The Chesham Arms, Homerton

Three cheers for Andy Bird! Why? Because the co-owner of two of London's key cocktail bars  - Original Sin http://tinyurl.com/qet3kwa and Happiness Forgets http://tinyurl.com/7pv65xk - has only gone and prised an endangered taphouse from the snapping jaws of voracious predators. Bewitching clueless councillors with their promise of 'elegant urban village living', Public (house) Enemy No.1, the evil property developers, contrive to knock down London's built heritage faster than I can knock back No 3. gin martinis - (i.e. alarmingly quick). I weep buckets for the thousands of London boozers lost to these sharks and scheisters. In a small victory for Canute against the cnuts, in Mehetabel Road E9, the developers' loss is this close-knit enclave's gain. With its replanted lawned beer garden, The Chesham is now a fine community asset, the focal point of a handsome grid of chocolate box-perfect Victorian terraces. Bird's painstakingly collated salvaged furnishings - the bar's polished ash counter found on Gumtree and shipped from a defunct Derbyshire tavern; tuffet stools last produced circa Lonnie Donegan; an old Joanna for Mehetabel's answer to Mrs. Mills  - restores the Arms to how it probably looked around the same time Ena Sharples and Elsie Tanner first traded port and lemon-fuelled insults in another wee local up North. My nostalgia for pubs past doesn't, of course, extend to a fondness for warm Watney's beer, sickly Spanish Sauternes or luncheon meat slapped between two stale slices of Mother's Pride - standard issue in 1960 when God help the boy that dared to order a Babycham in any East End tavern...unless his name was Ronnie, the gay Kray. The born-again Chesham's pours include sterling stuff from Dark Star and Five Points; Salopian’s award-winning bitter, Darwin’s Original; classy, affordable, French vino and a great G and T or a Bloody Mary that's bigged up by Bird, not at all subjectively, as “London’s best.” Ditto, pork pie and other trad bar snacks, the only food on offer pending the autumn addition of a kitchen. “I loathe ‘gastropubs’ that flog bought-in lamb shank for £15 a pop” rails an angry Bird, promising a from-scratch plat du jour, quality charcuterie and cold cuts. Atta boy, Andy! Now, go support your local... while you still can!

15 Mehetabel Road E9 6DU 0793 695517 cheshamarms.com/ 

 

Original Sin, Stoke Newington

Happiness Forgets regularly appears high on those ubiquitous year-end Best Bars lists. Quite right too! No arsey doorwhores. No narcissistic nobs punting molecular fanny. No cringeworthy concept (PR imagines "pre-Revolutionary Romanov luxe in Fabergé jewel brights infused with the decadent spirit of Studio 54" while I imagine Boney M tribute band in traj tin-foil outfits murders Ra-Ra-Rasputin at a Hornchurch hen night. No Cristal-fuelled Kanye and Kim klones. No £25-plus anodyne Asian share boards as flogged for a quid -with free Peter Andre CD - at Iceland. No! Just delightful down-played decor and damn fine drinks. I too am all Happiness to be at owners Alastair Burgess and Andy Bird's Hoxton Square dive whenever I'm not feigning interest in launch night bourbon and butterscotch slush puppies at some Shepherd's Bush shithole (you know who you are!) or the likes. In the quiet downtime of the first week of 2015, I make it to Burgess's Christmas present to London nightlife; his second sexy saloon, a lo-fi linear cellar that has me from hello. Butch brick and wood panelling, convivial booths, perch-perfect bar stools and a brown baize pool table at which to unleash your inner Eddie Felsen (pictured) sett the scene for spot-on fixes that look to old school (vieille école?) tipples for inspiration. Served by enthusiastic, attitude-free, all-female bar staff, classic French red wine-based apéritif Byrrh (plus Kamm and Sons and aquavit) informs Penfold Sour, while Belle Époque Parisian favourite Suze (gentian root, its bittersweet base), white rye and Lillet blanc makes for a top-notch tart Diamond Manhattan. Original Sin could easily be the downfall of this man. My only beef? Bleary-eyed on a night bus, it's a long schlep back to my K + C crib from the cold, windswept steppes of Siberia... aka Stoke Newington. Time to dig out the fur and ring Foxtons!
129 Stoke Newington High Street N16 0PH http://www.originalsin.bar 

