Apollo's Muse

Apollo's Muse is Richard Caring's cocktail lounge and private members' space concealed within Bacchanalia on Mount Street, reached through a discreet door off the restaurant. Caring drew on the Villa Albani in Rome and filled the room from his own collection: more than thirty antiquities, among them a Greek funerary stele dated to 400BC and a statue thought to represent Clio, the muse of history, set in an arched niche above the bar. The lounge is finished in fourteen marbles from floor to ceiling, under a gilded and coffered plasterwork ceiling, with velvet seating arranged around the bar. One curator's line has stuck to it: if the Vatican had a bar, this would be it.

Tales of the Cocktail named it among the ten best bars in Europe, and the drinks list runs to rare vintages and a roster of signature cocktails led by the Apollo's Martini. Executive chef Athinagoras Kostakos supplies Greek and Italian feasting plates for larger gatherings. The room keeps late hours, with nightly DJ sets, live music through the week and a monthly late-night party, House of Apollo's, that brings in guest DJs.

For a private event the whole lounge takes exclusive hire, holding up to forty seated or a hundred standing. It is a self-contained room with its own bar and entrance, which is what makes it work for a DJ-led evening rather than only a seated dinner.