‘The home of legends’ is not too grand of a statement to make of The Old War Office. Since it was reopened in dazzling luxury last year as Raffles London at The OWO, it’s drawn in quite the crowd – though none of course that could compete with its heyday: Winston Churchill, Lord Haldane, T. E.
Lawrence. But none of them are why I’m standing at its doors. I’m not here for dinner at the ever-glamorous Café Lapérouse, or to check into one of its sybaritic suites.
What has brought me to The OWO tonight is its more dealings. Down in its subterranean corridors are a series of rooms once used by MI5 and MI6 – high-security storage vaults that housed identity papers and mission reports from agents – now repurposed as the high-octane, if ever mysterious, The Spy Bar. These winding corridors are outfitted with a geometric carpet that feels not unlike something from .
And the staff member who has helped me navigate my way down here tells me that The Spy Bar was once an interrogation room. ‘Don’t drink too much,’ she cautions, ‘or you might end up in the hot seat.’ Elusive though it is, this clandestine hideout has quickly become quite the scene; I’ve heard that Lewis Hamilton, Tom Holland and Rishi Sunak have all visited in recent months.
Indeed, for some length of time, The Spy Bar was only open to hotel guests and residents, and though it has now opened its doors more widely, good luck getting a reservation – you won’t exactly find it on OpenTable. The aged wooden door to The Spy Bar is completely unmarked, save for three digits: 007. Coincidence? Well, it is inside this very building that Sir Ian Fleming, then a naval intelligence officer, dreamt up the idea for his James Bond novels.
I, for one, have decided to honour that history by channelling my inner Bond girl for the evening, with a sleek black dress and Dior heels. I guess you can call me Bond – Jasmine Bond. (I’ve even brought my very own Q with me: my software engineering boyfriend.
) When we step into the dark room, a sharply dressed man sits behind an imposing desk. And he knows my name before I even say it – clearly, The Spy Bar has done its research. Or perhaps I was the only 7pm reservation.
My phone camera is covered up – it’s strictly no photos, what else could one expect? – and then I am shown through the door. The cool jazz that fills the air is punctuated only by the rattle of the cocktail shaker. Here, it’s all low ceilings, low light and exposed brick walls.
Unmissable and dominating at the back of the room, an Aston Martin looms large over the well-stocked bar. It seems to float there, like some kind of special effect. The Spy Bar certainly has that Hollywood thrill nailed, and I briefly question whether I’ve just stepped onto a film set.
In the lounge, a bold red space where booths are laid out like a roulette wheel, I expect to see mobsters smoking cigars. Perhaps Bond will soon swing in and a perfectly choreographed fight will break out. No such luck.
Tonight, the clientele is suave James Bond wannabes instead: civil servants and bankers. Now seated, I begin to study the menu. It might as well be a dossier, with its pages and pages of options.
But I’ve done my prep, and I already know what I’m having. The Vesper martini unsurprisingly takes the crown as The Spy Bar’s signature drink. Invented by Sir Ian Fleming himself, it first appeared in his novel in 1953, named after double agent and original Bond girl Vesper Lynd.
Then, the moment I’ve been waiting for, as the barman asks me the all important question: ‘Shaken or stirred?’ Usually, a martini should be stirred, to avoid diluting the drink. But the barman lets me in on a secret. Bond’s choice is a spy trick: when you shake a martini, the alcohol sinks to the bottom so that there isn’t any in the first sip.
It’s the same reason why the agent never has more than one drink before dinner – you’ve got to stay on your A game. Martini – shaken, not stirred – in hand, I strike up a conversation with the barman, Lorenzo. I ask about the bottles elegantly displayed on the far side of the room: a large briefcase filled with a collection of James Bond Macallan, and, next to it, a Bollinger 007 Jeroboam, going for a cool £15,000.
Lorenzo explains that each bottle of Macallan represents a different decade of James Bond. When a punter picks a decade, he crafts a drink – so, for say, Decade II, he might pick ingredients from Sardinia, a filming location for . But that’s not the only secret Lorenzo has to spill.
He tells me that although the Aston Martin above the bar is a replica, the wheels were in fact used on set. More impressively, he shows me the now-bricked-up hole in the wall where Churchill kept a bottle of whiskey to open if and when the Allies won the war. And next to it, a replica of Churchill’s whiskey cabinet.
It’s stocked with 1870 cognac – try it in a cocktail for £2,000 – and a Macallan-Raffles Singapore collaboration bottle from when the eponymous hotel opened in 1887 – that’ll set you back £10,000 for a shot. After an expansive tour, I sink back into my leather chair, martini in hand, and decide that I have never felt more like a femme fatale. Bond would be proud.
When I’ve taken my final sip, I think that perhaps a career change is upon me. I could get used to this fast-paced, action-packed world, and I think I’d make quite the agent. Fuelled by Vesper Martini, I am going to stride out of The Old War Office and straight down to MI5.
Agent 008 has a good ring to it. Apparently, my Dior kitten heels say otherwise, as The OWO’s softly spoken doorman brings me swiftly back down to earth with his gentle caution upon my exit: ‘Just watch that small step there, miss.’ One step at a time, I suppose.
And with that, I walk out into Whitehall resolved to die another day..
