The Spy Bar

Down an unmarked corridor of near-identical wooden doors, one carries a small brass plate reading 007. Behind it, two former MI5 and MI6 storage vaults — once numbered 006 and 007, where the false-identity papers of wartime agents were kept — have become The Spy Bar, the residents' cocktail bar hidden in the basement of Raffles London at The OWO. This is the building where Churchill worked and where Ian Fleming, a Naval Intelligence officer, first imagined James Bond, and the room leans into that lineage without winking at it: deep burgundy-brick walls, low light, pale armchairs set against the dark, and the silver flank of an Aston Martin DB5 — the Goldfinger car, used on screen — set into the wall above the bar.

The drinks read as dispatches from the trade. The signature Vesper is rebuilt around a house London-honey distillate and the bar's own vermouth blend, and offered alcohol-free as readily as not; La Dame Blanche takes its name from a First World War intelligence network, Kiss of Death from a Cold War KGB weapon. A guided tasting pairs three cocktails with three canapés for those who want the full brief. Photography is forbidden the moment you cross the threshold, which is the point: what happens in the room stays in the room.

Seating around 52 across its two connected chambers, The Spy Bar takes private receptions by arrangement — the whole bar given over to a single party for a birthday, a launch or a late celebration, discreet by design and easily set for a DJ. It is not a published hire product; access is arranged through the house. The bar sits within Raffles London at The OWO on Whitehall, a short walk from Horse Guards and St James's Park.