Paper, Dress, Vintage: Hackney

In Hackney, rummage for 60s frocks, 50s fun furs, flouncy frilly blouses, fawn felt fedoras and fuchsia feather boas and - since there's no way you're ever going to squeeze into those hot heliotrope Biba hot-pants circa Thin Lizzy you just spotted; you might as well squeeze in afternoon tea and cake served on colourful mismatched china that last saw action back in the Black and White Minstrels' black and white telly days. Anytime I revisit retro threads, I'm struck by how skinny we were back in the day before my one-time 27-inch waist was hit by rampant inflation. By night, at this Second-Hand Rose's delight  - recently relocated from Shoreditch - pull on your glad-rags as a funky preloved clothes shop transforms into a bar and social open until 1am at weekends. Her dress rails tidied away, stylish owner Hannah serves classic pre-batched gin, rum, whiskey and vodka cocktails courtesy of Bethnal Green bar, Craft Cocktail Co, as well as a selection of beers by Crate, Hackney and Pressure Drop. Served by a second (microscopic) bar, the upstairs men’s department morphs seamlessly into a live lounge. A small stage hosts rockabilly, soul, blues and swing artistes when the room is not otherwise given over to jive classes, comedy, burlesque, cabaret and drawing classes. There’s even a wee garden in which to model the King's Road dolly bird @ Chelsea Girl halter-dress, serape, sun hat and cats eye shades Ms Moss would kill for. Like serial party animal Kate, Paper, Dress, Vintage has got the London Look.

352A Mare Street E8 1HR 8510 0520 http://paperdressvintage.co.uk/bar 

The Italian Job, Chiswick

Order a machete in London's grittier faubourgs; they'll bring you a bad ass blade. But in bucolic, bourgeois Chiswick, chances are the locals will recognise Machete as the dreamy pint they sank last summer on that perfect day in Parma, whence this punchy 7.5% abv American-style IPA hails. One of the four co-owners of 'London's first Italian craft beer bar' - a dozen regularly rotated ales on tap and countless bottles from Europe's boot - is a certain Signor Campari who doubles, ironically, not as a maker of red bitters but of rather fine beers at Birrificio del Ducato, his microbrewery in Emilia-Romagna. The four raggazzi behind this interesting venture, launched with love on Valentine's Day 2015, have remodelled what used to be Pickwick's wine bar. If the new interior is Italian in style, it sure as hell wasn't put together by rococo leather bag/ designer Donatella Turtle. All bare brick and barrels, it looks like the sort of howf used for sheltering sheep in the Sienna hinterland's hills. Also worth noting, is New Morning -  Campari's bottle-fermented Belgian-style beer with its distinctive ginger, camomile, coriander and green peppercorn nose. If you're looking for beers to "blow the bloody doors off" as Charlie Croker puts it in the cult flick that inspired the bar's handle, this Italian may be just the job!
13 Devonshire Road W4 2EU http://www.theitalianjobpub.co.uk

Mother Kelly's, Bethnal Green

A tagged mural, featuring a classic yellow Chequer Cab, recalls bombed-out Bronx tenement gable ends circa Grandmaster Flash's White Lines. There’s nothing remotely flash about this stripped-bare, railway arch set with refectory tables, however. What is grand about this chilled new US-style taproom and bottle shop - that's 'offie' to you - is a back bar beer wall whose spouts dispense two dozen amber gems. Hop-hedz will salivate over the prospect of Kentish pints Alpha State Red Simcoe and Larsens Pale,. Also worth a swallow, are Oregon light bock beer Rogue Dead Guy, Sleemans Honey Brown, Schneider Weiss, and various London craft ales on tap. A palisade of packed fridges contains more interesting thirst slakers: Dutch artisans De Molen’s Dood and Verderf and Amarillo for starters. Also on tap, are Mortimer’s Orchard cider, Prosecco, and house wine at £4 a glass. Basic cocktails such as Aperol spritz are offered and a selection of single malts includes Hebridean hero, Bruichladdich. Olives, pork pie and meat and cheese boards are also available at a bar whose name derives from 60s drag diva Danny La Rue’s iconic music hall song. Mother Kelly, late of Paradise Row, would be amazed to have such a place on her doorstep.  
251 Paradise Row E2 9LE  Twitter @Mother_kellys

