Venturing to the third floor of Westgate does slightly feel like you’ve left the real world behind. But making eye contact with the card machine as you pay for your cocktail at The Alchemist will bring you right back down to earth. Is it a fun night out with friends? Or has the price of cocktails made this kind of evening completely untenable, for students at least?
Part of the fun of The Alchemist is the presentation of the drinks: there is an eye symbol on the menu informing you which drinks are presented with dry ice. Whether you feel like the drinks are worth the money, then, depends entirely on where you fall on the spectrum between whimsy and cynicism. Maybe I was caught on a bad night, but I found myself firmly in the latter camp. The irony is, if I were more drunk, then I would have been much more amenable to the spectacle of the drink presentation, but at £13.50 a pop, I was too sober to forget how much each bedazzled sip was costing me.
Some of the highlights of the menu include drinks served in hip flasks, test tubes, tea cups, lightbulbs, and tobacco pipes. There’s also a section for shareable drinks, including something called the ‘Infinity Vortex’, which resembles a Rob Roy or Manhattan, and which will set you back £22. There’s also ‘The Globe’, which dares you to “share a pour that orbits the moon. Romance in perfect balance”, and offers a twist on a Cosmopolitan. Is the twist simply that it comes in a globe? Mostly, yes.
I tried two cocktails and a ‘spice bag’. The first was a French Kiss, which was presented in a traditional cocktail glass, and contained vodka, berry liqueur, raspberry, pineapple, cranberry, and citrus juices, as well as popping candy, and a meringue topping. The flavours were simultaneously fruity and fresh, yet violently sweet. But its pink colour and meringue dome did provide it with a touch of whimsy, and it made the perfect accompaniment to a girly night out.
Next, I tried the J2Woah. The picture next to it on the menu appeared to depict a beer bottle with a shooting star inside, but I didn’t quite get the theatricality that the menu promised. The bartender called out for a J2Woah, and I was fairly disappointed that the alchemy in question involved pulling out a bottle of pre-made cocktail from the fridge and plonking some cubes of dry ice into the top. It tasted good, but if the menu promises Ketel One citroen vodka, Cointreau, passionfruit, orange, wine, citrus, and golden shimmer, then I’d guess that you could approximate the experience by necking one third of a J2O and filling the bottle up with vodka.
Now it’s time to be cynical about their chips. There’s just something about the words ‘spice bag’ and the number 10.50 following a pound sign that doesn’t sit right with me. The spice bag originated in Dublin twenty years ago as a late-night favourite at a Chinese takeaway. At an upscale bar, paying approximately 50p per chip (spice sachet would be more accurate), it just feels a little bit like you’re cosplaying a night out, but for twice the price – Hunger Games Capitol style. Admittedly, we were complicit in this gentrification since we ordered the truffle fries with halloumi, and I’ll confess they were very good. But I think I’d prefer to pay fine-dining prices for finer things.
Overall, I’ve definitely had worse and less financially sensible nights out. £30 is about as much as I would pay in a restaurant, so if you’re looking for something slightly different to do with your friends or partner, then I wouldn’t necessarily rule it out. It’s definitely a good place to suggest if you’re confident that you’re not going to be footing the bill.
If you can forget for a minute how easy it would be to replicate the experience at home by consuming a VK out of some kind of random object and then going to get a box of chips, then the experience is admittedly quite fun. The Alchemist’s menu reads like the colourful horoscope section of a tween magazine, and definitely makes for a more enjoyable deliberation experience than usual. The atmosphere was undeniable, though loud, and the view over Oxford in the summer sunset is quietly breathtaking. I wouldn’t even rule out going back myself, since my friend regrets not trying the drink that comes in a bong, and I concede that I would quite like to take a shot out of a conch shell.
