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If you listen to the words of the famous song “Help!” by The Beatles, then you can say with confidence that the bar Help! in Moscow is a kind of answer to the Beatles’ musical challenge. Here the friendly bartenders are ready all day every day to extend a helping hand to anyone who is feeling down. Moreover, the bar’s alcoholic first aid is available for very merciful prices: from 160 rubles to 220 rubles a cocktail, which already goes some way towards improving your mood.

The modest interior with rough wooden furniture, brick walls with colored lights, photos of famous bartenders and their more famous clients imitates American bars from the 30’s. The only signs of modernity are the framed diplomas of the bar’s founder Dmitry Sokolov, and mosaics with the logo of the bar on the floor.

Dmitry Sokolov, multiple winner of various bartending competitions in the first half of the noughties, decided that every member of society has the right to try all the world’s most famous classic cocktails. The menu at Help! is a hefty ABC of bar language, where each cocktail is accompanied by a directory about its creator, its year of birth and country of origin, and sometimes a list of people for whom the cocktail was invented, or who was especially partial to it. For example, the famous Daiquiri, which was invented as early as 1896, was a favorite of Hemingway and Dietrich, or the Kir Royale, which was first mixed for Felix Kir, mayor of the French city of Dijon in the 1950s. If you wanted to get acquainted with the whole extensive range, you would need to go Help! every day for a few months or stretch out that pleasure for at least a year. It is worth noting that Dmitry Sokolov constantly updates the bar menu, and about 30 drinks at Help! are signature recipes. Sokolov’s famous In Her Eyes, a mix of gold rum, pear and mandarin syrups, pineapple and cranberry juice, was first thought up between the four kindly walls of bar Help!.

For ease of navigation in the vast world of cocktails, the bar card is equipped with useful tags that divide the menu into sections with unique tips. The quest begins with the World classics, then goes on to the Champions League, winning cocktails from Bartending Competitions since 1919, Tini World, Tropical Blends, and Intergalactic Murderers (this last comprises cocktails that knock you out). For those who need help coping with any post-cocktail morning illness, there are options suggested to cure a sore head and liver.