A 4.6 cocktail bar named, paradoxically, The Bar with No Name, turning its own anonymity into its identity
The Bar with No Name holds a 4.6 from seven hundred and forty-six people, sits on Colebrooke Row, and carries the most delightfully paradoxical name in the entire survey – it is called “The Bar with No Name,” a name that names its own namelessness, an identity built entirely out of the refusal to have one.
The paradox at the heart of the name
The name is a perfect little logical knot, and worth pausing on. A bar with no name is, by definition, nameless – yet the moment you call it “The Bar with No Name,” you have given it a name, and a very memorable one at that. The description of its namelessness becomes its name; its lack of identity becomes its identity; its anonymity is the very thing that makes it distinctive. It is the naming equivalent of the sentence “this statement is false” – a self-referential paradox, playful and clever, that turns absence into presence.
The Prat’s naming desk regards it as a small masterpiece of wit. Every other bar in this survey has laboured to find a name that conveys character, history, or grandeur; this one achieves character, memorability, and cool simply by declining to be named – and then cheekily using that declining as its name. It is the most self-aware name in the survey, a joke about naming itself, and it works beautifully. You will remember “The Bar with No Name” precisely because it insists it has none.
The speakeasy tradition
The name draws on the whole modern fashion for the hidden, secret, unmarked bar – the “speakeasy” revival, in which a bar signals its exclusivity and cool precisely by being hard to find, unmarked, and discreet. This survey has been sceptical of the speakeasy pose before, noting how often “hidden underground bar” is really just a rent-gradient decision dressed in mystery. But the Bar with No Name makes the pose into an honest joke: rather than pretending to be secret while plastering its name everywhere, it simply, wittily, declares that it has no name at all.
The nameless, unmarked bar plays on the allure of the secret and the exclusive – the sense that only those in the know can find it, that discovering it is a small privilege. By naming itself after this very quality, the Bar with No Name both participates in the fashion and gently mocks it, having its cake and eating it. The Prat’s naming desk enjoys the self-aware cheek: the speakeasy conceit, acknowledged and joked about rather than po-faced.
The Colebrooke Row connection
The bar sits on Colebrooke Row, a handsome Islington street beside the Regent’s Canal, and it is closely associated with a genuinely celebrated hidden cocktail bar in the area – the whole Colebrooke Row corner has become known for small, serious, discreet cocktail bars of real quality, the sort of place where the drinks are taken as seriously as the anonymity. The near-perfect scores such places attract reflect the genuine craft within, not just the mystique of the unmarked door.
The bar
A 4.6 across seven hundred and forty-six people is a strong, volume-proof score. The reviews describe superb, seriously-crafted cocktails in an intimate, characterful, discreet setting – a genuine cocktail destination whose namelessness is matched by real quality within.
Verdict
An excellent cocktail bar named, with perfect paradox, the Bar with No Name – turning its own anonymity into its identity, and gently joking about the whole speakeasy fashion even as it participates in it.
Go for the seriously good cocktails and the discreet, intimate setting, and enjoy the wittiest name in the survey – the bar that has made a memorable identity out of insisting it has none at all.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
