The Magpie

The Magpie cocktail bar has been open for a little while now, casting a lonely shadow down on the lower, quieter end of Yongkang Lu.

I was first drawn here when I wandered past and saw Jacky, the rather dapper barman, playing his sax to no-one on the street outside. The last time I was there he’d recruited a girl behind the bar, too, and told me that she was a French horn player. Seriously, they’re a hi-hat and some brushes away from a jazz band. He’s a cool guy, and he actually makes a mean cocktail. His shtick is fancying-up your bog standard Smirnoff and Bacardi pours with his own infusions, which you see there in the bar, infusing away. So his Moscow mule is ginger ale (no surprises there), with ginger vodka (that’s so much ginger it feels as though the mule actually kicked you in the mouth. In a good way, of course).  He’s even got bai jiu cocktails. Now, not being a fan of bai jiu I’m wont to remind you that you simply can’t polish a turd. However, I tried it, and I finished it all, and I didn’t vomit. So success!

The virtue of setting up down on this end of Yongkang Lu is that there seems to be very little incentive to observe the 10pm curfew that exists on the noisy, pissed-off-locals-drenching-pissed-up-foreigners-with-water end of the street. The last time I was there we left at 1am, and the bar was still crammed with people (about 20, which is about as many as you can fit in The Magpie.)

Drinks are cheap, and good, and the Shanghai press has been giving this place a lot of small, but frequent  buzz (not in a cheap dildo way – I mean I saw that Isobel bird off ICS filming a piece there, and it’s been in all of your generic expat rags.) So I’d go quaff a few jars before the pissed-up expats annoy the locals enough that the place turns into a waterpark.

189 Yongkang Lu, near Taiyuan Lu

永康路189号, 近太原路