London’s new Twin Peaks-inspired bar is a place to misbehave
Last month, Upstairs at Hausu, a David Lynch-inspired hi-fi bar launched in Peckham Rye. Its co-director talks Amelie Maurice-Jones through the challenges of curating a cocktail menu by colour, and why every good bar should have an “element of misbehaviour”.
Named after the 1977 Japanese cult horror film Hausu, the listening bar is celebrating its one-month birthday, after opening on 20 March under Peckham Rye’s arches in south London.
“It’s going really well,” Upstairs by Hausu’ co-director and head of drinks programme Tom Middleton-Joseph tells the drinks business. “We’re pretty excited about where it’s going to go – this is just the beginning.”
This summer, the team will launch an ‘after hours’ events series, with a music programme – zig-zagging through house, R&B and post-punk – played both through vinyls by in-house DJ, and boosted by speakers in the corners of the room. Middleton-Joseph is excited to rework some of the muscles honed in his previous career in nightclubs, and when it comes to music, he’s “striving for an eclectic mix”.
You’ll find the bar above the restaurant, also named Hausu, which has quickly become a South London stalwart for its blending of buzzy vibes and fire-fuelled cooking since its launch in late 2024, with Middleton-Joseph, his sister Holly, and their business partner Christian Williams at the helm.
Paint the town red
Middleton-Joseph hopes the new space will bring a different energy and dancefloor atmosphere to the eatery. “We want people to come upstairs and feel like they are in a closed space where they can behave in different ways,” he describes.
The décor goes a long way in making this happen. Designed by in-house artist Eva Gold, it takes its inspiration from David Lynch’s Red Room in Twin Peaks. Shrouded in red drapery and dim lighting, the room is created to feel intimate and almost hypnotic as it entices in guests.
And intoxicating, perhaps? How exactly are guests “behaving differently”? Middleton-Joseph is coy in his response: “Every good bar has an element of misbehaviour to it.”
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Colour-co-ordinated cocktails
The interior’s red colour scheme complicates things when it comes to drinks-making. “You can’t use greens and blues, because they look washed out and, frankly, a bit disgusting,” confides the co-owner.
This means the cocktail list is structured around a warm colour palette: think reds, oranges, whites and yellows. “I like starting from colour then going backwards,” adds Middleton-Joseph.
Take the salted Iberiko tomato Martini, for instance, which has been a fan favourite since its launch. It’s made using a milk clarification process. While mixing tomato juice with milk looks “pretty rubbish,” separating them makes for a “beautiful, clear, yellow-tinged liquid”.
It also taps into the trend for savoury cocktails across the capital, emerging as a key trend at ProWein Dusseldorf, as bartenders get creative with umami-rich ingredients like bone broth, miso and smoked salt. Added to this, “the Martini itself is having a whole new moment,” Middleton-Joseph points out.
Other hits on the cocktail menu include a blood-orange, gin-based Sidecar made with fig foam, kiwi and coriander soda, and a vodka plum sour – with yoghurt mixed in for a pink hue. There’s also a natural wine list (thank god wine doesn’t come in blue and green), and drinks can be paired with an array of European-inspired bar snacks, spanning oysters with Tabasco, and bread from the Camberwell icon Toad Bakery with smoked butter, olives, marinated peppers and boquerones.
Turn up the music
London’s gone crazy for listening bars in recent years. The hi-fi lounges, inspired by Japan’s jazz kissa culture, provide a laid-back alternative to loud nightlife. Middleton-Joseph puts their surge in popularity down to the unique thrill of “coming into a space and being introduced to something musically you’ve not heard before”.
There’s nothing quite like it: “Everyone wants to have a new experience,” he adds. And at Hausu they’ll find just that: a liminal space of sorts where wacky music, sunset cocktails and a sense of mystique make create a space to make meaningful memories, and, of course, to misbehave.
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