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"A necessity if you're a beer geek travelling to London town" - Beer Advocate
"A joy to read" - Roger Protz
"Very authoritative" - Tim Webb.
"One of the top beer writers in the UK" - Mark Dredge.
"A beer guru" - Popbitch.
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London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
North London: Highgate and Archway
 The Bull, London N6. Pic: The Bull Brewpub, gastropub, specialist (Independent)
13 North Hill N6 4BX
T (020) 8341 0510 W thebullhighgate.co.uk f The-Bull-Highgate tw Bull_Highgate
Open 1200-2330 (2400 Fri-Sat, 2300 Sun). Children welcome until 2030.
Cask beers 6 (London Brewing), Other beers 7 keg, 50 bottles, Also 2 real ciders/perries, 35 wines.
Food Gastro menu, sandwiches, bar snacks, Outdoor Front terrace, Wifi. Disabled toilet.
Mon fortnightly beer school, food and drink events and promotions, seasonal events, functions.
The Bull is another example of a neglected and derelict London pub regenerated with great beer at its heart. Though clearly built as a pub beside what was once the Great North Road, it housed five different restaurants over 15 years then spent almost two years closed and squatted before reopening in its present form in August 2011 under the stewardship of Dan Fox. Dan has good form, having managed one of the capital’s most famous beer venues, the White Horse (p225). The Bull has the advantage of being a completely free house — not to mention equipped with its own microbrewery, its attractive wood-clad vessels just visible in one side of the kitchen if you look through the gap at the end of the bar.
Like the White Horse, and as you’d expect given its location a short walk from Highgate village, the pub is a well appointed, rather upmarket place with a food offer that’s better than ordinary too. The interior is decked out in tasteful maroon and cream, with open fires and solid wood furniture, signalling its beery focus with advertising enamels on the walls and hops draped from the ceiling. The moderately sized space downstairs is duplicated upstairs with two other very attractive rooms that can also be booked for functions — shades again of the White Horse. Food ranges from sandwiches and bar snacks like fish tacos, tempura vegetables and well reputed chicken wings to imaginative, but slightly pricey, main dishes like venison loin with potato gratin, pineapple and jalapeño pulled pork and pappardelle with dried tomato and courgette.
 Toilet humour at the Bull, London N6 Each dish has a beer matching suggestion drawn from an impressive range. This starts with the house cask beers, which have rapidly become best sellers under the London Brewing brand. Six are normally available, including the distinctive Beer Street Best Bitter, Galena Red, a golden ale, specials and seasonals. The likes of Veltins, Blue Moon and Brooklyn are on keg, with guests kegs coming from US brewers like Sierra Nevada (including seasonals) and Flying Dog or British ones like Camden Town. A fine range of packaged beers also heavily features Americans — Anchor, Goose Island, Green Flash, Odell, Port/Lost Abbey and Southern Tier, with Caldera and Maui in cans — plus a few reliable Belgian and German stalwarts. A collection of large bottles invites sharing with a meal, and includes some rare stuff from excellent Somerset brewer Moor.
There are numerous beer-themed events including a popular Monday night tasting under the name “Beer School.” Some other London venues may have more extensive lists of rare beers, but the Bull does a great job of showcasing fine beer as a quality, artisanal product, while also featuring it as a perfect match for great food in a civilised environment. One bull to take by the horns.
Underground Highgate Bus Hillcrest Estate (143 Archway, East Finchley) Cycling LCN+ 6A, 80 Walking Link to Capital Ring
London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
North London: Kentish Town and Tufnell Park
 Tapping the Admiral, London NW1 Contemporary pub (Pineapple)
77 Castle Road NW1 8SU
T (020) 7267 6118 W www.tappingtheadmiral.co.uk f Tapping-the-Admiral tw TappingAdmiral
Open 1200-2300 (2230 Sun). Children welcome until 1900.
Cask beers 8 (Adnams, Brodie’s, Dark Star, Redemption, unusual often local guests), Other beers 5 keg, 14 bottles (UK), Also 4 ciders/perries, 12+ wines, cocktails & home-blended spirits.
Food Thai, Outdoor Beer garden, Wifi. Flat access but no disabled toilet.
Wed quiz, music planned, annual cider festival.
Kirk McGrath, owner of the Pineapple (p156), a gem of a place in Tufnell Park, opened two new pubs in 2011 along broadly similar lines: the Railway Tavern in Stoke Newington and this delightful place in backstreets just round the corner from Kentish Town West Overground station. Like the Pineapple, it’s a small, cozy, characterful and welcoming community pub with a strong beer focus. Originally known as the Trafalgar and for a while bearing the ghastly label Tavern Inn The Town, the pub had been closed, derelict and squatted for years, at one point threatened with demolition to make way for a block of flats, before its current rejuvenation.
