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 

Ping, Earl's Court

65 Olympic medals? Wow! But as Britain has never won one at table tennis, now is the time to get into training for Rio. Conveniently, the sport is currently trending in London’s bars. Pending Bounce, All-Star Lanes’ £2.5 million customised Holborn pile, perfect your best pen-hold grip at new late-night lounge Ping’s three tables. Witty street art from I Love Dust (of MEATliquor renown), and deep sofas for critical time-outs set the scene for Ping's not-so-punishing boot camp. Body fluids re-balanced on isotonic rhubarb Aperol spritz, reflexes razor-sharp on £7.70 espresso martini, muscles energised by carb-rush pukka pizza - blue cheese, walnut and pear, perhaps- spank the competition at wiff-waff, table tennis’s original name, or get involved in a beer pong tournament, the get-messy drinking games enthusiast’s ultimate marathon. With rhythmic gymnastics courtesy of DJs such as Radio 1 Xtra’s Sarah-Jane Crawford, parallel bars to take to, and male Tatler totty to be ogled: Olivers Proudlock and Cheshire (Pixie Lott’s model squeeze), cricketing hunk Rory Hamilton-Brown and Daniel Radcliffe - the boy that cast a spell over a nation's children, and now that he's fully grown and prone to whipping his man-child kit off on stage, Mums too, creepy as that is -  have all been in. At weekends, Ping is fast becoming posh mosh pit central. ‘Earl’s Court just got edgy’ tweets one fan of a venue whose guest-list boasts more double-barrels than a Chelsea locksmith. Made In Hackney, may wish to avoid.

180 Earl’s Court Road SW5 9QG www.weloveping.com   

Il Bar at The Bulgari, Knightsbridge

Molto swanky new Italian hotel The Bulgari imagines Knightsbridge ‘the heart of London.’ If you’re Nancy Dell’Olio or the sort of Vuittoned-up vulgarian/ lucky sod (delete as appropriate) whose idea of B&B involves a £9,000 + per night suite of ‘peerless magnificence’, champagne, caviar and bathing your ‘arris in asses milk, it probably is. Yet, for just £13.50 for Three Herbs Julep or smoked rosemary and bergamot martini (sweet service and a navvy-sized platter of breads, garlic olives, stuffed peppers and charcuterie included), Plebs can briefly party in the emperor's new clothes, living la dolce vita at Il Bar. An imposing silver lid-off flying saucer-shaped vision, its ‘tenders know their cocktail onions. I order an À La Louisiane # 2. My request for a take on an overlooked New Orleans classic would see less savvy souls log on to howthehelltomakeit.com - answer: bourbon, Bénédictine, absinthe, bitters and sweet vermouth. Here, it's competently parried in a beat with ‘do you prefer Martini Rosso or Carpano Antica, sir?’ I’d score Il Bar higher but for the clenched-ass 90s chic barn it inhabits. Deadly dull. I half expect its dreary drapes to open as a Mafia capo’s gardenia-covered coffin trundles past to an Italian cover of My Way. Yep, if Prada did funeral parlours…... In the alley outside, a kiosk’s awning announces ‘lottery tickets / bus passes.’ After one drink, this EuroMillions  serial loser flashes his and boards a red number 74 home. I fancy Nancy could walk back to hers, although the world's most impossibly glamorous woman probably insists on being carried by liveried servants. 

Bulgari Hotel 171 Knightsbridge SW7 7151 1010 www.bulgarihotels.com 

Flat P, Hampstead (NOW CLOSED)

Wall-to-wall coverage of summer 2012's squalid orgy of corporate greed that has turned my city into a five ring circus drones on; unlike Mayor Bozo's booming looped LU Tube tannoy announcement which has been dropped, mercifully, for being all too persuasive. The gist of his jolly irritating joyous proclamation was that all right-minded people should avoid London like the plague, abandoning it to badly dressed fans of archery, pin the tail on the donkey, mud-wrestling and midget-throwing. Thankfully, the only time the O-word crops up tonight is during a game of bitch volleyball; my sharp stylist date dismissing Team GB’s Next-designed white and gold trackies as 'chip-shop hip-hop.’ Unlike at LOGOC's venues, no seats remain unsold at Hampstead’s latest draw. In a dishy room where thirty is a squeeze and drinks are medal contenders; that’s hardly surprising. Up a Stygian staircase accessed via hot new hot dogs, sliders and bourbon joint, Dach & Sons, lies Flat P; a soft focus retro cocktail lounge pimping late-night lovelies more sexy than any local resident pop star out cruising the Heath could hope to lock lips with. To scratchy 1930s dance band tunes, we get squiffy in a jiffy. Green Fairy Sazerac; Crystal Clear Martinez (£9); lavender bitters, prosecco and pomegranate foam-topped flute, Backwards Bellini; Counted But Not Out (Chase Marmalade vodka, Aperol and Carpano red vermouth): these are the sort of quality quaffs that have gained the peeps behind Flat P a loyal following. That said, I prefer this intimate space to its big sisters, Marylebone cellar Purl (awkward layout) and Worship Street Whistling Shop which, to me, would work well as a set for a gloomy Edwardian murder mystery. The only mystery here is why they are actively courting publicity. Like Chinatown’s ECC or NYC’s PDT (Please Don’t Tell) before it, a nod and a wink has filled FP PDQ.

