The Rosewood hotel’s Scarfes Bar team has teamed up with its namesake, illustrator Gerald Scarfe, to create a riveting new cocktail menu. Presented in a graffitied hard-back book, the menu features 18 imaginative recipes, inspired by British public figures of the past two decades, from 2001 to 2018.

Featuring a host of well-known names from the worlds of politics, royalty and entertainment, each concoction is accompanied by a satirical caricature by Scarfe, with many of the illustrations created, or updated, especially for the menu.

‘When I saw the shortlist of characters, I was really excited as I had never drawn a number of them before, so had to create them bespoke for the menu,’ said Scarfe. ‘I’d been waiting for the perfect opportunity to draw Ali G for years! The team had done exhaustive research into interesting ingredients that were relevant to each character to include in their respective cocktails, so the resulting menu is really special. I feel personally connected to it and am delighted to see my work come to life in liquid form. I am partial to the occasional martini, so my favourite cocktail has got to be the Naturalist, inspired by Sir David Attenborough. Not only is it stunning to look at but it also boasts delicious and delicate flavours.’

Bar manager Martin Siska and head bartender Greg Almeida oversaw the creation of the cocktail recipes, which took eight months in development, allowing the team time to experiment with new equipment and techniques.

‘After last year’s menu received such a great reception, both from our guests and from the hospitality industry, it was important for us to keep on improving,’ said Almeida. ‘While we already used a rotovap [rotary evaporator] and sous vide machine last year, we have really learned how to push our creativity during the past few months, with ingredients such as speculoos biscuits, gravy sauce and even soil distillates featuring on the new menu. We also decided to learn new processes such as milk clarifications, which is in our Amy Winehouse-inspired Back to Black cocktail. This is actually a very old technique, but none of us had really tried it on such a big scale. We also invested in a centrifuge, to make our drinks clearer and sharper in flavour.’

The menu also takes sustainability and low-waste into consideration. ‘Before we began to develop the individual drinks within our new menu, we looked into which particular ingredients are often disregarded and sent to waste throughout all outlets of the hotel,’ explains Siska. ‘Upon investigation, we found that berries were one of the most frequently disposed food items, due to their short shelf life and perishability. For this reason, we decided to incorporate the berries into our cocktail recipes, fermenting them to produce wine. We also recycle our used corks by donating them to local artists, who work with the material to create innovative pieces, and have adopted the use of compostable cornstarch straws for all of our beverages, which are manufactured from fully sustainable materials.’

In addition to exploring the new cocktail menu, entitled: A mischievous cultural history of the British Isles through cocktails and the satirical work of Gerald Scarfe, visitors to Scarfes Bar can also view the artist’s large-scale canvases that adorn the walls of the space, which Scarfe describes as ‘my personal art gallery, where you can see my life on the walls’.

Scarfes Bar, Rosewood London, 252 High Holborn, WC1V 7EN; rosewoodhotels.com

Discover Rosewood London’s artful afternoon tea here