The Boulevardier Was Named After A Magazine, And Noodle After Dark Puts One Back In Your Hand

Erskine Gwynne, an American writer living in Paris, started a monthly magazine called the Boulevardier in 1927 and gave his name to a drink to go with it. Bourbon, Campari and sweet vermouth in equal thirds, first printed that same year in Harry MacElhone’s Barflies and Cocktails. The magazine closed in 1932 and the drink outlived it by nearly a century.

Noodle After Dark prints the Boulevardier with its measures, in a magazine made for the same hour Gwynne’s was. That small loop is a fair way into what the issue is trying to do.

After Dark is Noodle Magazine UK’s second title, a late-night entertainment magazine for men, and every face in it is fictional.

• Issue: No. 01, September 2026
• Price: £7.50 an issue, or £69 for the year
• Format: Digital PDF or Printed Copy
• Cutoff: August, so some September events are trailed rather than reported

Noodle Magazine Sells Magazines And Makes Its Own, From 2 Official Sites

Before the issue itself, it helps to know who is behind it. Noodle Magazine is an online magazine shop and publisher. It sells single issues and subscriptions of established titles, runs a blog on lifestyle, health, home, business, fashion and beauty, and since June 2026 it has printed its own monthly issues under the Noodle Magazine Originals label.

The business runs from 2 official sites, one for each side of the Atlantic:

• noodle-magazine.co.uk is the UK site. It’s operated by Capital Technologies Ltd, registered in England and Wales under company number 11903724, with its office at 70 Barrington Road, Bexleyheath. Prices are in pounds, and After Dark is sold here.
• thenoodlemagazine.net is the US site, based in Los Angeles. Prices are in dollars, and it has its own American issues, Love, Rings & Rhinestones for September and Upscale Living for October 2026.

Both sites point to the same Instagram account, @noodlemagazine.official.

A few unrelated sites, some of them adult video sites, use a similar name online. Noodle Magazine is a magazine publisher, and the 2 domains above are its only official homes.

It Opens With Danny Boyle In Venice

The lead story follows Danny Boyle’s Ink opening the 83rd Venice Film Festival on 2 September, with Trainspotting turning 30 in the same breath. It also brings back the plain line he used to turn down Alien Resurrection, and it’s written with more warmth than most profiles of him bother with.

Because of the August cutoff, Venice is covered going in, not coming out. The issue says the verdicts wait for No. 02.

The Short Story Is Set At Quaglino’s

The fiction is called The Last Table at Quaglino’s. A card sharp named Henry Vale walks from a wet Brewer Street to a private room on a stolen invitation, and ends up holding 4 kings he can’t account for. The last page carries the story, and the issue’s own reviewer says it’s worth the cover price alone.

The setting is a good choice. Giovanni Quaglino opened the real restaurant in St James’s in 1929, and in 1956 the Queen dined there, the first reigning monarch to eat in a public restaurant. Terence Conran brought it back in 1993 with aluminium ashtrays shaped like a Q, and so many walked out in pockets that the restaurant, reopening this October, has asked Londoners to return them in exchange for a bottle of champagne. A room with that much history behind it is an easy place to believe a card sharp would end his night.

The Drinks Pages Print The Measures

Drink is the section most readers will go back to. The Boulevardier comes with its measures written out, so you can stop guessing at the bar at home. Around it, the pages cover:

• The World’s 50 Best Bars landing in Milan on 7 October
• Blue Note opening its first London room on St Martin’s Lane on 23 September
• Quaglino’s back from its centenary refit
• A 55 year old Glenury Royal, from a distillery long closed
• A Blair Athol with 347 bottles in existence

After that the issue wanders the way a night does. Nightlife walks from The Box Soho through Crazy Coqs, Proud, Sabrage and the Kit Kat Club. Motoring has the Ferrari 849 Testarossa and a $42.9m Shelby Daytona Coupe from Monterey, and Cards books a December in the Bahamas for a $120m WSOP guarantee. Then the back pages bring a Glasgow fox stealing milk off a doorstep and a 10 question quiz with the answers printed alongside, because it’s late.

Every Model Is Made Up, And It Says So 3 Times

The Hour of Gold pictorial is all noir shadow and cabaret feathers. Every model in it is fictional and AI generated, and the magazine prints that on the cover, on the masthead and again on the back page, rather than in small type at the end.

The glamour is the old-fashioned kind, gloves, silk and a raised eyebrow across a dim room. Nothing in it is explicit. It’s plainly a magazine for adults, but one you could leave on a table without having to explain it.

Who Should Buy It, And Who Should Pick The Sister Title

Buy it if you’ve ever stayed for the last hand after the sensible people went home. At £7.50 it costs less than the round you stayed for, and the annual comes to £69.

Pick the daytime title instead if you want your reading done by 9 in the morning, with nothing in it you’d need to explain at a school gate. Noodle Magazine UK sells both on the same site, and they’re built for very different hours.

No. 02 is where the Venice and Apple verdicts are promised, so the second issue will show whether the trailing pays off.