The cocktail lounge London keeps searching for is fifty feet underground

You have done the usual circuit. The “we’ll just grab one” that turns into a room you can’t hear yourself think in. The bar that looks perfect on your phone, then hands you a drink that tastes like it was designed for a photo, not a palate. The place you try once, then quietly never suggest again.

What you actually want is simpler, and rarer: a cocktail lounge in London that can become your little secret hideout. Somewhere you can take a friend who thinks they’ve seen it all, a colleague who notices detail, or a date who understands the difference between “nice” and considered. Somewhere that holds the night, rather than rushing it.

Kiyori is that place. Our freshly launched cocktail lounge and bar, tucked beneath Aki London in Marylebone, it is designed to transition as the hours unfold: intimate early-evening gatherings upstairs in your own head, then something more magnetic when the night decides it is not finished with you yet.

A properly defined cocktail lounge in London

You’ll see the word “lounge” used a little too casually around London. It shouldn’t. A lounge is not a bar with softer lighting and a chair you can’t sit in for more than twenty minutes. A lounge is a decision about pace. It is a room that flatters conversation. It is a place where you can arrive early and still feel like you are exactly on time.

This is where Kiyori starts. The Lounge is built for the pre-dinner drink that becomes the real beginning of the evening. For after-work drinks that don’t feel like a compromise. For the kind of table that makes you sit a little differently, not because anyone is watching, but because the room has standards and you instinctively meet them.

And because this is Aki, the details behave like details should. The glass has weight. The lighting does not fight your face. The music sits low enough to be felt, not performed. You can stay. You are meant to.

The cocktail lounge London goes underground for

Kiyori is not “downstairs” in the way restaurants sometimes use the word. It is down in the original vaults of a former bank. The descent changes the temperature of the evening. You go from the main room’s high design and high clarity to something quieter, darker, more private. Not hidden for the sake of it. Hidden because it suits the intention.

There are two spaces, and they do two different jobs. The Lounge is the earlier hour: a room for connection, for conversation, for the subtle theatre of watching who arrives and how they carry themselves. The Vault is the later hour: higher energy, more movement, and a sense that you have slipped beneath the city’s surface and found a frequency it doesn’t advertise.

It is an underground bar in London that doesn’t ask you to cosplay nightlife. It simply gives you the right rooms, in the right order, and lets you choose what kind of night you are having.

The Lounge: the part of the night you remember

Every Londoner has had the same small disappointment: you find somewhere you like, but it only works at one volume. Too loud for a conversation. Too quiet for a celebration. Too bright for a date. Too dark for a meeting. A one-note room, asking you to be the one who adapts.

The Lounge does the opposite. It makes space for the early evening version of you. The one with something to say. The one who wants the cocktail to arrive like an object, not a trick. The one who is capable of a second drink because the first one was built with restraint.

This is how a regular begins: not with a grand declaration, but with the sudden realisation that you have stopped searching.

The Vault: when the night turns its collar up

On Fridays and Saturdays, resident DJs take Kiyori from 9pm to 1am. The point is not to turn the room into a club. The point is to give the night a second skin. A deeper beat. A little more shadow. The kind of energy that makes you stay for “one more” without needing to announce it.

If the Lounge is where you gather yourself, the Vault is where you let go of the day’s posture. You can be here with friends and feel like you have discovered something. You can be here with a colleague and feel like you understand each other better. You can be here on a date and watch the room do half the work, quietly, like it has done this before.

And it has.

Cocktails with structure, not noise

A good lounge cocktail behaves like good tailoring: clean lines, precise construction, nothing decorative that can’t justify itself. Kiyori’s menu leans into Japanese spirits, bright botanicals, and ingredients that feel deliberate rather than performative.

If you want something that holds a conversation, start with Umebiki, a drink that reads as stone fruit and lift, with a finish that stays clean rather than sweet. If your evening needs a darker edge, Tōkaiden brings grassy citrus and spice in a way that feels controlled, not chaotic.

For the person who orders with confidence, Hishio sits in that bitter-sweet, umami register that makes the second sip better than the first. For something that evolves as you stay, Midori No Michi changes with its matcha ice ball, quietly reminding you that the best nights do not hold still.

The Kiyori Lounge menu: Wagyu, tempura, and robata

If you need food, the Lounge runs a tighter, more deliberate menu than the main restaurant upstairs. It is built for a room that prioritises conversation over courses. You can order Truffle Salt Edamame, Fuji Wagyu Beef Tataki, or the Wagyu Beef & Black Garlic Gyoza without breaking the rhythm of the evening. There is Rock Shrimp Tempura, and from the robata grill, Chicken & Spring Onion Yakitori alongside Asparagus in brown butter hazelnut miso. Enough to keep you sharp, not so much that the night gets heavy. And if the evening suddenly demands the full omakase or sashimi experience, the main dining room is just a staircase away.

How to find your new regular in London

The problem with “finding a new place” in London is not a lack of options. It is that most options are built for somebody else’s idea of a good time. Too much theatre. Too much sameness. Too much of the feeling that you have arrived in a room designed for strangers, and you will remain one.

A regular hangout does something different. It makes you feel recognised before you are. It gives you a table you can return to. It has a mood that holds. It has a rhythm that makes sense: early drinks that feel intimate, later hours that feel alive, and a door you can open without needing a reason.

Kiyori is for the person who wants all of that, and would rather not explain it.