All My Gods is the latest bar from Dram operators Simo Simpson, Jack Wallis and Chris Tanner, this time with tattoo artist Roxy Velvet. It's a dive bar for bikers – and bartenders. Hamish Smith reports.
When Roxy Velvet said she’d bring her bike, I didn’t expect her to drive it directly into the bar. Lucky the entrance had a dropped kerb – for the memorable entrance but also the bar itself. Without this little council-approved lowered pavement, this summer’s most daring bar launch – All My Gods – wouldn’t exist.
“It was the only arch on Paradise Row with one – and the site was available,” Chris Tanner tells Class. That shared realisation over beers under Bethnal Green’s gastronomic arches with Dram partner Simo Simpson was the trigger for an idea that had been rumbling in the recesses of the collective Dram team’s mind (Tanner, Simpson and Jack Wallis), without ever having quite materialised.
Simpson immediately texted their friend and co-conspirator – tattoo artist, former burlesque dancer, biker and fellow dive-bar enthusiast Roxy Velvet. The message went something along the lines of “drop down kerb!”. She knew what it meant. They had found the site for a biker-friendly dive bar of their hazy late-night chats. The boys behind Dram would be the operators, but Velvet – self-appointed director of vibes – would front the thing.
For the operators who once ran Milroy’s of Soho and who’ve collectively been behind Silverleaf (Simpson and Tanner), Cav (Tanner) and Dram (all three), All My Gods is a step outside of their natural habitat. The idea here is to look beyond cocktail drinkers to other sub-cultures, who incidentally also like a drink.
“Roxy was our first call to front it – there’s a whole world around bikes and tattoo culture, so by bringing Roxy in we’re merging industries,” says Simpson. And while this is her first bar, she shares the Dram team’s passion for dives. “We knew Roxy used to frequent London dive bars like Crobar and 12 Bar and Intrepid Fox and for us dive bars were really formative in our careers,” says Wallis.
For Velvet, it was the perfect bridge. “I have a lot of connections to the bike world – and I’m hoping to bring them here. They’re creative people – held together by their love for motorbikes and adventures. It’s a very mixed group of people but they’re a bit of a family. The culture is fun, exciting, rock and roll, irresponsible, possibly ill-advised, and now they have a place in London.”
Above all, this is a bar built around accessibility not exclusivity - where anyone would feel welcome. A homage to the late great London dive bars. “Where you can order a Martini and a Pickleback in the same round, and no one blinks,” says Velvet. “That chaotic, creative energy is what we’re bottling at All My Gods,” she adds.
Operation dive
So what does that all mean operationally? It means “bare bones-ing it”, says Tanner. “It’s a pool table, it’s cold beer, it’s loud music. That's basically it. It’s rough around the edges, a, little bit more hands-off for us [than previous concepts], and just somewhere to hang out.”
The interiors are certainly designed accordingly. Inside the 60-cover arched space the aesthetic is aimed to be somewhere between “a nineties skater basement and warehouse raves”. The bar is cast in concrete, there’s a large central table and the lighting is inspired by motorbike exhausts. Drawing on the interiors of great London dive bars like 12 Bar Club, Crobar and Intrepid Fox, All My Gods features chipboard walls stained with tattoo ink, a black velvet pool table and bathroom murals by Velvet herself. By the time you make it down, there may well be a motorbike – in various states of its build – stationed near the entrance.
And the name All My Gods? It means only that we can worship who and what we want – dive bars included. And if it’s provocative-sounding, it is so in an arbitrary way, without too much real meaning.
The audience is headlined as bikers, but it feels like the Venn diagram crosses into bartender territory too. Even before opening, the trade seemed to get the pitch immediately. “What was interesting when we put the team together, was the amount of high calibre bartenders who were like: ‘Yo, this is exactly what I want to do’,” says Tanner. “Their CV reads like they should be fucking consulting for Pernod, and they’re like: ‘No, I want to sling beer.’”
The drinks
They’re not the only ones who are feeling less and less fancy – drinkers seem to be too. And while cocktail culture seemed to only go in one direction – more complex, more ambitious – there’s an increasing desire for simplicity. There’s a little less money washing around, so why not offer quality at discreetly discounted prices, with no diminishment of the concept and experience?
What does that look like? Well the £8 All My Gods Martini, which is made with the ever-dependable Finlandia vodka and served ice cold direct from their proprietary ‘Martininator’ (a retrofitted Jägermeister machine / pictured below centre).
There are taptails, classics and signatures and all are a flat £10. There’s a Fish House Punch (pictured left / Takamaka rum, Courvoisier, peach iced tea), Mezcal Verdita (Lost Explorer mezcal, Ancho Reyes Verde, verdita), Nitro Garibaldi (Campari, fluffy OJ), and Watermelon Margarita (Cazcabel blanco, triple sec, watermelon), alongside summer-favourite cocktails Frozen Nuclear Daiquiri (pictured right) and Frozen Irish Coffee. These are drinks you want to drink, not build relationships with.
There’s 1936 lager and Guinness on draught, homemade vending machines that will be dispensing a rotating list of cold RTDs. And if Buzzballz aren’t your thing – and I can’t imagine why not – there’s Ruinart Blanc de Blanc champagne at £13 a stem. If that doesn’t sound like a bargain, you probably don’t live in London.
“We wanted to take drinks everyone knows or recognises to some degree and make them our own in our Dive Bar Universe – playful, recognisable, and still tight where it matters,” says Tanner.
Blood, sweat and smears The purist might argue that dives aren’t born, they become. Only through time do they earn the blood, sweat and smears. Yet, without the new replacing the old, there’s a danger of them dying out.
The do or die for any dive comes down to the vibe, but the quality of the drinks at All My Gods is no minor refinement. Right now people have champagne tastes and beer budgets – and they can get it all here. That accessible, lowered-kerb offering speaks to the many, whoever their god.