Redemption Bar, Covent Garden

Covent Garden welcomes a bar with a difference this December, as Redemption, London’s first alcohol-free cocktail bar takes up residence in Seven Dials.

This, the third London site for the Redemption group, will become the flagship with an adjacent 45-cover restaurant serving up wholefood, vegan and gluten-free dishes that are low in natural unrefined sugars. There will also be a takeaway area, allowing customers to build their own dishes from a range of seasonal fruit and veg, salads, nuts, seeds and even superfoods, such as charcoal powder, pine pollen and medicinal mushrooms.

As well as a range of virtuous cocktails — think spirit-free versions of classics such as their lychee & yuzu martini and pineapple margarita — visitors to the teetotal bar can also take their pick from kombucha on tap and a selection of alcohol-free beers, wines and spirits.

The space itself will fuse traditional and contemporary influences, using sumptuous combinations of teal velvet, marble, brass and the odd splash of coral pink. While things will remain cosy in the winter months, in the summer, the place will really come into its own with light streaming through a sky lantern above the bar, and bi-fold doors opening up onto an outdoor seating area in the iconic Neal’s Yard.

As with the existing properties in Notting Hill and Shoreditch, the aim is to create a luxurious environment that, like the food and drink on offer, doesn’t feel do-gooding or healthy.

With the likes of The Barbary, Hawksmoor and Flesh & Buns on the doorstep, it might seem like a bold move, but with more of us than ever before identifying as teetotallers, and vegans, there’s no doubt there’s a market for abstinence that doesn’t feel like deprivation. So, if after one hangover too many this festive season you still want to socialise, but can’t face another glass of mulled wine or a meat-heavy meal, you know where to go.