3 Crowns, Old Street

Were it in Silicon Valley USA,  rather than off Silicon Roundabout (that unlovely junction that blights old Old Street ), The 3 Crowns would be a very different local for the web designers, game developers and app-y hour geeks that will inevitably make up this new indie food pub's clientele. Where Californians demand spirulina smoothies and quinoa cosmopolitans,"No vodka! Hold the triple sec!" and the sort of macrobiotic organic edamame-based baloney Gwynnie and Madge might fancy, the London IT massive will be happily shooting out their brain cells, retro arcade game-stylee, doing serious damage to the 3 Crowns' kegs of American pale ale (via Hackney Brewery) and Czech-style pilsner from Norwich micro, Redwell. Behind its original green glazed tiled exterior, the 3C's stripped back nu-Edwardian pose is low on folderol, shifting the focus on to the open kitchen that flanks the rear dining room. Pile in for bar food, dinner, or an £18 three-course lunch. Trad Brit with a slight Gallic accent is the sort of grub that talks to me: rustic terrines; guanciale with avocado and tomato; Middle White roast pork with celeriac remoulade and capers; hake, mussels and samphire; onglet in a bun; spiced oxtail and sweet potato mash; possets, fools, or walnut tart with strawberries and cream. A reasonably priced, interesting wine list has big juicy Chablis, doable Pays d'Oc rouge at £16, Txakoli - an effervescent Basque white that got the thumbs up when I tried it for the first time recently on a hot afternoon on a beach near Bilbao - and Ambriel Classic Cuvée, a brand new sparkling chardonnay / pinot blend from West Sussex producers Outhwaite that's making waves. At the 3Crowns, I find myself thinking "sometimes, all you want is a decent local. Shame I'm not a local."
 8 East Road, N1 6AD 7842 8516   www.the3crowns.co.uk

Sylvan Post, Forest Hill

It was a red letter day in disguise for Forest Hill when this bar opened in the old post office there. Postman Pat-erpernalia harks back to the premises past life and, at £3.70 or thereabouts for draft Sagres, Meantime IPA, Krusovice or Devon Red cider, how long before a pint here costs less than an actual first-class stamp? Craft beers are also popular: look out for casks from East London Brewing, Windsor & Eton and others. Tempranillo blends and Airén wine from Galicia come at the distinctly suburban price of £13.75 and there’s Chablis at around twice that in a list that offers many by the carafe and glass. Food,  served in the evening and at the weekend from noon, might typically include baked Camembert with chutney, potted duck rillettes, grilled halloumi salad with roasted summer vegetables and salsa verde (£7.50), Barnsley chop with Jersey royals and anchovy and caper dressing, smoked fishcakes, beef-burger, cheesecake and  Eton Mess.

24 - 28 Dartmouth Road SE23 3XU 8291 5712 www.sylvanpost.com

This review and others like it appear at www.squaremeal.co.uk

Pelt Trader, The CIty

Retro pub mirrors last fashionable circa The Onedin Line grace walls that might have been better been left bare. Presumably a survivor of trading missions up Injun-infested American rivers, a lone Davy Crockett-style canoe dangles above this windowless boxy City vault located deep under the railway platforms of Cannon Street station above: you’re sure not here for the decor. When I add that Pelt Trader is the latest in a chain that includes Euston Tap and Holborn Whippet, this new bar’s raison d’être becomes clear: beer!  Hopheads are flocking to this City venture in numbers. And why not?  Know anywhere else in this parish that let's you choose from 30 regularly rotated craft keg and cask brews hidden behind a big 'beer wall.' No? Thought not! Prices start at £3 and sampling is positively encouraged.  So popular were Kernel Pale Simcoe -"one for the ladies" - and Buxton Wild Boar, they had sold out before I could sample them, leaving the likes of Buxton Imp, Tiny Rebel Billabong and Benedictiner weissbier to try. No hardship!  There’s a dozen wines from £16- £30 and thin crust pizza and charcuterie. Mutton, venison, goat and boar meatballs from Borough Market are set to be added in July 2013. The bar is shut at weekends, when Cannon Street's suits are consigned to Kent commuter-belt heaven, dreaming of Monday lunchtime at Pelt Trader as they sup swill at their local carvery, I imagine

Arch 3 Dowgate Hill EC4N 6NJ 3137 1872 @PeltTrader www.pelttrader.co.uk

Related Bars

Holborn Whippet REVIEW : http://tinyurl.com/c6lv2gd
Euston Tap REVIEW: http://tinyurl.com/nakk75r
Euston Cider tap: REVIEW http://tinyurl.com/qee7sk3

