The key to the good cocktail

During a trip to New York at the start of the year, I detected faultlines in the city's internationally envied reputation for customer service excellence. Returning this month confirmed that, in my experience at least, all those things that make the backbone of the nation --servility, efficiency and the working-for-the-tip effort --have been replaced by indifference and sloppiness.

America, you see, introduced the modern service culture to the world. Admittedly, it was always a bit contrived and robotic, but they were very good at it --along with spawning a portfolio of international brands that would act as a showcase for the American way. TGI Friday's (the cocktail and burger chain featured in the Tom Cruise film Cocktail) arrived on these shores in the mid-Eighties with its own brand of cheerful service, gimmicks and jokily clad staff. And although we might consider the TGI brand to be a bit downmarket, many of its staff, when liberated from the corporate shackles of the brand, have gone on to open their own bars in London.

And almost without exception, each one of them has brought higher levels of service and drinks to the high street. The latest such graduate of the TGI Academy is Freddy Donaldson, who spent eight years with the brand before broadening his skills in several of London's style bars, eventually finding this former shop unit on Lavender Hill and opening it as a cocktail bar he could call his own.

My spies went ahead of me and reported, 'extremely good drinks, a seriously good chilled-out vibe without deafening music and extraordinarily friendly serving staff'. Too much to expect from a small shop unit in the urban village of Battersea, isn't it?

Once again, although these occasions don't happen often enough, you must promise me that you'll keep quiet about this place, as we don't want half of London beating a path to its door and spoiling the pleasures that are meant for so few.

The Key is small, but the ground floor bar has a mezzanine area and there's a spacious basement bar that takes the crowd overspill and can be used as a venue for private parties.

It is furnished throughout with nice squashy armchairs, is smartly accoutred and elegantly finished. The highlight of the design features, which are very understated, is an enormous glass chandelier wrapped inside a mirrored lampshade.

But it's the drinks I came for, and I wasn't disappointed. A long, extensive cocktail menu includes the humorously named Grape Full Dead, Apple Mac and Basil Brush --boom, boom! - but I opted for the serious stuff and enjoyed a fabulous Mojito and a seriously good White Cosmopolitan, made the traditional way but with white cranberry juice.

The cocktails run in at around £7, which sounds expensive but you get what you pay for, and if you get there before 8pm, the happy hour offer of two-for-one drinks represents a cocktail lover's fantasy.

The wine list isn't up to much - four red and four white - but only a philistine would pass on the offer of some of the best cocktails available in London.