AMBAR

Lounge Bar in St. John's Wood

4 / 10 from 2 reviews

Address
Odeon
96 Finchley Road
St. John's Wood
London
NW3 5EL

Map

History

Telephone
020 7586 1269

Region
St. John's Wood

Nearest Station
Swiss Cottage
0.06 miles

Category
Lounge Bars

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An Art Deco classic reborn! Originally opened in 1937, AMBAR at Odeon Swiss Cottage is a cool cocktail bar with a great selection of 25 wines by the glass to boot! Great design, table service for food and drinks and open all day every day. Open to all, whether you're seeing a film or not, and perfect for private hires.

All In London Review

Odeon Cinema opens new bar and eatery

The refreshments on sale at a cinema usually consist of a plate of nachos with some overly spicy slices of jalapeno pepper, accompanied by a plastic cup of Coke/Pepsi. So it’s interesting that a huge chain like the Odeon, one of the largest of its kind in Europe, has opened an actual drinking and eating destination at their Swiss Cottage cinema. The mildly art-deco furnishings such as the round lampshades on the tables and the large ‘O’ in the middle of the room pay homage to the cinema’s 1930s beginnings, however the aim is for this to be a drinking destination in its own right, which is totally plausible as this is an area with little in terms of nightlife (unless you count the pokey pub next door) but plenty of disposable income.

The bar is well stocked, with Moet, Tanqueray 10, and a selection of cocktails ample enough to cater to most palates; amongst the 60 available they do a mean gin martini, or for those with sweeter tastes there’s the cranberry and gin-based Royal Sapphire. There are 25 different wines by the glass and bottles starting from about £16, from oaky New World chardonnays to fruity merlots; you may also choose to splurge several hundreds of pounds on the champers or indulge in invigorating (or the opposite, depending on your previous intake) shots. Then there’s food; this being an Odeon Cinema it’s still going to be of the comforting stodgy variety, so there burgers and chunky chips, falafels with yoghurt dip and smoked salmon bruschetta with chunks of mozzarella. For desserts they’ve paired up with the English Cheesecake Company to provide cookies and cream cheesecakes among other flavours.

Ambar is open till 2 am from Thursday to Saturday, so if you’re intent on staying in the area for the night this is now the latest opening bar in the neighbourhood.

Reviewed by Leila
Published on Nov 24, 2011