Crown and Shuttle, Shoreditch

Once, a seedy pole-dancing joint patronised by lonely Polish plumbers ("for cash I do you good deal, Mister sir") and dodgy Del Boy wankers - literally -  the Crown and Shuttle has reverted to its historic role as a public house. And a rather nice one that reflects the new beer fancier's needs, it is. Its mission? To slake thirsts with fine London ales such as Redemption Urban Dusk, East London Nightwatchman, Redchurch Old Ford stout (£3.60) and quality foreign brain-blasters. Wines from £17 include Pinot G at £26 and tasty street scran from a van - all gleamy 50s chrome - is one reason the urban courtyard garden out back is packed out. Another, is the chance to play table footie and ping-pong. The decor - all downbeat-bare-brick-distressed with a few 50s chairs lobbed in the mix - harks back to the days before this neighbourhood figured on most folk's radars. My date, who worked across the street in a branding agency before it felt compelled to move on to Plaistow, East Ham, Becontree or some other far-flung District Line exotic I'll no doubt be reporting back from, come 2015, as the new Shoreditch, sniffily dismisses some of The Crown's punters as 'suspiciously Barnsbury.' Meanwhile, due to cunningly placed signage, I'm about embarrass myself by mistaking a storage room for the bogs - and no, on one bloody Mary I am not bloody well pished! As it is, nobody notices. As far as the check shirt nu-Edwardian hirsute hipsters and shaven-headed Shoreditch pale and peculiars are concerned, interloping West London boy is invisible. 

226 Shoreditch High Street E1 6PJ 7375 2905  http://crownandshuttle.com/ 

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 

Craft Beer Co, Islington

A sympathetic refurb in scarlet and forest green breathes new life into this backstreet boozer; but its the fantastic range of craft beers that turns this charming local into a destination for hop-heads. As with the business’s other outlets in Clerkenwell and Brixton, there’s hundreds of bottled ales and a serious set of taps to tempt - we counted 24. Both native and imported artisanal beers demand serious attention. Bermondsey’s Kernel and a host of new wave native microbreweries go into bat for Britain, while Belgium is represented by a strong showing of Lambic, Geuze and Trappiste beers from the likes of Westmalle Abbey. There’s a strong Scandinavian team and America plays a blinder: Hoppin’ Frog’s 9.4% abv B.O.R.I.S The Crusher (‘bodacious oatmeal Russian imperial stout) and Anchorage’s The Tide and its Taker (a rarity at a sobering £29.95) among the folksy standouts. Wines from £15.95, scotch egg, epic meat pies - try the chorizo version - twinkly-eyed service and a patio garden complete the attractive offer.   

55 White Lion Street N1 9PP 7278 0318 www.thecraftbeerco.com/

Visit Square Meal for my review of Craft Beer Co Brixton  www.squaremeal.co.uk

Underdog, Shoreditch

For its first stab at a cocktail bar, Scottish indie craft brewing success story BrewDog has created a moody speakeasy in the basement of its second London premises - at what used to be Mason & Taylor and, before that, Green and Red. Figure out how to get in -  having Marvel Comics mutant Kitty Pryde's special powers will help - and you'll enter a dimly lit, atmospheric, post-punk take on a Deep South juke joint circa Calvin Coolidge - complete with a gutsy growling rhythm n'blues soundtrack, occasional live music and bartenders straight out of a Walker Evans portrait. Are the drinks as downbeat as their Great Depression-era surroundings? Not a bit of it! Any joint whose head honcho, lightly probed as to what bar he rates in London (his excepted), cites Happiness Forgets is playing my tune. Priced between £8 and £9, ideas such as Boil Your Maker (Glen Garioch Highland single malt or Buffalo Trace with a choice of floral, rich or bittersweet home-made vermouths) are top dog. As in an Ardbeg-based julep and The Beer Meeting (Diplomatico Anejo, Dead Pony and Libertin Black ales, verveine cordial and orange bitters) BrewDog brews inevitably sneak into the mix wherever practicable -but the guys aren't beer zealots to the extent that they won't knock out a Negroni..or Dead Pony-Groni if you let them have their way.  Underdog has the makings of a great Shoreditch bar. So what if only popcorn is available to eat? There's a Depression going on out there, don't ya know? Two 'Snakebiteritas' to the good; like you care?

