Alcoholic Architecture review: This is what it’s like inhaling a cocktail cloud at Bompas and Parr’s pop up bar
Wandering into a cloud of alcohol is just as surreal as you might think it would be.
The atmospheric gothic surroundings of Southwark Cathedral on the outside and handfuls of skulls and stained glass windows created below Borough market on the inside all help, of course, but even walking down the dark and narrow entrance steps into Alcoholic Architecture, you already smell and taste something strange in the atmosphere.
That atmosphere is a cocktail cloud, created by the Willy Wonka style duo Bompas and Parr in what they are calling a mixture of meteorology and mixology.
Despite having to grab a tourist style plastic poncho on the way in to protect your clothes from the 140 per cent humidity you'll be heading into, descending into the darkened cavern of a bar where you can pick up a traditional drink, the moist heavy air still layers itself over your skin. It's not unpleasant, but rather like stepping into the vivarium of reptiles at London Zoo.
In the corner a neon sign flashing "breathe responsibly" entices you to step into the cloud itself, which my cohort of attendees seemed reluctant to do until the first brave soul crossed the threshold.
Once through, it's perhaps not the taste that immediately hits as it's already been building as you enter, but being unable to see anything in front of you other than solid white cloud, leaving you without any feeling of where you are or what you're walking into.
It's not dissimilar to entering a sauna, although without that intense heat and more sensory deprivation, but that may just be designed to enhance the other senses.
The taste – unnamed spirits and mixer at a ratio of 1:3 – and smell is sweet, creeping into your mouth and nose, although my fellow guest pinned it down at acrid.
The experience is what I imagine purgatory to be like – wide-eyed uncertain looking souls wandering through clouds not knowing where they are heading.
A shuffle around the room, which as it turns out is just a normal room and relatively intimate, lets you get your bearings, and the mock stained glass and changing colour lights create mysterious and dreamlike shapes and shadows.
The 30 minutes goes quickly considering you're just walking around a room with strangers, albeit with alcohol in the air, which at the time you can't especially feel the effect of even if it is being absorbed through your skin, mouth, nose and even eyeballs – although it does apparently have a quicker effect because it bypasses the liver.
Returning back into the bar, where the bartenders do not apparently suffer from the effects of inhaling wafts of the escaped cocktail cloud, a surprisingly disturbing alarm alerts you to your time being over.
Your returned from the netherworld blinking into the fresh air (the boozy fog does not stick with you) with a light-headed tipsiness which feels like the first time you ever tried a drink. That feeling of being in the drinking sweet spot before you tumble into drunkenness lasts for the evening.
Alcoholic Architecture is at Cathedral Street, Borough Market for six months from today. Tickets can be booked for hour slots for £11.50 off-peak (Mon, Tues, Weds and Thurs, Fri before 5pm) and £13.50 peak (Thurs, Fri after %pm and Saturday).