68 Heath Street NW3 www.dachandsons.com 

Birthdays/ Rita's Bar and Dining, Dalston

Forget events at Stratford. A 100-metre strip of Stoke Newington Road hosts another sport in which Britain reigns supreme. Street style. In the 2012 sartorial dash, the beardy gays, nu-Edwardian faux-gay fogeys and fash-forward Twiglets at deeply Dalston new-kid-on-the-block, Birthdays, are gold medal contenders. Housed in a nihilist post-industrial concrete shell of the type favoured by music video directors circa Joy Division, this joyous jumpin' joint is so utterly zeitgeist, it might be a branch of trend-chasing Ted Baker by this time next year. Get in now for £6 rinses - Hibiscus Margarita, Dark and Stormy and Negroni - or ice-cold Desperados courtesy of resident peripatetic pop-up Rita’s Bar and Dining whose more-addictive-than-crack beef patty melt (£5) is among the highs on a short menu of low rider  street chow that's sending foodie bloggers into Twitpic frenzy. At the bar, Edie Sedgwick reincarnated shows me the wellies she’s customising for Bestival, inquiring whether a) I also plan to attend and b) I’m here to see Cerebral Ballzy, a Brooklyn punk outfit (appaz), appearing tonight in the live music lounge/ pogo pit-cum-sauna downstairs. Like Carrie Bradshaw, checking out some Williamsburg hipster scene where 30 counts as dead, I get to thinking: ‘Have I had too many birthdays to be at Birthdays?'

33-35 Stoke Newington Rd N16 8BJ

http://birthdaysdalston.com  , www.ritasbaranddining.com

Escape The London Olympics

As the five-ring circus rolls into town and the hordes of sports fans descend, Londoners may find themselves hard pressed to enjoy a quiet pint or a leisurely meal. One solution: head for the hills. Keith Barker-Main suggests some alternative drinking and dining locations within easy striking distance of the capital.

READ the full article from Square Meal summer 2012 edition herehttp://tinyurl.com/7mpaxyw

Bar Américain, Soho

When the Regent Palace Hotel was demolished, the site's developers promised its basement bar would be carefully packed away and reinstated within the new building. ‘PR twaddle, I thought.  As part of the Atlantic restaurant, it had been a fiercely stylish Beautiful People hangout circa Hugh Grant with Liz Hurley in THAT dress. All softly-lit chrome, frosted glass, dark leather and oaky ethereal gorgeousness, this elegant art deco lounge belonged in an old MGM musical set on a 1930s ocean liner. Joy of joys, it was run by drinks industry legend Dick Bradsell, inventor of Espresso Martini, Treacle, Bramble and the daft-sounding but distinctly doable Snood Murdekin -  future classic cocktails to make a chap dance on the ceiling like Fred Astaire. Bradsell has moved on -  currently to be found at Soho hip pit, The Pink Chihuahua  - but good to their word, the developers - with a little help from David Collins Studio - have indeed recreated Dick's former domain piece-by-lovely-piece. Rebranded Bar Américain, it's a destination den at Corbin  and KIng’s new baby, Zédel. Head downstairs past the Josephine Baker-style cabaret bar, Crazy Coqs, towards the main draw, a buzzy gilded Montparnasse-style brasserie,  swing a right under by the 'vestiare', et voilà - 1932 revisited. My drinking buddy claims it reminds him of the bar scene in The Shining; but any carnage here is likely to be on account of the bar's resident tuxedoed matinée idols' sours, slings and things: Sazerac, The Gatsby and The Calloway (a bourbon, port and fig flip), impeccable at £9.75. My only gripe is that, on two otherwise faultless visits,  the clientele has been less ocean liner more Coach Trip. Time for London’s beau monde to reclaim this grand old girl, surely?

20 Sherwood St W1F 7ED 7734 4888 www.brasseriezedel.com