51 - 55 Bethnal Green Road E1 6LA 7729 8476  www.brewdog.com/bars 

The Holborn Whippet, Bloomsbury

Brought to you by the people behind The Euston Tap and its sister cider bar, the Whippet is a retread of a defunct Italian restaurant on Sicilian Avenue, that cute little passagio that's a colonnaded corner of Palermo in hum-drum Holborn. The clunky wooden interior brings to mind a below stairs room in Dumbdown Abbey. That, or a 1930s bookies office: 'I'll 'ave half a crown each way on Wallis Simpson, trap 5, in the 6.30 at Catford Dogs, guv.' Apparently, this new craft beer bar's name stems from Georgian times when there was whippet racing to be had in these parts... 'before the chains started to move in.' That'd be Mrs Beaton's Ultimate Burgers; Snuff-a-Snorter; Sweeney TGIF et al? Tonight, the crowd is a mix of whippet-thin office workers and scruffy mongrels who have let themselves go to the dogs. Why do so many craft ale fans imagine Stig of the Dump crossed with a 'before' off The Biggest Loser is a hot look? Fill your boots, boys, at a bar built around a brick ‘beer wall’ whose 20 taps sensibly eschew global big brand swill in favour of sterling stuff from Thornbridge, Black Isle, Dark Star, Magic Rock and Essex brewer Mighty Oak. For hop haters, there's a selection of cider, wines and Gosset champagne. Hungry? Pile on even more calories with chargrilled steak sandwich, chicken club and burgers. The bar recently tweeted that a customer asked if its 'Whippet burger' was made from real whippet? Why not? The flesh of any well-looked-after creature that spends its life racing is bound to be lean and lovely. As my regular boucher chevaline in the Pas-de-Calais claims all his steaks come from ex-Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winners;  what's so odd about chowing down on the winner of the 7.45 at Walthamstow slathered in onions?

25 - 29 Sicilian Avenue WC1A 2QH  3137 9937 http://holbornwhippet.com

The North Pole, De Beauvoir Town

It’s been a treasured pub/ community hub since 1840; but, will the North Pole in W10 now be allowed to quietly melt away? Note to Kensington & Chelsea Council planning wonks: don't imagine what we really really want to spice up our lives is another ruddy Tesco mini-mart! Across town, after a Northern Line journey as arduous as any expedition Shackleton ever undertook, I discover another North Pole pub. Unrelated to the former, it battles on valiantly. Spruced up nu-Victorian stylee, what intrepid explorers will discover at this off-piste boozer, are honestly priced craft beers from £1.60, scrummy scrumpy, decent vino and good grub. On a sun-trap patio, slake your thirst on two dozen or so hand-pulled ales from the likes of London Fields, Redemption, Innis & Gunn and Cornwall’s Harbour Brewing. Bottled amber includes numerous Yanks, Mexicanos and Continentals. Try Norwegian brewer Nøgne Ø’s porter and IPA or Germany’s Schneider Aventinus, a doppelbock ruby Rottweiler at 8.2% abv. Eats encompass anything from pint of prawns, pizzas, mac’n’cheese or jerk chicken with ‘slaw rice and peas (£11) to snarfable sliders and burgers. Exile fidgety kidults to a play den that offers  Pac-Man, Space Invaders, pinball and - yay, baby - a vintage juke box. Reinvigorated under new landlords, N1’s North Pole looks good for decades...or at least until it shows up on the radar of some colonising retail juggernaut that spreads like the pox.

188 -190 New North Road N1 7BJ  7354 5400 www.thenorthpolepub.co.uk 

Crate Brewery, Hackney

On a steamy August night, Hackney Wick’s gritty industrial estates recall a 70’s Blaxploitation flick set in The Bronx circa Let’s Clean Up The Ghetto. In E9, it’s estate agents who are cleaning up, marketing this ‘urban village's’ desirable designer pads to young professionals. East London's shiny new middle class is out in force tonight, crowding onto tables on the canal towpath at Crate Brewery, the latest microbrewery/ bar combo catering to our new-found thirst for artisanal craft ales. Available on tap in its adjacent bar-cum-canteen, intense, hoppy, nutty Golden Ale - one of  three house draughts - is as good as I’ve tasted lately. Equally intriguing, is Brewfist Space Man: a notable Italian from a range of imported bottled beers that includes Bear Republic’s California-brewed Red Rocket. Crate’s owners have imaginatively kitted out the brewery's taphouse-cum-canteen, warming up an austere breeze block shell with a bar made from old railway sleepers. A mishmash of furniture is wittily fashioned on the cheap from what looks like Eddie Stobart’s cast-offs: crates, pallets, trolleys, heavy duty webbing and the likes. Dominating one wall, a humungous pizza oven takes pride of place.  ‘Yum’ I say, contemplating my (£8) red onion, courgette, feta and gremolata thin crust. ‘Double yum!’ says my date, clocking ' a 'spicy salami' and the exotic waiter who serves us: in a T-shirt bearing Jim Morrison’s image,  he makes The Doors’s smouldering late frontman look plain by comparison.

