Ruby's Bar and Lounge, Dalston

Accessed down the same shonky staircase - as distinct from each other as the former premises they inhabit (a cheap chop suey joint and a naff Nigerian nightclub) - Tom Gibson’s conjoined dive bars are bang on the Dalston dollar. Turn left for anything from postmodern-ironic Snowballs (advocaat and lemonade with a maraschino cherry on top for 50s sophistication) to a spot-on Sipsmith Gibson in Gibson’s Peaky Blinders-era, peeling parlour; as sweet a snug as you’ll find in all N16. Turn right for a larger, booth-lined, party pit where the focus is on craft beers, European wines curated by Clapton oenophiles Verden, and street food residencies such as Hanoi Kitchen, purveyors of soft shell crab, maki rolls and chargrilled lemongrass grilled lamb chops. Launched in January 2016, the newer room’s low-rent 1960s working men’s club vibe - complete with bingo apparatus, a stage for live music, sundry turns, and DJs dropping retro rock and decent disco on a kick-ass system at weekends - pays homage to sadly no-more Mecca dance hall, The Tottenham Royal (pictured in its prime), where Gibson’s grandparents Twisted to The Dave Clark Five and to Beatles’ songs, he tells me. At their grandson's rebooted gaff, anticipate A Hard Day’s Night that will leave you in Bits And Pieces. 

72 - 76 Stoke Newington Road N16 7XB  www.rubysdalston.com

Relive it here: 

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-dave-clark-five-technicolor

original review at www.squaremeal.co.uk

Hoi Polloi, Shoreditch

Hoi Polloi, the latest on-the-moolah beaux peeps magnet from Bistrotheque / Shrimpy’s Pablo Flack and David Waddington, has a wee cocktail bar in one corner for those not booking into the all day-brasserie. Tasty Festival of Britain decor suggests a1950s holiday camp; while the drinks menu references another strand of camp also prevalent in that decade: ‘polari.' A rich patois that appropriated many Yiddish terms, polari was used in public by gay men. Impenetrable to others, it was necessary lest their saltier observations betray their sexuality, leaving them open to attack, blackmail or arrest in the days before homosexuality was decriminalised.The old loingo has been enjoying a bit of a revival while other polari words have entered our language. 'Naff', for example, is an acronym that originally stood for 'not available for fucking', as in 'straight, ergo undesirable. Examples here include ‘omi-polone’(an effeminate man) - a Buffalo Trace and port sour (£9); ‘riah shusher’ (hairdresser) - a rhubarb and vanilla Tapatio blanco mule; and Sipsmith sloe gin and ginger wine fix, 'bijou basket' - tasty tackle to wrap your laughing gear around. I suggest a new cocktail called 'a cottage loaf'. Co-owner Dolly Waders, salty stick that he is, instantly catches on, where others are bamboozled. "Cottage loaf as in bread, or hair buns?" asks my 30-something friend Laura. "No dear" I say, in my best Kenneth Williams nasal whine, "more bread for hairy buns - as offered up by dolly Dilly boys to johns cruising in Soho khazis... vada?" Laura the innocent is still none the wiser. Not-so-queer beers include two from Beavertown (that’s not a polari term, rather the Hackney microbrewer); there's wine from £4, and snacks of pickled onion rings and salt cod paste, chickpea fritters with tarragon yoghurt dip, or ‘puffy scratchings.' The latter may or may not be code for risky risqué retro couplings. Either way, Hoi Polloi is a Round The Horney hang-out, and a club bar due to launch downstairs is to be 'a bit like the Joiners Arms' ( a nearby Hackney homo haunt) Oooh, er! 

100 Shoreditch High Street E1 6JQ 8880 6100 www.hoi-polloi.co.uk  

Image: vada the bona showgirls on the old Queen Mary (via www.cruiselinehistory.com )

See also http://www.polarimagazine.com


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

Propstore 2013, Southbank

Packed with props from recent NT productions, last year’s South Bank summer essential p(r)op-up is back for another sell-out season that will last until the sun sets on September. As locations go, postcard-perfect views of the Thames and a ringside seat for the Southbank’s always entertaining passagiata are hard to trump and this year, the astro-turfed terrace is larger than before for maximum posing/ people-watching possibilities. Sip Sipsmith gin coolers, cups and cocktails, draught Meantime lager and various London-brewed artisan bottled beers, English wines, and order street grub - fish finger sandwich, steak and ale rissoles, sweet potato and chickpea falafel, scotch egg, and boxed salads - at resting actor prices. There's live music on Saturdays at 9 pm, and a special late licence means DJs can play until 2 am at weekends - cue late-night luvvies on the lash, sozzled on the South Bank claiming they're method actors in preparation for a production of The Days Of Wine And Roses, a play and a film starring Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon as a pair of  alcoholic lovers.  If you spot one familiar luvvie face ahem, 'propping' up the bar, for Pete's sake don’t mention Vicious: the ITV sitcom Frances de la Tour appears opposite Serena McKellan and Derek Jacobi (channeling John Inman in Are You Being Served) is more ‘Gordon Bennet!’ than Alan Bennett - whose new play, People, de la Tour  starred in at The Lyttelton this Spring.   

