Praise be – there’s a new way to squeeze more vegetables into your diet and it doesn’t involve salads, but cocktails. Forget tomato-drenched bloody marys and olive-laden dirty martinis – a crop of innovative veg-centric creations are popping up on cocktail bar menus around the capital, and even Waitrose namechecked the trend in its most recent drinks report. Leading the charge is The Churchill Bar & Terrace’s new sustainable bar menu which tackles food waste, with its Wasteless Martini featuring fortified fennel sherbet and the Full Circle brandy sour including fermented carrots, both sourced from leftovers in the Marylebone venue’s kitchen. 

Over at new rooftop bar Wagtail, you can enjoy 360° views while sipping on a Beetroot, which pairs the vegetable with pisco and  mezcal. Mayfair’s Apricity also makes use of the root veg in its cognac-infused Remy’s Beet, while The Standard’s new bar Sweeties serves golden beet caramel in its Roots Manuva, alongside vermouth, turmeric, ginseng and more. If mushrooms are more your thing, the bar also serves the Pick Me Up, with vodka, rum, coffee, mushroom and burnt butter, or head to The Wigmore where the bartenders combine vodka, tomato water and porcini-infused vermouth to create the Umami. Finally, Soho’s soon-to-open Firebird will be offering a Greek salad-inspired dirty martini, complete with feta and oregano-infused gin and cucumber bitters. And if you became a master mixologist during lockdown, we suggest broadening your repertoire with a courgette martini, celery and salted lemon cocktail or beetroot bloody Mary. Getting your five-a-day has never been so easy.