Novikov Restaurant & Bar

On Mayfair's Berkeley Street, a few doors from Park Chinois, Novikov has been the address for glamorous, late-running nights since Arkady Novikov brought his Moscow empire to London. Behind the foliage-framed entrance, 17,500 square feet hold three distinct spaces: a buzzing Asian restaurant built around an open kitchen and crushed-ice seafood display, a softer Italian dining room, and — the one we love most — a basement Lounge Bar that turns into one of Mayfair's most polished late-night rooms.

The Lounge Bar is unusual among restaurants in that it was built for music. A multi-zone in-house sound system runs throughout, engineered to take the room from low dinner ambience to a full dancefloor, alongside a resident DJ booth and moving-head lighting overhead. DJs play from 9pm Wednesday to Saturday and the room runs to 2am; on Tuesdays, 'Novikov Live' brings a set of blues, funk and soul. A DJ can plug in and play to club standard here without a single piece of hired-in kit.

For private celebrations, Novikov has three intimate rooms: the Poppy Room, the wine-lined Vino Room, and a secluded area within the Lounge Bar itself, seating roughly 25 to 50, with full buyout to 250 standing. Between the in-house Asian and Italian kitchens, a serious cocktail programme and a kitchen that runs late, it is made for a night that runs from a long dinner through to the dancefloor downstairs.