Side Hustle

Covent Garden's Agave Counter

Hotel bars in London occupy a peculiar position in the city's drinking culture. The leading of them function as genuine destination bars that happen to share a postcode with a lobby; the worst are expensive holding pens for guests who haven't found anywhere better to go. The bar program at Side Hustle, inside the NoMad London on Bow Street, operates firmly in the former category. Its 2025 ranking of #79 in the Top 500 Bars places it among a small group of London venues recognised at a global level, alongside city peers like 69 Colebrooke Row and A Bar with Shapes For a Name.

Covent Garden is not an obvious neighbourhood for a serious spirits program. The area's pedestrianised plazas funnel tourists from the piazza toward the theatre strips of St Martin's Lane and Long Acre, and most of the bars in the immediate radius price high and deliver little beyond proximity to the West End. Side Hustle's position on Bow Street, in a building that once housed the Bow Street Magistrates' Court before NoMad converted it, gives it an address with more architectural weight than the surrounding hospitality strip.

Where the Spirits Come From

The editorial angle at Side Hustle is sourcing: specifically, the agave spirits category, which has undergone the most sustained producer-level transformation in premium drinks over the past decade. Tequila and mezcal are not interchangeable products from a single region. Tequila production is legally confined to specific Mexican states, dominated by Jalisco, and governed by strict denomination rules around the blue agave plant. Mezcal draws from a wider geographic range, including Oaxaca, Durango, and Guerrero, and encompasses dozens of agave varieties beyond blue Weber. The distinction matters at the bar level because an extensive agave collection is not simply a list of bottles — it reflects sourcing decisions about producers, regions, and production methods that vary enormously in scale and philosophy.

A bar that commits to Latin American flavour influence as a structural program, rather than a seasonal trend, is making a statement about its supply chain. The agave spirits market has seen significant consolidation at the commercial end, with large spirits conglomerates acquiring small producers across Jalisco and Oaxaca. Bars that maintain extensive collections at the quality tier are sourcing against that current, seeking out independent distillates and smaller-batch expressions that don't reach most back bars. This is the context in which Side Hustle's drinks menu sits, and it's what separates the program from the hotel bars that simply stock a premium tequila brand as a concession to the category.

Latin American flavour influence in the broader drinks menu extends the sourcing logic beyond spirits. The flavour traditions of the region, from the chile-forward heat of Mexican cuisine to the citrus and herb profiles that run through Central and South American drinking culture, translate into bar programs that look to non-European ingredient traditions for their base materials. This positions Side Hustle at an angle to the classic cocktail programs that dominate London's most recognised bars, several of which draw primarily from European aperitivo and British pub traditions.

Side Hustle in London's Bar Hierarchy

London's cocktail bar scene has fragmented across at least three distinct tiers over the past decade. At one end sit the hyper-technical programs, bars like A Bar with Shapes For a Name and Academy, that have built their reputations on preparation technique and menu architecture. In the middle ground are bars with strong regional or flavour identities that carve out specialist followings. At the accessible end sit neighbourhood bars, some with genuine craft credentials, operating without the overhead of central London addresses.

Side Hustle occupies the middle tier by category specialisation and the upper tier by address cost. NoMad London's Bow Street location comes with the pricing expectations of a five-star Covent Garden hotel. That premium is not unusual in the global hotel bar format: comparable programs at destinations like Merchant Hotel in Belfast operate inside similarly positioned properties where the bar program is a distinct identity within a luxury hotel envelope. The comparison holds because both venues are attempting the same thing: a drinks program that earns recognition on its own terms rather than borrowing credibility from the hotel's room rate.

For drinkers coming from outside London, Side Hustle provides a useful calibration point. The agave-led identity is more focused than the broad-spectrum programs at bars like Schofield's in Manchester or Bramble in Edinburgh, both of which operate excellent cocktail lists but without a single-category specialism at their core. The specialist approach tends to attract a different drinker: one who already has a working knowledge of the category and is coming to explore depth rather than breadth.

Within the global agave bar category, the comparison set extends beyond the UK. Venues like Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu demonstrate that serious spirits programs with strong sourcing commitments are not exclusive to traditional cocktail capitals. London's version, as represented by Side Hustle, benefits from proximity to one of the world's most active imported spirits markets and a buying public with increasingly sophisticated category knowledge. See our full London restaurants and bars guide for broader context on where the city's drinking scene currently sits.

Planning Your Visit

Side Hustle is at 28 Bow Street, London WC2E 7AW, inside the NoMad London hotel. Bow Street is walkable from Covent Garden Underground station in under five minutes. The West End's theatre schedule means the surrounding area is busiest on weekday evenings between 6pm and 8pm and on weekend afternoons. For a bar with a focused spirits program and a Top 500 ranking, arriving outside peak theatre hours generally means more time at the bar with space to work through the agave list methodically.

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