Canvas, Shoreditch

“We are cocktails and art" proclaims new DJ-lates bar Canvas, hoping to explain what sets it apart from the herd. Let's see: "Whether it's through paint, print, interior design, or even our cocktail menu created by Jumbles St. Pierre, everyone and everything in Canvas laments (sic) the importance of passion, art and creativity within our unique and ground-breaking concept." By the look of the art on Canvas's blank canvas tonight, I'm not sure the acquisitive Mr. Jopling will in the  long-term lament not opening his cheque book to its young creators. There again, I'm more  Corot and Courbet than White Cube contemporary; so WTF do I know? What I can spot, is a decent cocktail. And what Jumbles St. Pierre (oh how I love a good Jackie Collins' read) has come up with is more persuasive than rough and ready decor that lies somewhere between Warhol's Factory and a Wild West saloon; Canvas's barmen in black, more Milky Bar Kid than Johnny Cash. Three to try, are dark diplomat (a chocolate-orange twisted 'Diplomatico rum Manhattan’), banana cabana (if you're sweet on sweet), and Wild Turkey and Frangelico, fruit-flavaoured slug, wild angel. Canvas sits midway between Hoxton Square and the lurid late-night chicken cottages of Old Street Roundabout. If the area's pallid peculiars are to adopt Canvas, its 'greeters' will have their work cut out, repelling repellant boozed-up oiks looking for the grotty cheap pub it replaces and visitations from plagues of Hummer-borne Billericay Fake Bake Biancas out on Saturday's rapacious razzle. However tasty ‘upcyled’ (sic) Patrón Silver, mango and lime, chilli-frosted punch, this weary old banging DJ bar-avoider would rather drop £12 at nice Nightjar, Loves Company or Happiness Forgets around the corner. 
235 Old Street EC1V 9HE 7336 0275 www.canvasbar.co.uk

100 Hoxton (and The Hoxton White Horse - Now Closed. See postscript), Hoxton

The excellent Happiness Forgets notwithstanding, I'm not much drawn to drinking around Hoxton Square these days, even less so IN Hoxton Square itself, a depressing urban patch that reminds me of Manhattan's Thompson Square before the East Village style mafia sanitised the old slum. A few hundred yards to the North of once-hot Hokky Square, lies Hoxton Market whose shabby East End streets, sprinkled with edgy looking flakes, remind me of my old haunt, Golborne Road off Portobello back before the Stella McCartney classes even knew where W10 was. The way gentrification is eating up grimier postcodes, and with recession-defying property prices spiralling, how long before anybody that isn't a hedge fund f***wit or an overpaid Town Hall pen-pusher is pushed out,  and Hull becomes London's latest hip hood? In the meantime, facing one another across the street, there's Hoxton White Horse and 100 Hoxton to enjoy. The old N1 nag that was Hoxton White Horse no longer looks destined for the knacker’s yard after some timely TLC. In fact, it's now looking every inch a winner, its gin jockeys cuter than My Little Pony. Pile in for wine at £20 and under, draught Meantime, a jukebox jam-packed with retro joy, Pieminster pies, board games and fun events such as speed listening (basically, speed dating with iPods and free cake) in the Horse’s soulful bluesy new whisky and rum bar downstairs, a sweet shoebox  that comes on like a nightclub in a Northern mining town around circa Red Rum’s first Grand National win. As I'm on the wagon, my bar bill is as low as any I've had since Disraeli's wake - 55p for a soda and lime. Imagine! 100 Hoxton, the new colt on the block, is also worth a gamble. A baby sister to  Zilouf’s on Upper Street, here’s a funky-as-you-like, no-frills, Bauhaus-inspired cocktail bar with a nice line in East-West grub. Go for mango and passionfruit caipiroska and They Came from the East (a Japanese whisky, and Chartreuse martini). Grub includes Thai cod cakes, Korean-style pan-fried duck and sago pud with fresh fruit. Japanese martinis?  Korean style pan-fried duck? If they get wind of it, expect Space NK, Carluccio's and another ruddy branch of All Saints to open before you can finish your espresso.

