Last week I went to a bar in Soho called LVPO to meet a few friends that were having after work drinks. We ended up staying there a while and, although my friends really liked it, I had some reservations about it.

It takes a lot for me to like a bar that serves cocktails because they’ve always got really slow service but there’s some exceptions that make up for it with experienced barstaff that make killer cocktails quickly. One example is Lab on Old Compton Street, Soho, which I couldn’t recommend more.

Unfortunately, this bar had particularly slow service despite the bar being relatively quiet. Another pet hate of mine is when you go up to the bar, get your wallet out and slap it down onto a dripping wet and very sticky surface. Worse still, is when you lean on the bar and cover your arms in it all.

At the time I felt it necessary to tweet that I didn’t like this place from my phone and thought that it was highly unlikely that I’d return there in a hurry. Then a few days later I got a tweet back from the bar asking if I’d like to come back to try the bar again for a second time. I was impressed with their response so wrote a blog post about it.

They offered me a free bar tab so it was impossible for me to refuse. This visit was better, good in fact. Although the service was still just as slow, there was no dripping wet bar and the fact that I wasn’t spending £4 on a beer each time made it considerably easier to ignore the shit bits.

Despite their quick response and generous invite back with a free bar tab, it’s unlikely that I’ll return to LVPO. I commend their efforts to lure me and me back but for some reason I still have a lingering dislike for this place. The wet bar and slow service would be no problem to me in any bar that charged me between £2 and £3 for a pint, but when it’s £4 they need to make it worth the extra.