Halkin Bar

The Halkin Bar sits a few steps off the lobby at COMO The Halkin, behind the arched windows that face Halkin Street. Laboratorio Associati of Milan set the hotel's interiors when it opened in 1991, and the lobby and bar were rebuilt in 2019. The room now runs as a long, low-lit stretch of quilted banquettes and cream armchairs, broken up by dark fretwork screens that divide the floor into pockets. Circular clerestory windows sit above the banquette wall, so the light stays soft through the middle of the day.

It opens at seven and runs to eleven at night, and it carries the hotel's whole ground-floor offer. Coffee and a short kitchen menu of pasta, steak and salads through the day, COMO Shambhala dishes alongside them, afternoon tea from two, brunch on Saturdays and Sundays. The cocktail list is deliberately short and built around The Halkin Gin, an organic London dry gin of ten botanicals made for the house and poured into a White Negroni, a Bee's Knees or a Tom Collins.

For an event the appeal is discretion rather than scale. The screens and banquette bays already divide the room, so a group can take a section without closing the hotel, and the bar can be taken exclusively by arrangement through the events team. Service runs to eleven. Reservations are not usually needed, which is part of why Belgravia treats it as a local.