Portside Parlour, Shoreditch

Originally a pop-up, in Spring 2014, the good ship PP set sail from Broadway Market, docking in Shoreditch, its new permanent mooring. Formerly a hairdresser's, the new premises' Grace Brothers'-style window display appears to have been salvaged from a Chatham chandler's yard circa the sinking of The Titanic. Mercifully, there's so far been no sighting of old gushy gusset, Kate Winslet, a ludic' luvvie so full of hot air, it's little wonder she floated while others sank like stones to Davy Jones' Locker. Inside, all darkly-lit metals and black leather booths, the mood is v Querelle - benders on a bender as imagined by Fassbinder (only not so gay, or at all threatening) - with gallons of good-times grog housed in mesh-fronted lockers. Get off your rocker on autopilot, an absinthe-laced triple rum punch as lethal as any U-boat torpedo, or sink a poet - Johnnie Walker Black ‘re-blended’ with Talisker single malt, sherry and bitters in a Chartreuse-rinsed glass - a dark destroyer to wax lyrical about at £9.50. Non-rum recipes such as Hendricks, nettle, elderflower, orange blossom water and mezcal long drink, lawnmower sling, are similarly ship-shape. ‘Private dining curated by Sager and Wilde’ is set to come on board soon and, served until 11pm (with wine from £20) a selection of piscine tapas includes baby octopus terrine, seafood croquettes, and devilled whitebait. Portside Parlour is a sophisticated cocktail cabin: more Otis Ferry than Calais ferry, it floats my boat.

14 Rivington Street EC2A 3DU 3662 6381  www.portsideparlour.co.uk

Pearl's at The Cat and Mutton, London Fields

After 10 years as a gastro, Broadway Market's landmark pub was more overcooked Mutton than Top Cat when I visited last year. Not long afterwards, it shut, sold to new owners appaz. If the pattern in similar gentrified pockets of London held true, I reasoned, the new owners would be a chain of burger barons, bento box pimps, Carluccio's, Space NK, Oliver Bonas or some other yuppie knob wank. Would I mourn the Cat? Not really. I'm not local. Even if I were, there are more interesting places to drink on this East End strip where, perversely, the rarest sight these days is the genuine article. Eastenders don't, as a rule,  go by India or Hugo, rather Mason and Paige. Presently, I heard good news. The Cat and Mutton would reopen as a pub not a branch of Foxton's and, most interestingly, with Tom Gibson at the helm - he of dishy Dalston dive bar Ruby's, a gaff that's well worth crossing town for. Come April, I'm schlepping out East again -  a tedious habit since my manor, Chelsea, became about as cool as chlamydia. I'm here for the CaMutt's re-launch. Roadblock! The old girl is as stowed out as the first day of a Sloane Street sale, only with a crowd that doesn't look like lumpen X-Factor audition losers, what the queue for Gucci's sale appears to consist of these days. And lovely, the new improved Cat turns out to be. A more attractive but not unrecognisably different spin on what went before, it has craft beers and Licky Chops on kitchen duty downstairs and, of more immediate interest to me, Pearl's, a cocktail bar upstairs. Gussied up like an Edwardian bordello, Pearl's is accessed via a vertiginous spiral staircase whose polished steps should be approached with caution when well-oiled. How to get that way? £8.50 cocktails called fiery mare (gin, Kamm and Sons, lemon, wasabi and cucumber) and frisky Nellie or some such similarly hoorish handle. Alfred’s porter is an interesting Victorian-style fix that says much about London Fields' now. Asking for brandy, stout, honey and oyster sauce would have got you laughed out of the Cat when I first drank on Broadway Market long before it talked with a Mockney accent. In the punk days of my childhood, bootleg vodka and Vimto with a Dexedrine chaser was how to start your night.  
 76 Broadway Market, E8 4QJ 7249 6555 http://www.catandmutton.com

