“Either a cocktail dies a hero, or it lives long enough to become the villain.” At Scarfes Bar, inside Rosewood London, Batman’s most quoted line becomes the premise for the new Heroes & Villains menu.
Heroes & Villains: Blurring the Line Between Good and Evil
The cinematic reference is intentionally provocative, but it also captures something recognisable about contemporary cocktail culture. Drinks that once defined modern drinking or embodied a particular moment eventually become too popular, too divisive, or somehow unfashionable in the eyes of the very industry that helped turn them into icons. The new menu takes that idea and builds twenty cocktails around ten well-known figures, each presented through a heroic and darker counterpart.
Gerald Scarfe’s Art Finds Its Way Onto the Menu
The concept draws directly from Heroes & Villains, the 2003 exhibition book by British caricaturist Gerald Scarfe, whose work has long covered the walls of Scarfes Bar. Each page features an illustrated caricature. Thehero cocktail appears first, while a concealed insert reveals its villainous opposite. That structure gives the team, led by Director of Bars Andy Loudon, room to work across technique, ingredients, irony and pop culture. Clarifications, distillations and carbonation all appear throughout a list that also reclaims cocktails with particularly complicated reputations in modern bartending.
Famous Figures Take Centre Stage in Heroes & Villains
The Cosmopolitan, Pornstar Martini and Mojito — wildly popular with drinkers, often dismissed by sections of the bar world — become ideal material for the hero-versus-villain framework. Paul McCartney opens the music chapter with Strawberry Fields Forever, a Paloma built with tequila, fortified strawberry, verbena and CO₂, finished with verbena-dusted bell pepper. His opposite is Man on the Run, a Ramos Gin Fizz variation built on rum, with coconut, peach wine and peach-jasmine soda. David and Victoria Beckham enter through Ninety 3rd, a Pornstar Martini reinterpretation inspired by Beckham’s famous 2001 World Cup qualifier goal, combining gin, passion fruit, clarified vanilla and Champagne. Diva, by contrast, leans directly into the glossy visual language of the Cosmopolitan, with lychee, lychee honey, orange blossom, citrus and vodka.
A Journey Through Science
The science chapter follows the same logic. Charles Darwin inspires Natural Selection, a clean, sharply structured highball with whisky, raspberry, carrot and fino sherry. Evolution shifts the tone completely, bringing together whisky, pistachio and pineapple sour in a mug serve. Rosalind Franklin appears through Double Helix, a darker Manhattan built around single malt, fig, balsamic wine and toasted marzipan. Her villainous counterpart, Never Wrong, combines tequila, French liqueur, sherry and pandan liqueur.
Heroes & Villains Concludes With Literature and Politics
The narrative continues with Oscar Wilde (High Society and Temptation), Isaac Newton (Inertia and Laws of Motion), Agatha Christie (4.50 from Paddington and Whodunnit), and William Shakespeare (Final Act and Foul Play). Toward the close come Richard Branson, with Hot-Air Balloon and Public Stunts, alongside Margaret Thatcher, represented through Iron Lady and Divided Kingdom. Because everyone, after all, has a preferred hero — and a villain.
The article first appeared on Coqtail – for fine drinkers. Order your copy here
Images courtesy Scarfes Bar
