Up a staircase from Poland Street, behind a door that gives nothing away, is the room that used to be the Blind Pig, Jason Atherton's speakeasy above Social Eating House. The Blind Pig has moved to St James's. Its replacement keeps the stairs and the sense of discovery, and changes almost everything else.
Kamara opened on 29 September 2025. It is the first bar from Tasos Gaitanos and Alex Large, who started Brother Marcus in Balham in 2016 and became best known for eastern Mediterranean brunches. Their new Brother Marcus Soho has taken the old Social Eating House downstairs. Convenient. The mezze are what that family does well: cod's roe taramasalata with sumac onion, crispy calamari with zhoug aioli and Aleppo chilli, fried chicken with muhammara and Greek graviera.
The drinks
The cocktails were developed with Angelos Bafas, who worked at Soma, the bar at Kricket, and at Kioku Sake Bar. They draw on his northern Greek heritage: tsipouro, mastiha, mountain tea, smoked boukovo pepper. Much is made in-house, macerated, fermented or distilled. Spirits and ferments rest in Cretan clay pots, whose porous walls, the bar says, allow a slow, controlled oxidation that adds texture and a faint mineral note.
The list at opening read like a map. A Tuvunu Highball of fig brandy, Metaxa 12, mountain tea and figs fermented in honey. A Smoked Pepper Daisy of mezcal, tsipouro, boukovo and a hay-smoked tomato spirit. A Mahleb Gimlet of mastiha and tsipouro macerated with Essex-grown cardamom leaf. And the Yosmo, a Cosmopolitan made with yoghurt. Someone had to.
“The herbs and resins of the eastern Mediterranean, treated with the precision of a serious bar.”
The list now, under the group bar manager Marco Luisetto, goes further into process. Bread + Butter is an Old Fashioned modelled on tsoureki, the Greek sweet bread, built on a house burnt-butter spirit with Michter's bourbon, mahleb, cardamom leaf and carob. Tomato + Cucumber is a savoury Martini of vodka, single-variety tsipouro, tomato water, pickled cucumber and caper leaf. The wine list is low intervention, from Greece, Georgia and Lebanon. There is a low and no-alcohol section for anyone pacing themselves.
The room
Finch Studio dressed it in terracotta and bronze under a cave-like ceiling, with dark corners for dates and booths for bigger groups. It is a room designed for conversations that would rather not be overheard. The shelves hold pottery from independent potters on Crete, and the pots are not decoration. They are where the spirits and ferments rest. The jars that look as if they were borrowed from a surgical museum are macerations and ferments, made in-house.
When to go
Book ahead for Thursday to Saturday, when the bar itself recommends reserving. Early evening, before Soho fills up, is the hour to take a seat at the bar and let the bartenders steer. Bafas has since opened Cato in Covent Garden, but Kamara is where his eastern Mediterranean idea is most complete.
