Al's Cafe Bar, Exmouth Market

Nice location, decent range of beers, food is okay... service is for the very patient.

21 Aug 2006 20:56

The Old China Hand, Clerkenwell

As I work quite local to this pub (getting on for 10 years now), I've been a 'regular' throughout it's transitions. For the record, O'Hanlons was excellent... Mulligan's was very much less so.

In it's current 'Old China Hand' guise, I have to say that, personally, I think this is the best that pub has ever been. It seemed to take a while to get there... but I reckon it's finally settled down to being a pretty nice place to spend a few 'bob' getting 'fed and watered'.

It still has a good range of beers on pump, a huge range of various beers/lagers/ales in bottles and their food (a varying 'Dim Sum' menu) is absolutely brilliant and simply must be tried.

The environment architecture is definitely 'love-it-or-hate-it'. At best?, it's... er... tastefully unique...! The pub also has big LCD's for sports and music played at sensible levels.

Basically, I like the place.

The only (slight) let-down for me is that they've had staff in there that have been a bit too 'easy going' for a pub that can get big numbers... especially at the end of the week...

But as Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy once quoted:- "I'm British. I know how to queue..." (!!!)

20 Aug 2006 18:56