Downey, Jonathan (1965–), is a bar owner who, beginning in 1997, became an influential figure in the early years of the London cocktail revival. He was unique in the movement in that he was not bartender or restaurateur but a lawyer and businessman. He was an exacting taskmaster, and his bars achieved a reputation for a high level of cocktail quality and service, in part because he enlisted into partnership first Dick Bradsell, the leading London bartender of the time, and later Dale DeGroff, who held equal status in the United States. See Bradsell, Dick; and DeGroff, Dale. After visiting the New York cocktail bar Milk & Honey during its early days, he teamed up with owner Sasha Petraske to open, in 2002, a London branch of the bar, thus introducing the haute speakeasy concept to the United Kingdom. In just a few years, he commanded an empire that included the Player; Trailer Happiness, an influential modern tiki bar; Sosha, a club in the east London neighborhood of Shoreditch, which later became a cocktail hotbed; and his cornerstone, Match. With the 2020 Covid-19-related closure of Milk & Honey, the only dedicated cocktail bar remaining in his portfolio, most of Downey’s energies are now devoted to Street Feast, a company that creates enclosed, open- air eating-and-drinking night markets in disused industrial spaces throughout London, and to advocating for the restaurant industry.
See also Milk & Honey and Petraske, Sasha.
Simonson, Robert. A Proper Drink: How a Band of Bartenders Saved the Civilized World. New York: Ten Speed, 2016.
By: Robert Simonson