Lady’s TGI Fridays in London Review

Today I want to bring you my review of TGI Fridays in London. Specifically, the cocktails at TGI Fridays in London.

TGI Fridays in London

I haven’t been to a TGI Fridays in years. When I was in college I spent a semester studying in San Diego and worked as a hostess at a restaurant in Del Mar.

After my shift was over, I used to go to the TGI Fridays in La Jolla to meet up with friends. In those days, none of us was old enough to order alcohol, so we stuck with food.

After a number of TGI Fridays-less years, the other week I received an invitation to attend a cocktail making event at the TGI Fridays in London’s Covent Garden.

I figured it would be a good excuse to go back to the restaurant to taste the non-food side of the menu.

TGI Fridays Cocktails

I arrived last night and was greeted by the bar manager and a very enthusiastic bartender named Frodo (“because I’m short”, he said).

After asking me what my favorite spirit was, Frodo left the table and returned a minute later with a cocktail called an Uncle Bulgaria. As if my accent hadn’t already exposed my American-ness, I asked about the name.

Everyone looked at me with surprise. “It’s from a popular children’s show called The Wombles,” they said, amazed that I had never heard of it. Sigh. Even in an American bar, I was still a foreigner.

After the initial round of cocktails at TGI Fridays in London, we were ready to get behind the bar. Our first lesson was making mojitos. Out came the glasses, in went the limes, the mint, and the sugar.

I got a little exercise grinding them all together, then topped them off with ice, soda water, and rum. They taught us how to do a perfect pour for the rum, but I kept accidentally adding a little more. Not that I minded.

The mojito making at TGI Fridays in London was followed by a team event. The first task was to try to pour exactly two ounces of liquid into a cup.

This was measured by a very scientific-looking set of beakers. My team sadly lost that round, all of us having poured a bit too much.

TGI Fridays Cocktail Flaring

The second part of the team competition was to make a cocktail at TGI Fridays in London. It wasn’t just about the ingredients, though. It was also about the flaring.

What is flaring, you ask? I had the same question when I first read the invitation.

I imagined it as something akin to the “pieces of flair” that Joanna was ‘encouraged’ to wear at Chotchkie’s in the movie Office Space (the restaurant was supposedly modeled after TGI Fridays, after all).

Were we going to have to wear buttons and pendants? No. Far from flair, flaring was the art of bartending showmanship that featured in another movie, Coyote Ugly (or so I’m told. I never actually saw the movie.).

Once again behind the bar, Frodo led my team in a little cocktail flaring lesson.

We learned how to spin the tin in our hands, throw it over our shoulders, juggle it with bottles of spirits, and toss it back and forth as we took turns shaking the concoction.

It was a lot of fun, but judging by the number of times I dropped my tin, I don’t think I have a future in bartending.

The final competition at TGI Fridays in London came down to the cocktail we made (in our case, a Key West Cooler) and how good our cocktail flaring skills were when we made it.

My team lost again, but we were quickly consoled when Frodo and another bartender did a little “flare-off”.

To use yet another movie analogy, this was like the “walk-off” in Zoolander, only with bar accessories instead of fashion accessories.

It was pretty amazing to watch as they threw, spun, stalled, juggled, and tossed the tins, bottles, straws, and napkins behind the bar.

The “flare off” was declared a draw, both bartenders having impressed us equally.

Afterwards we enjoyed a feast of TGI Fridays food, including nachos, potato skins, chicken wings, mozzarella sticks, and other healthy American favorites I used to enjoy in San Diego.

At the end of the evening we all said our good-byes and the manager guaranteed us that we would go home and start tossing around our household goods to improve our flaring techniques. Maybe.

But when he told us TGI Fridays in London would be hosting the UK Bartender Challenge Finals—including a flare-off featuring all the regional champions—I was tempted to return to see how good those that do practice at home get.

Until then, I’ll stick with perfecting my two ounce pour when making mojitos.

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