The American Bar has occupied its corner of The Savoy since 1893, making it the longest-standing cocktail bar in the UK. The room is Art Deco throughout – geometric patterns, polished surfaces, sleek lines, and the kind of light that flatters both the glassware and the guests. A pianist performs every evening from 6:30pm, taking requests, and the combination of music and candlelight – with the faint suggestion of the Thames visible from certain seats – gives the bar a character that is particular to this place.

The current menu draws on the hotel’s own archive as a creative brief – stories, figures, and moments from The Savoy’s past translated into drinks. It is an approach that treats the bar’s heritage as living material rather than something to be preserved behind glass, connecting each new list directly to the people and events that have passed through the hotel over more than a century. The physical menu reflects the same sensibility – a claret leather cover with gold foil typography, opening onto archive images from the hotel alongside the current list.

The vintage spirit collection runs deeper than a back bar curiosity. Ada Coleman, head bartender here in the 1920s, created the Hanky Panky for the actor Charles Hawtrey – one of the most celebrated cocktails to have originated in this room, and one of many that found its way into the Savoy Cocktail Book. The Time-Savoy Classics use vintage expressions of the original base spirits to recreate it and others as they would have tasted at the time. Alongside these, rare bottlings are available for guests who want to drink from the collection directly.

Sustainability runs through the operation with some specificity. A partnership with ecoSPIRITS – a closed-loop system in which spirits are distributed in large-format containers and decanted at the bar – has cut carbon emissions by 90% on the spirits it covers, and a cocktail developed through the collaboration has contributed to more than three thousand trees planted in Borneo. Surplus scones from the hotel’s afternoon tea are repurposed into Tea O’Clock, closing a loop between the kitchen and the bar. Still and sparkling water comes from The Savoy Well, an onsite bottling lab producing water in custom reusable glass bottles. Hand-cut and stamped ice is used throughout, all fruit juices are freshly squeezed daily, and a no single-use plastic policy runs across both front and back of house.