Hoxton White Horse 153 Hoxton Street N1 6PJ 7729 8512 hoxtonwhitehorse.com/

100 Hoxton, 100 - 102 Hoxton Street, N1 6SG 7729 1444 http://100hoxton.com

Photo: Ben Sutherland

PS: NEWS JULY 2013 Hoxton White House has closed. It will become Lyan Bar in September 2103 (see new review) 

Smith's, Hammersmith

Hammersmith Broadway is physical proof of why town planners should be lined up and shot; the clueless clowns' cadavers used as landfill for Boris's estuary airport's main runway. If the RAF needs target practice, let them reduce to rubble the buildings on the traffic-clogged roundabout underneath the traffic-clogged flyover that blights this foulest of faubourgs. Any local building that had an iota of character or charm - The Palais and The Clarendon ballroom, say - have been demolished, replaced by the sort of concrete and glass ghastliness that has blighted Dresden since Churchill unleashed the Lancasters. I'd as soon drink bleach as drink cocktails in downtown W6, and the entrance to tonight's destination doesn't augur well, looking as does it like the sort of basement dossers might adopt for the drinking of meths. We push on through anonymous double doors behind which I half expect to run into wheelie bins full to the brim with festering trash discarded from the hotel above. Thankfully, what lurks beyond comes as a pleasant surprise. Here's a fair approximation of a Louisiana juke joint circa Tennessee Williams;  where Tennessee Smash awaits latter-day vintage chicks channeling deluded Southern soak, Blanche Dubois. Washed brick walls; bordello plush; a skip load of the sort of decorative tat once found in Carnaby Street  boutiques circa Sgt Pepper's: original its magpie mix is not,  but it's a perfectly fine place to fritter away an hour or so over a £7.50 Blood'n'Sand, Monkey Gland or what turns out to be a rather horny Dark'n'Stormy. Less sexy, is our £15 assembly of vegetarian dips, the Katy Perry of the share platter world- cleverly styled but ultimately bland and forgettable. On the table opposite, a couple discusses their future private party with a manager who says proudly 'We want to keep the place semi-secret...like a speakeasy.' With few punters to speak of in the house on a Friday evening at 9pm, his reverse sales psychology is apparently working. How come? W6 is not blessed with good bars. And although it's hardly Nightjar or Hix Soho, If I were forced to dwell hereabouts (not that I could afford one of its unfathomably popular terraces), I'd be at Smith's every night, drowning my sorrows on the rum punch cocktail for two they call the Gustav Holst. Hammersmith - a far-flung Planet I'm not Suite on. 

The Brook Green Hotel,170  Shepherd's Bush Road W6 7371 1361http://smithsw6.co.uk

LONDON 2012: GOLD BARS

BAR OF THE YEAR:
QuiQuiRiQui http://tinyurl.com/8g4vbpm
London does this kind of bar best (and yes, I know one of its owners is Scandinavian). Fabulous freaks in a stripped-back, trippy Tarantino-esque Mexican porno basement beneath a kebab shop; Tom Jones on the jukebox; messy early morning mash-ups on rare weapon of mass destruction grade super-premium mezcal =  no hangover? Bring it on!

Favourite new uptown girl: 
The Luggage Room http://tinyurl.com/cg9nfxo
You'll need the cash equivalent of a pile of LVs (as in Luncheon Vouchers; ask your granny) to get steaming at this luxury LV (Louis Vuitton) walk-in steamer trunk: quality never comes cheap.