National Theatre, Southbank SE1http://tinyurl.com/brqjwrh

The Thatched House, Hammersmith

This updated, historic boozer targets upmarket Brackenbury Village, as estate agents (and locals) like to style this patch of Hammersmith. Run by the same team as riverside pub The Ship in Wandsworth, the Young’s house offers a comfy-cosy nu-Victorian-style lounge and sun-trap patio garden. Lunch and dinner (with specials for a fiver for children) might typically include soup and pie of the day, mac’n’cheese, Wiener schnitzel with fries and pickles (£10); Mediterranean vegetables on Parmesan polenta; burger;  fat fill sandwiches and Sunday roasts served until as late as 8 pm. Bar snacks encompass that current sine qua non of snacks,  pork pie (moist and meaty) and the similarly ubiquitous scotch egg, as well as eggs Benedict; anchovy toast; and sloe-gin cured smoked salmon from local boys Sipsmith who also supply the base for a good G&T. Sambrook’s ales - brewed in Wandsworth - join Young’s special (£3.60), Aperol spritz and a sensible wine list at either side of £20. £21.95 gets Aussie Crystal Brook shiraz and chardonnay. For good craic, turn up for Sunday evenings’  live trad Irish music sessions - a feature introduced by hail-fellow-well-met manager Oisin, happy to charm customers with a bit of the old blarney. 

115 Dalling Road W6 0ET 8748 6174 www.thatchedhouse.com

see this and other reviews at www.squaremeal.co.uk

Negroni Bar, Smithfield

Owner Russell Norman has made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear at Polpo Smithfield, his latest Venetian bàcaro a Londra. He's turned an old meat market storage facility - where sow, cow and sundry bloody carcasses once dangled forlornly - into a bijou bar. Don’t be squeamish: Mr Muscle has wiped all trace of Miss Piggy from the room’s original Victorian glazed white tiles. That said, I’m not much for getting slaughtered in a windowless cellar whose main feature - dinky antique carved wood bar aside - is a slightly menacing door leading to what I pray is only a kitchen beyond. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre springs to mind and, unless your father’s name is Josef Fritzl, it’s unlikely you’d linger long in such poky surroundings. Still, for an evening ‘ombra’ (glass of vino) or a Negroni before dining upstairs, I commend it. The Negroni was born in 1919, when the eponymous Florentine count asked a barman to pimp up his usual Americano cocktail, replacing its soda with gin. Here, Sipsmith or Beefeater 24 are deemed the perfect partner to Campari and red vermouth - specify Carpano Antica Formula for optimum enjoyment - in Polpo’s £7 version of the classic. Other Italian jobs available include Aperol spritz, Henderson (white wine and Campari), and Negroni Sbagliato. Literally, a ‘wrong’ Negroni; prosecco replaces gin in this currently molto a la moda alternative aperitif.   

Polpo, 2 Cowcross Street, EC1M 6D 7250 0034 http://polpo.co.uk 

Propstore, Southbank

Packed with props from recent NT productions, last year’s South Bank summer essential p(r)op-up is back for another sell-out season that will last until the sun sets on September. As locations go, postcard-perfect views of the Thames and a ringside seat for the Southbank’s always entertaining passagiata are hard to trump and this year, the astro-turfed terrace is larger than before for maximum posing/ people-watching. Sip Sipsmith gin coolers, cups and cocktails, draught Meantime lager and various London-brewed artisan bottled beers, English wines, and order street grub - fish finger sandwich, steak and ale rissoles, sweet potato and chickpea falafel, scotch egg, and boxed salads - at resting actor prices. There's live music on Saturdays at 9 pm, and a special late licence means DJs can play until 2 am at weekends - cue late-night luvvies on the lash, sozzled on the South Bank claiming they're method actors in preparation for a production of The Days Of Wine And Roses, a play and a film starring Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon as a pair of  alcoholic lovers.  If you spot one familiar luvvie face ahem, 'propping' up the bar, for Pete's sake don’t mention Vicious: the ITV sitcom Frances de la Tour appears opposite Serena McKellan and Derek Jacobi (channeling John Inman in Are You Being Served) is more ‘Gordon Bennet!’ than Alan Bennett - whose new play, People, de la Tour  starred in at The Lyttelton this Spring.   

National Theatre, Southbank SE1http://tinyurl.com/c96qths

Ruby's Dalston

Spelled out in letters on a cinema marquee of the type seen above 1960s flea-pits named, implausibly, The Savoy or The Ritz, a sign proclaims ‘Nothing To See Here.’ I beg to differ. Ruby’s, directly below, is well worth a butcher’s. Vertiginous old lino-covered stairs, lit red, form the seedy approach to what could be a knocking shop offering a free STD with purchase, or the type of 80s dodgy den frequented by Dirty Den, grim crims and bent coppers. Don’t brick it! Beyond Ruby’s irresistibly louche portal, lies the sweetest, friendliest, buzziest cellar imaginable. The only shooters you’ll find here are whisky chasers for your Shoreditch Blonde or Hoxton Stout - those are local ales, not gangsters’ bits of skirt, I should add. All peeling, distressed carmine and eau de nil plaster, retro public convenience-style glazed tiles, shonky mismatched furniture, Art Deco Alsatian dog bisque ornaments and 1960s branded drinks coasters I'm sorely tempted to nick, this engaging pit- formerly a Chinese takeaway - is a cracker. So too, the upbeat couple that owns it. Hit them up - not in a Reggie Kray way - for delish daiquiris, margaritas, Sipsmith martinis and £8 juleps served in coupes, cups, jars and milk bottles, and congratulate yourself for finding Dalston’s dishiest dive bar. The Savoy or The Ritz, it’s not, but Ruby’s is a class act in its own lovely lo-fi way. 

76 Stoke Newington Rd N16