Think you’re sick of nights out inspired by Alice In Wonderland? Spend an evening at Alice’s Adventures Underground‘s Wonderland Bar in the Vaults of Waterloo and you’ll have to think again. 
Designed for the ever-expanding category of failed grown-ups like me who hate regarding themselves as such, The Wonderland Bar is a pop up lasting until August 2015 that throws you deep down the rabbit hole to enjoy fairytale cocktails and food.
Part of the hugely successful theatre experience Alice’s Adventures Underground, The Wonderland Bar is an immersive night out featuring a hedge maze in which I got lost twice, a flamingo croquet set to spark infinite laughter after a couple of drinks, aerial acrobats and a bunch of picture friendly trade-mark Alice in Wonderland characters going nuts around you.
Everything at the Wonderland Bar is incredibly well thought through. From the music – the live performance by Tankus the Henge, who played classic covers in a jazz and blues key, added a key spark to the already perfect atmosphere – to the cocktails from the flawless Bourne & Hollingsworth and the incredibly tasty Pieminster pies.
I had a very fresh ‘Mead Feast’ (£7.5) with mead, fresh lemon juice and quince jelly churned over Ice with honey and basil, and the blue surprise cocktail ‘Eat Me Drink Me’. Remember: don’t even try to have an ‘Eat Me Drink Me’ without one of the inventive Smith & Sinclair cocktail pastils. I had the whiskey and cake pastil – it didn’t make my body shrink, but by that time my head was pretty much already there.  I finished the night with a mouth-watering ‘Off With Their Heads’ pie with butternut squash, feta & sun dried tomato pie (£4.50).
There’s something incredibly endearing about creating a night out from one of your childhood’s classic stories. The Wonderland Bar does it perfectly: it keeps the mystery behind some of the cocktails and behind the fun and games, allowing you to get close enough to the actors to get a picture, to then let them run off before they tell you too much. Lewis Carroll would approve.
Pictures: Carolina Are, Kapranos PR
For the Italian version of this article, please check Italian Kingdom.