Unit 7, White Building, Queens Yard, E9 5EN http://cratebrewery.com 

Crown and Anchor, Brixton

Victory Storm King; Shaky Bridge; Fanny’s Bramble; Maui Big Swell: if you’re headed for William Hill, that’s not my 1-2-3-4 for The Derby. A sceptical Taurean, I some while since bet a tenner on Astrology at 25/1 for the big race. Beer and cider lovers will recognise those four brands as highly desirable, if hard-to-find, drinkables. On a particularly iffy stretch of Brixton Road, beyond jerk chicken shack, Paradise Cove - not this cove’s idea of paradise - and an outfit selling superfly pimp gear, I discover all four and lots more. At the no-frills, nicely-striped-back-to-its-bare-brick Crown and Anchor, a new sister pub to Stokie’s Jolly Butchers, there’s hoppy goodness - around twenty brews on tap - to swell happy beer-swillers’ bellies. Derbyshire brewer Thornbridge’s Sequoia, Kipling and Topaz; lots of local London interest; Scottish punks, BrewDog; and from a Belgian Trappist abbey, Rochefort 10 - a monk’s naughty habit at a whopping 11.3% abv? From a snappy menu of just-what-you-fancy scran that includes arancini, mussels in cider and rhubarb crumble, I order juicy 8 oz Brixton burger and double fried chips (£9.95). Hopefully, Astrology’s jockey will stick to salad.

246 Brixton Rd SW9 6AQ www.crownandanchorbrixton.co.uk/ 

Stormbird, Camberwell

Ousting the lost-its-Funky Munky, this rare bird is going down a storm with Camberwell hip hop lovers. That’s hip hop as in fashionable craft beers rather than as in blasted out of a nicked stereo in low rider wheels with blacked out windows, what to drive in a 'hood where a second-hand Saab will kill your cred...ston' dead. The spruced-up taphouse (now owned by the same folk as The Hermit’s Cave opposite) lacks signage: look for the Brooklyn Brewery neon through fold-back windows- the sign, a sign of good things within. A palisade of chrome spouts to shout about offers quality pints such as Brodie’s Citra, Ruination Old Foghorn, Redemption Urban Dusk (£3.20) and Deuchar’s IPA. Less familiar, are Odell’s Cut-throat Porter and Yeti Imperial Stout (available in 1/3 pint trial measures). Continentals include Schneider Weisse, Liefmans and ‘Kwak’ - as Jonathon Ross might pronounce ‘crack’, and every bit as addictive and popular down the road in Peckham I'm told. Also of interest, is a selection of perry and cider that includes presses from Symonds of Herefordshire.  One happy punter was moved to exclaim ‘the selection is mental good’. I would not disagree. The range is staggering.  So will you be, if you fire into Stormbird's fine whiskeys and wine from £12. 

25 Camberwell Church Street SE5 7708 4460 

Find more bar reviews at www.squaremeal.co.uk

Craft Beer Co, Clerkenwell

In groups of four they arrive, all sweaty anticipation: paunchy geeks with ratty grey ponytails, who look like they spend daylight hours in darkened rooms playing Dragon Age 2 and listening to prog rock. Latter day pilgrims, they’ve come to worship at a new temple of Dionysus, Clerkenwell’s Craft Beer Co. ‘Look, Dora! They’ve got Magic Rock Dark Arts’ gasps a Hobbit to his Hogwarthian Miriam Margoyles-ish missus, herself a practitioner of the dark arts, I’d wager. Dora coos fondly over countless spouts spewing Cotleigh Seahawk, Redemption Hotspur and other ales I’ll presently come to know. Bottles of Cigar City Humidor, Blithering Idiot, Smuttynose Porter and Gorbals Affyerheid (or did I hallucinate that?)  are pressed on me by simpatico staff out to make converts to their beery cause. I'm given Clerkenwell Lager , 'brewed for us by a sort of wandering Danish gypsy.' And a definite cut above Carlsberg too, I say. ‘Try this beauty’ urges a Merlin look-alike proffering me a sample phial of Dresden stout. ‘It tastes like smoky bacon.’ And it does; the 85p saved on a packet of crisps, I’ll put towards a pork and black pudding ‘hand raised’ pie. The range of craft ales, allegedly the biggest in Britain, is astonishing. So too, a selection of premium bourbon and Scotland's finest. I canter on dutifully, beer-blinkered to those appealing distractions. Who knew ale could be so expensive? At £25, does Horny Devil throw in a free lap-dance? Seriously though, I'd urge you to make strides for this fantastic reconfigured corner boozer... and be sure to wear an elasticated waistband if the amber stuff floats your bloat.  

82 Leather Lane EC1 7430 1123 http://www.facebook.com/thecraftbeerco