Buck and Breck

Past the unassuming entrance, you'll find a wardrobe where you're encouraged to hang your jacket. This isn't the kind of bar where you drape your coat over a chair back.

The interior is striking for its simplicity, neatness and communal layout. The bartender is centre stage, with drinkers seated around the large island table covered in black crocodile skin, which serves as a shared bar. There's no back bar with shelves of bottles; instead, two recessed areas neatly hold bottles with their position and colour-coded, banded necks, the only indication of what's inside. Gonçalo is happy to share the code, saying bottles with a green central line are gin, while those with blue stripes are whiskey, and so on. He reasons, "gin is flavoured with plants so green, while whiskey comes from the UK and USA and blue is in both of their flags". To be honest, that's as far as I've progressed in my attempts to master Gonçalo's unfathomable code. Thankfully, his fellow bartenders pluck bottle after bottle with assured confidence of what's inside.

At Buck & Breck, even before the sustainable bar movement, bartenders never used straws to test the drinks they mix. Instead, two containers hold long-handled spoons, one for clean spoons and the other for spoons discarded after sampling, ready to be hygienically cleaned and recycled. This attention to detail is what makes this one of the world's best bars.

The use of mobile phones is rightly frowned upon; this is a haven for cocktail appreciation and conviviality. Encouraged by the communal table, you're bound to end up chatting to the folk around you. Great bars are truly sociable places, and even the self-service wardrobe at Buck & Breck's entrance seems designed to encourage guest interaction.

Before he opened this bar, Gonçalo was a justly renowned bartender, known for spirit-forward, beautifully balanced libations like the Rum Old-Fashioned (which he created in 2009). This cocktail style continues on the bar menu with 30+ cocktails and a well-curated champagne offering. Drinks are simply listed by name and ingredient, without brand identification, under telling headings such as Les Décoratifs, Roughly Elegant, High and Dry, and Choc Au Lit.

Everything at Buck & Breck is just so. Effortlessly elegant and without pretence. Different and somehow just right.