based on my review for www.squaremeal.co.uk 

Stories, Hackney

London Fields' latest bar/ cafe/ gallery/ social hub (origami classes, anyone?) is from the crew behind The Book Club and The Queen of Hoxton - venues synonymous with the sort of  nu-hippies, style bloggers, Guardian-reading geeks, bohos and lazy bozos you can also expect to find here. In fact, the only demographic you'll have trouble locating dahn Broadway Market these days, are the indigenous Cockney sparras flushed out their natural habitat by smug sHabitat-chic colonisers priced out of the leafier parts of Islington.  Brunch, from 10am until mid-afternoon, and bar food that includes wild mushroom and mozzarella arancini, beef and chorizo burger with peppers, pigs in blankets, squid and prawns piri piri (£5), are served in a postmodern space that feels like the canteen / chill-out zone / hot-desking area (or whatever the current buzzword is) at some achingly cool Shoreditch brand agency. Network and bounce around ideas for your new viral ad campaign/ indispensable app over a pint of draught London Fields ale, wine from £4 a glass, or various ‘stories’ cocktails from £6.80. Try ‘sob’ ‘adventure’ (rum, orgeat, apple juice and lime), ‘likely’, ‘shaggy dog’ or for the likely lad on his laptop who claims Google is about to snap up his big idea as the next Tumblr, ‘cock’n’bull (Four Roses bourbon, lemon juice, Cointreau and lemonade)

30 Broadway Market E8 4QJ 7254 6898 http://www.storiesonbroadway.com

This, and similar reviews, appear at www.squaremeal.co.uk

Portside Parlour, Hackney

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum! And what bastard stole my original Westwood pirate shirt now that I need it most? Tonight I'm swashbuckling out East to a new pop-up...if I can find the ruddy place (I've got until at least May 2013 to do so, I'm told) Let's see...clue 1: locate Off Broadway, a popular Hackney haunt set in a street market that packs up around the time Portside P opens (5 pm). Clue 2: make as if to spend a penny….and hello sailor! We're in to what looks like a cosy, candlelit take on a Captain Pugwash's cabin; although, this being PC Hack-en-ee, there'll be no smutty Seaman Staines, Master Bates and Roger the Cabin Boy jokes here, Matey. (Did you know? You can still buy Matey, my favourite childhood bubble bath introduced to me by a caring auntie because 'all the nice boys love a sailor' as she put it, cryptically...presciently). Set up in collaboration with Appleton Estate, Portside P's back bar boasts over 50 rums including barrel-aged rarities and Venezuelan Santa Teresa Rhum Orange liqueur. From £8, choose from a selection of grogs, cups, punch, slings, daiquiris, and just about any other style of drink the tar's tot of choice is suited to. Order Mai Tai (£8), spiced rum mulled cider or Hot Buttered Rum (served from copper kettles) from £12 for two to share. Should rum not be your cup of tea, so to speak, you’ll find beers from Kernel and Hackney microbrewery Craft. The soundtrack is appropriately Jack Sparrow/ Keith Richards/ Johnny Kidd and the Pirates (pictured) Shakin' All Over ...and if you don't know that particular tune, that's what's YouTube is for. 

63 - 65 Broadway Market E8 4PH http://portsideparlour.co.uk 

Off Broadway, Hackney; Library, Islington

£5 for a Manhattan is a steal. But that’s what you’ll pay for a well-made cocktail from a concise selection at Off Broadway (pictured). An unpretentious Manhattan neighbourhood-style lounge, it’s ‘Off Broadway’ as in busy Hackney street market of that ilk; consequently, it’s rammed with Eastenders that are less Phil and Grant, more Phil and Kirstie, so middle class has this insufferably smug location location location become. There’s perfectly formed Vespers and Sours, accessible vino and tasty American beers including Genesee Cream Ale from upstate New York and four from California’s Flying Dog. What scran there is - cheeses and salamis mostly- is top notch, but this new narrow L-shaped venue is not for the claustrophobic: I get my homely antipodean neighbour’s entire CV, like it or not. ‘I used to be at Grazia’ she booms. Perhaps its editor grew weary of Oz’s answer to Ugly Betty’s foghorn monologue and an armpit that smells of neglect? What drowns out chat at new late night bar, The Library, is an XFM-ish soundtrack; fair enough, it is a music venue, its small stage apparently has hosted Bloc Party and the Fratellis as well as comedy turns, which is how detractors might dismiss the Glaswegian rockers. The main bar - a dreary bottle green painted space with potted palms, fake books by the metre and workaday furniture - is supposed to say ‘traditional gentlemen’s club’: Hmmm, the British Legion, Scunthorpe? Thankfully, the crowd is less mundane, as is food such as mutton stew, roast partridge and venison sausages and mash. Drinks, meanwhile, are affordable and include ‘artisan’ cocktails and slacker-friendly brews for Mr. Scruffs.

Off Broadway, Broadway Market E8 7923 9265
The Library, 235 Upper St, N1 7704 6977