First earning recognition for reinventing Eleven Madison Park’s cocktail program in the mid-aughts, Leo Robitschek has garnered accolades for developing and leading the food, beverage and cocktail programs at all NoMad Hotel properties, leading the Cocktail Apprentice Program at Tales of the Cocktail for 10 years, and writing The NoMad Cocktail Book. In other words, the man knows how to open a bar — particularly, a hotel bar.
Recently, Robitschek was part of the team that launched NoMad London’s Side Hustle, which took home the Best International Hotel Bar award at the 2025 Spirited Awards. It’s a unique space, which once served as the HQ of the Bow Street Runners, England’s first official police force. Now, it’s an agave-forward bar that utilizes seasonal British produce, mixing Latin American traditions with both European and American flair.
Those aren’t quite the ingredients you’d expect from the typical hotel bar (or, for that matter, almost any bar). But being a former police station or concentrating on agave spirits isn’t what makes Side Hustle shine. “What makes us unique is that we’re not just creating an intimate, safe place for hotel guests,” Robitschek says. “We’re creating a place where we want everyone to come in at any time of the day and feel like they can be themselves, sit with their friends and loved ones, and create memories.”
The Best Bars in London, According to Cocktail Maestro Leo Robitschek
As a James Beard Award winner and head of bars for NoMad hotels, his recommendations are to be followedBelow, a few tips from Robitschek (in his own words) on creating an ideal community space for hotel guests, tourists, cocktail fans and curious locals alike.
Stay Grounded
The NoMad has always had this ethos of New York City with a bit of European flair. And it’s always been this idea of push and pull — internally, we call it the high-low, meaning we want to be luxury but our version of modern luxury. We also want to have a lifestyle component, but we don’t want it to be lifestyle nightlife-y. So in all of our elements, we always look at everything we do and intentionally design and juxtapose that with pieces that may feel a bit more residential or grounded. We want to make sure everyone thinks it’s a cool place that’s rooted in that city and a little aspirational, but also feels like they belong and they’re part of it. The average person who walks into Side Hustle bar may not even know we’re in a hotel because we have a street entrance.
You’re in a Hotel — Think Globally
For Side Hustle, we wanted to do something a little different. We wanted to create a space that looked and felt like it was just a good London pub. But inside it had intentional design, with food and drinks that were more like southern Los Angeles, using ingredients that sometimes come from Mexico or Latin America, but were primarily locally-sourced and seasonal.
Be a Bar for Everyone, Not Just Guests
We wanted to create a good agave bar that had really good food, a place you could come in off the street and didn’t have to know you were in a hotel. You could come in and have a good time and vibe with the music, whether it’s pre-theater, post-theater, for dinner or just for cocktails. We built for the community. The majority of people who come in are from London — it’s locals on Sundays, insanely industry-heavy on Mondays. We also get a lot of people who are going to the opera. And then there are tourists.
Celebrate the History of the Room (Even When It’s Strange)
Almost every [hotel bar] I’ve worked with has been an adaptive reuse. This one is two buildings that we put together. Side Hustle is the police station part, and the other building, which is where the event space is, was a magistrates’ courthouse. It’s very interesting architecture, but it limits design and what you can do — everything from colors to materials, and you obviously can’t move any walls. I think you need to be able to retain the history of what that building was. We actually retained some of the drunk tanks and jail cells and made a few of them hotel rooms.
We also have a museum that’s connected to the bar. It marks the history of police because it’s not only a police station, but where the first ever police station in England existed. It opened during the time of the gin craze because there were so many gin-related crimes.
Play With the Classics
We change our menu on a seasonal basis. But a few drinks have been on the menu in some sort of way since the beginning. One of them is called the Sergeant Pepper. One of the reasons this drink is so beloved is because when we look at cocktails, we look at seasonality. We’re pretty kitchen-centric, and I love culinary techniques. We try to work with the kitchen to upcycle many ingredients or share pantry items. This is a cocktail that started in New York but was a very different cocktail, and then we reformatted it and reimagined it for London. It’s become more of a Margarita now — if you look at the Side Hustle bar menu, we have a Margarita page with some classics and some seasonal Margaritas. This is basically our housemade verdita, with the verdita coming from the byproducts of other things we have on the menu. It’s easy drinking, spicy, vegetal and a bit more like a savory Margarita.
Break Some Norms
I wouldn’t say we’re a traditional hotel bar. Hotel bars vary from place to place, and so many of these places tend to be mostly for hotel guests. They tend to be places you come in and enjoy a really elevated experience to match what you’re having in the hotel. Then you have lifestyle places like The Standard, where they try to create spaces that are a bit more fun. And then you have what we’re doing, which is really creating space that has elements of the hotel but might skew more casual — really good quality and design but not stuffy.
Finally, Do Embrace the “Hotel” Part of Hotel Bars
If you look at a lot of the bars in the 50 Best, they’re incredible conceptual bars, but the majority of those bars only create the cocktails on their list because it’s what they’re showcasing. But being in a hotel bar, that’s hard to do. With us, you can walk in, sit down, not look at a menu and order pretty much anything you want within reason. We have a big back bar. I can’t come say, “Hey, I’m going to do solely a party bar that’s only going to serve these eight cocktails.” I’m going to be able to serve people what they want, no matter if it’s on the menu.
5 Hotel Bars Recommended by Leo Robitschek
- BKK Social Club (Four Seasons, Bangkok)
- The Connaught Bar (The Connaught, London)
- The Portrait Bar (Fifth Avenue Hotel, NYC)
- Swan Room (Nine Orchard, NYC)
- Argo (Four Seasons, Hong Kong). “I think what they do is pretty amazing,” Robitschek says. “You’re going to one of the most beautiful hotels in Hong Kong, and then all of a sudden, a guy in a giant gummy bear outfit comes out, which is unexpected.”
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