Playboy cocktail bar mixes it with the best

Bar owner and cocktail mixer Salvatore Calabrese is usually associated with elegant establishments such as Fifty at St James's or the Lanesborough Hotel in Knightsbridge.

Now the man known as the Maestro has won an award for his bar Salvatore's at the Playboy club which returned to London in June amid criticism from feminists.

He won for "outstanding achievement to the industry" at the Class Awards, part of London Cocktail Week. His bar manager also won an award.

Mr Calabrese, who has served the Queen and Nelson Mandela, said: "Of course the Bunnies are a huge part of the Playboy image but they're not about sex, to me they epitomise glamour.

"My vision was to create the best, most luxurious cocktail bar experience in the world."

The private members' club features a casino, dining room, cocktail bar and terrace. The prizes will come as a blow to campaigners who say the Playboy Club's return marks a regressive step and that the establishment in Old Park Lane is degrading to women.

Kat Banyard, director of UK Feminista, has argued: "When it comes to today's pornography industry, all roads lead back to Playboy. It was Hugh Hefner who laid the political and cultural groundwork for the brutal, violently misogynist pornography that now floods society."