The name - Avalon - suggests this Shoreditch bar/ club/ live music venue will be a Pre-Raphaelite vision of the court of King Arthur. Arthur Daley more like, based on furniture that might have been snapped-up by the dodgy dealer in a clearance sale at a convicted Balkan warlord’s villa. Naff baroque tables, crushed velvet upholstery and silvered thrones are bizarrely juxtaposed with decor that implies a Chinese restaurant in Chernobyl. Lit red, punters assume a weird radioactive sweet and sour sauce glow. But like the similarly tacky Punk in Soho, such disparate duff-ness gels, creating a bonkers backdrop for the debauchery expected of its target ‘Ditch bitch style junkie clientele that, at tonight’s press party, includes an androgynous colossus wearing a lobster as a fascinator. His look is more doolally than Dali and with promised dim sum slow to appear, I’m tempted to seize the Mad Hatter’s crustacean and boil the bleeder in a hot tub downstairs. Hot tub? Oh, yes. Currently unfinished, a heroically seedy basement - think Dirk Diggler’s Boogie Nights filmed in a Burmese brothel - will incorporate mosaic plunge pools and similar spa malarkey. 'Drinks? Oh, go on, then! Two Blue Lagoons and one of your signature ‘Karma Sip-tra’ martinis, please.' As we leave, a queue forms outside; Avalon is already the stuff of local legend.
141 -143 Shoreditch High St E1 tel 3222 0530
