COUPETTE has always felt like a slightly odd fit for its location. Bethnal Green is the beating heart of London’s East End, a vibrant collage of pie-and-mash shops, Bengali clothes vendors and semi-ironic cat cafes. It’s the perfect home for nearby Satan’s Whiskers, say, whose lovingly distressed exterior and unpretentious drinks list neatly reflect the general vibe. But Coupette, whose menu is a paean to all things Normandy and whose exposed brickwork can’t disguise a general air of sophistication, has always seemed ill-at-ease in its surrounding neighbourhood.
The exposed brickwork in the bar at Coupette. Photograph: Coupette
So it’s great to see that, in launching its new menu – the first complete overhaul since the bar opened in 2017 – Coupette has endeavoured to let a little more Bethnal Green flavour in through the front door. Local sign-writer Ged Palmer – whose Luminor Sign Co is just down the road if you need any bespoke lettering done while you quaff your Champagne Piña Colada – is behind the menu’s appealing background illustrations and fancy typography. Further collaborations with local artisans have been promised in the series of seasonal menus to come. It may only be a small gesture towards community spirit, but as with so much about Coupette, it’s the little touches that make all the difference.
Happily for fans of the bar, several drinks have been carried over from the old menu, including Coupette’s signature Apples, a mouth-watering blend of apple juice and whatever bottle of calvados head bartender Chris Moore is currently enamoured of, lightly carbonated and served over ice. It now has something of a companion piece in the form of the Corn Collins, another perfectly calibrated long drink which should be experienced by anyone taking a seat at Coupette’s bar. Using Woodford Reserve as a starting point, Moore doubles and then triples down on the corn flavours that characterise the bourbon, throwing in a bit of smoke and sugar for good measure. The addition of lemon seems counterintuitive until you taste the finished product – an explosion of flavour with a complex finish that somehow suggests unripened bananas. It’s a real showstopper of a drink, up there with Coupette’s very best, and destined to be a stalwart of menus to come.
Corn Collins. Photograph: Coupette
If classics are more your thing, the Bloody Martini is worth a detour. As the name suggests, it’s a cross between a Bloody Mary and a proper cocktail – the gloopy tomato juice that typifies the former has here been replaced with grilled tomatoes, thoroughly clarified and infused with smoked paprika and herbs. Along with the obligatory vodka, Moore uses vin jaune to dry things out, and the result sees the perennial brunch favourite elevated to something more sophisticated and pre-prandial. To drive the point home, it comes served with a very un-brunch-like dish of comté cheese, which has been aged to perfection and works wonderfully well with the paprika.
Bloody Martini. Photograph: Coupette
Martini fans may also want to try the misleadingly named Imperfect. If you find yourself looking over that ingredients list and thinking there’s no way gin, cocoa wine and truffle vermouth can be brought together in harmonious fashion, you’d be wrong. Dry and nutty with just a hint of funkiness, it’s a miraculously well-balanced drink, a real tribute to Moore’s rigorous development process. Cocoa also makes an appearance in the Obsidian, a toothsome rum-based digestif dominated by the bittersweet herbal flavour of Amer Picon, and enlivened by an unexpected hint of passion fruit.
Obisidan. Photograph: Coupette
Moore’s beloved calvados makes a return in the Sunday Afternoon, designed to taste like a slice of apple pie. It heartily succeeds on that front, making for a buttery, warming after-dinner take on the aforementioned Apples. The other apple-y drink on the menu, the Shimmer, is only a smidgen less successful. Made with 30&40 (a calvados-based aperitif) and lightly seasoned with herbal alpine notes from Genepi, it is supposed to be “reminiscent of diving into a crystal clear blue ocean when on holiday”. It’s beautifully presented and certainly very drinkable, with an appealing hint of bitterness hovering just around the edges of the sweet eau de vie, but it’s subtle rather than evocative – more a lake than an ocean.
Shimmer. Photograph: Coupette
Still, this is cocktail making of the very highest order. It’s a long menu – twenty drinks in total – and considering the standard, it continues to be keenly priced at around £10 a drink. So although Coupette might never be the boozer of choice for many of Bethnal Green’s locals, it is and remains a world-class destination for cocktail lovers all over.
by Tristan Jakob-Hoff
Coupette 423 Bethnal Green Road, London, E2 0AN
info@coupette.co.uk