am not going to type out in this diary entry purely because I do not want to relive the specific moment of paying it, and the small plate of food we ordered to share, described on the menu with considerably more poetic ambition than the actual portion size justified, disappeared between the three of us in roughly four bites each.
I think what genuinely struck me, reflecting on the whole evening afterward, is how thoroughly this specific venue has leaned into selling the view itself as the actual product, with the food and drink functioning as a kind of secondary, almost incidental afterthought priced accordingly high purely because they can charge whatever they want for the privilege of consuming it while looking at that skyline. That is not necessarily a criticism, exactly, since the view genuinely does deliver on its own terms, but it does mean the whole evening functions considerably more like a paid experience than an actual meal out, a distinction worth knowing before you book rather than discovering it, as I did, once the bill actually arrived.
Would I go back? Genuinely, probably, for a special occasion specifically, rather than as any kind of regular haunt, because the view really is worth experiencing at least once properly, ideally at exactly that golden hour window we happened to catch by pure luck rather than deliberate planning. I would simply go in with realistic expectations about what I was actually paying for, and possibly eat a proper meal beforehand so the tiny, expensive plates function as a genuine bonus rather than the evening’s actual sustenance.
My friends, for what it is worth, remain considerably more enthusiastic about the whole experience than my own slightly more measured verdict here suggests, and I suspect I will be dragged back within the next few months regardless of my carefully balanced review, which is, I have decided, entirely fine by me. Some views are worth the alarming bill, at least occasionally.
One small addition worth noting for anyone considering the same trip: the actual booking process itself proved almost as much of an ordeal as the eventual bill, with a reservation window that opens, apparently, precisely three weeks in advance and closes again within what felt like minutes once genuinely desirable evening slots got claimed. I ended up setting a phone reminder specifically to be online the moment bookings opened, which felt, at the time, like a genuinely excessive amount of effort to expend on securing a dinner reservation, and which I am now recounting in this diary with a straight face as though it were an entirely reasonable thing to have done.
The whole evening did leave me thinking, walking home afterward, about how thoroughly this city has developed a genuine cottage industry around exactly this kind of scarce, heavily marketed experience, the booking scramble itself functioning almost as part of the product, manufactured exclusivity layered on top of an already expensive night out. I do not begrudge the venue for leaning into that dynamic, since it clearly works commercially, judging by how quickly those booking slots disappeared. I simply want to be honest, in this diary at least, about exactly how much of the evening’s appeal was the view itself and how much was the specific, slightly absurd thrill of having successfully secured access to it in the first place.
I have already been asked, by at least two people who saw the photos I posted, for the exact booking strategy that got us in, which I found genuinely funny given how little actual strategy was involved beyond a phone reminder and slightly excessive persistence at the precise moment the booking window opened. I am half tempted to write up the whole process properly as its own separate piece for work, purely because I suspect a genuinely useful, practical guide to navigating this specific city’s more absurd reservation systems would land considerably better with readers than yet another straightforward restaurant review ever could.
More from this author at Vivienne Pratfall, prat.uk.