The trend that refuses to die: 
Speakeasies.
But these clandestine cuties are more than forgiven
Evans and Peel: http://tinyurl.com/auj63pm  Underdog: http://tinyurl.com/b3pur7m  Flat P: http://tinyurl.com/cy8uwzo

Dishiest Dalston dive: 
Ruby (don't take your love to town) http://tinyurl.com/ajcubkd

Biggest anti-climax: 

Opium (should have guessed: never liked Yves' perfume much either) http://tinyurl.com/ce2srmq

Hugest erection of the year: 
The Heron Tower, home to Sushisamba and its 'OMG!' (said the gobsmacky girl standing next to me) views of Lilliputian London below http://tinyurl.com/8ecefy5

Worst-dressed crowd of the year: 
Loadsamoney lads are not-so-City-slickers after ten too many 'tails. Yep, it's Sushisamba again.

The if-it's-good-enough-for-Michael-Fassbinder pub of the year award:

The Sebright Arms http://tinyurl.com/agwadbn

Gay shame of the year: 
Blitz http://tinyurl.com/anxn2oy

Wow... or wank? Decide for yourself: 
And Co http://tinyurl.com/9phzbjm

Most unlikely (anthropological) fun night out:
Bodo's Schloss http://tinyurl.com/a8y8wek

Most memorable cocktail:
If I liked it, I ordered ten - ergo, I can't remember it...or anything, come to that, until the ambulance showed up. Pretty much everything on the Gorgeous boys' menu at St James floated my boat. This much, I do remember. http://tinyurl.com/ac23j23

Most asked question of the year:
 'What's your favourite bar?' If I really must spend my own money, let it be at
Happiness Forgets  http://tinyurl.com/ak37xfs

Enough already: 
cocktails and burger/hotdog joint overkill; faffy molecular mixology; bubble tea; scotch eggs; door whores with more attitude than at Studio 54'- despite standing guard over a not-all-that Soho sweat-BOX; pop-ups - all pooped out now; charcuterie share platters; palate-cleanser flavoured water; cocktail lists that are a longer read than Doctor Zhivago; elderflower anything; who-cares Foursquare; edible gold flake; shampagne cocktails: prosecco ain't Pommery;  Aperol spritz; Hendrick's gin; twee, tweedy Chap Olympiad types; pork scratchings -  the ultimate dental damn!

Happiness Forgets, Hoxton

According to Dionne Warwick, ‘loneliness remembers what happiness forgets.’ Did writers Bacharach and David ever imagine their song would inspire a funky East London watering hole? ‘Please don’t call it “a speakeasy.”’ Mr. Head-Shaker tits, worried the term has been inappropriately appropriated by PRs and hacks (guilty) to describe any liquor lounge smaller than Tiger Tiger, the Haymarket meet-market that’s bigger than Bulgaria. He’s not keen on ‘dive bar’ either, although, technically, that’s what this basement snug is. OK, then: Happiness Forgets is a small cocktail bar.... with big appeal. Happy now, mister? I am: we have Head-Shaker’s undivided attention, given the place is (unfathomably) as deserted as a Detroit dollar-a-daiquiri dive (oops, sorry!) that’s run out of rum. Tonight, it seems,  the Happi-inn isn’t for N1’s gelled fin stick-thins, out en masse, for a spot of competitive preening in Hoxton Square. Maybe they begrudge £7 for a top drawer rinse? Their loss! Improved Gin Cocktai, Sazerac and a bone dry Martini are irreproachable. Knocking out flawless classics, not farting around with faddy ‘molecular’ malarkey, is HF's mission statement. I like the look of Harry Palmer (Maker’s Mark, Suze and vermouth). Named after Len Deighton’s spy from The Ipcress File, it’s fatal for Cainers, out dangerously late on a school night. Unaware that I write for the paper, Head- Shaker tells me a PR (I know who you are) dropped in, warning him that the only way his bar could be guaranteed a review in Metro, was if he hired her. Let's be clear. A: it doesn't work like that. B: his bar just got a great review from me... in print...gratis! Update (June 2012). My review and subsequent praise elsewhere have placed this puppy front-of-brain for any booze-hound headed Hoxton way. Prices may have nudged up but standards have deffo not dropped. Journalist and a top tart absinthe and apple sour whose name escapes my one remaining brain cell (Alistair Head-Shaker will know) are your current best calls at this fine basement open, sadly, no later than 11pm.  
8 Hoxton Square, N1 7613 0325


http://www.facebook.com/happinessforgets