I'm not happy. It's chucking it down. I'm out East, and I'm being dissed by a lump of lard parked up in his fart-filled white van. 'Oi darling, ' he sneers, perving over my Glamazonian blonde date, 6ft tall in this season's Marc Jacobs heels and hot pants. 'What you doing with a fat old bastard like 'im, when you could 'ave me' - not to mention the chlamydia, crack habit, spent Stella cans, takeaway containers and skid-marked rancid baby-batter-stained Primark trackie bottoms strewn on the floor of a fetid pit on BNP Avenue E29 that accompany his gracious offer? His type, and the waaaaay scarier wankers who held me up there at knifepoint, aeons ago, are why I largely avoid Hackney Road by night. I have also largely avoided mescal since I holed-up in Mexico - shaking, sobbing and quasi-sectionable - after over-enthusiastic youthful experimentation with tequila’s turbo-charged sister convinced me I was being stalked by a giant sombrero-wearing Technicolor killer banana called Hector. (Me, paranoid... much?) Tonight, I’m back in mescal's clutches...in Hackney Road...in a louche David Lynch-esque basement, its walls plastered with brash 1960s Mexican cartoon porn depicting pneumatic bimbos pursued by ’El Afeitador’ (the shaver) ‘de Pubis’ (guess!). What could possibly go wrong? Ominious as it seems on paper, this sexy/sleazy (legal) late-late-night shebeen - located beneath a kebab shop, for added glamour - is all good. The rare spirits sold at London’s first dedicated mezcaleria, QuiQuiRiQui - that’s cock-a-doodle-do in Spanish to you - really are worth crowing about. After £8 Mescal Negroni and Pink Taco cocktails, mine (Danish) hippy host - who is happily ‘living the mescal lifestyle, man’ - introduces me to the hard stuff. Subtle Santa Domingo Albarradas - all pear drops, pepper, chilli and turmeric notes - for example, would hold its own against many a malt whisky. As, at £10.95 per double, it bloody well should. Presently, Mistress Mescal’s magical fuzzy buzz kicks in, so too does a familiar track, and I'm rendered Comfortably Numb. Have I really spotted Jake Shears dressed as a Day of the Dead skeleton by the tiny bar, or am I hallucinating again? Hackney Road: guaranteed walk on the wild side
184 Hackney Road E2 7QLhttp://quiquiriqui.co.uk/