Inside the irregularly shaped drinking area is now clean and modern with wood surfaces and a few big posters: less cluttered than the Pineapple, it feels more spacious, although Kirk insists it’s actually smaller. The beer policy is “to stock plenty of local ales and avoid the obvious”: there’s usually a beer each from Adnams, Brodie’s, Dark Star and Redemption, though the exact brand may change, complimented by guest casks that might come from Butts, Kingstone, Meantime, Moorhouse or Purity. It’s also good to see small Welsh brewer Kingstone among a short but well chosen list of British bottle conditioned beers, alongside Adnams’ rare barley wine Tally-Ho and more from Butts, Dark Star and Meantime. Other choices include house speciality cocktails and a range of unusual flavoured spirit blends, made locally by hand. As in the Pineapple, there’s a good value Thai-based menu, with lunches for a fiver during the week.
While the big new specialist beer bar openings gain the lion’s share of the attention from beer geeks, it’s great little places like this that are strengthening the infrastructure of London’s beer renaissance.
Update. In Spring 2012 the Thai menu was replaced by a more general pub menu with sandwiches, pies, tapas-style dishes and salads.
Pub trivia. After the Battle of Trafalgar, mortally victorious British admiral Horatio Nelson’s body was shipped to Gibraltar in a cask of brandy, from which sailors allegedly took surreptitious sips, thus the phrase “tappping the admiral” for taking a sneaky drink. As the brandy was laced with camphor and myrrh, I suspect there’s little truth in this picturesque tale, but it provided great inspiration when the new owners of the pub were looking for a name that honoured the original, the Trafalgar, one of numerous Nelson-themed pub names in the area, without sounding too flag waving. Look carefully at the pub’s logo and you’ll see the story depicted graphically, making inventive use of an admiral’s uniform shoulder insignia.
Overground Kentish Town West Underground Chalk Farm, Camden Town, Kentish Town Cycling LCN+ 6A
http://maps.google.com/maps/place?q=tapping+the+admiral+nw1&hl=en&cid=3654771458453481583
London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
North London: Camden Town and Primrose Hill
 Some of the decorations at the Sir Richard Steele, London NW3 Traditional pub (Faucet Inn)
97 Haverstock Hill NW3 4RL
T (020) 7483 1261 W www.faucetinn.com/sirrichardsteele
Open 1100 (1200 Sun)-2400 (2330 Sun). Children welcome until 1900.
Cask beers 4-6 (Adnams, Wells & Young’s, Westerham, guests) Cask marque, Other beers 1 keg, 1 bottle, occasional real cider.
Food Imaginative pub grub, Outdoor Beer garden, Wifi.
Thu quiz, Sun live music, annual beer festival, board games, functions.
One of London’s great eccentric pubs, and the winner of numerous awards including most recently a fancyapint.com reviewers’ award in 2011, the Steeles, as it’s known locally, is a big corner pub on the lower slopes of Haverstock Hill. On the edge of Belsize Park and just down the road from Hampstead, it’s popular with celebrities but is welcoming to anyone. Cult film director Tim Burton lives nearby and you might think he had a hand in the decor, which is quite spectacular: rich wood panelling, clocks, old advertising signs and other curios, stained glass, large portraits of the pub’s namesake, fireplaces, giant mirrors and toy bats hanging from a ceiling that sports a vast Renaissance-style fresco depicting regular customers.
Until early in 2011, the pub had been under the same ownership for 25 years, and the current look dates from the 1980s. The owners, Paul Davies and Kirk McGrath, had since reopened the Pineapple nearby (p156) and decided to sell the Steeles to finance further smaller pubs on the real ale-focused Pineapple model, prompting much local anxiety. Thankfully the new owners, Faucet Inn, who also own the Dartmouth Arms (p154), have changed little, though they have given the place a good clean and it’s now looking better than ever.
They’ve also brought in manager Paul, a real ale expert, to improve the beer focus, so it’s well worth keeping an eye on. The plan is for up to six cask beers, with one pump permanently dedicated to a changing Westerham beer, another to a changing Wells & Young’s, and guests from those breweries as well as the likes of Adnams, Batemans or Thwaites. Classy lagers are Camden Town Hells on keg and Budvar in the fridge, while occasional beer festivals will expand the range further. A varied home made food menu runs from sharing plates, salads, sandwiches and burgers to toad in the hole and caramelised red onion tatin.
Pub trivia. Irish-born writer, politician, theatre manager and founder of the Tatler and Spectator magazines, Richard Steele (1671-1729) lived nearby, and the locality is known as Steeles Village. Steele once observed: “People spend their lives in the service of their passions instead of employing their passions in the service of their lives.”
Overground Kentish Town West Underground Chalk Farm Bus Steeles Village (168 Chalk Farm, Belsize Park) Walking Belsize Walk
London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
North London: Canonbury and Barnsbury
 Drapers Arms, London N1. Pic: Drapers Arms Gastropub (Independent)
44 Barnsbury Street N1 1ER
T (020) 7619 0348 W thedrapersarms.com tw DrapersArms
Open 1200-2300 (2230 Sun). Children welcome.
Cask beers 3 (changing often local guests), Other beers 3 keg, 4 bottles, Also 65 wines, a few malts.
Food Gastro menu (reservations recommended), Outdoor Beer garden, Wifi. Disabled toilet.
Aug beer & cider festival, seasonal events, board games, functions.
With an elegant powder blue façade overlooking one of Barnsbury’s more select streets, this fine old pub was restyled and reopened in 2009 by Nick Gibson and Ben Maschler (Fay Maschler’s son) as an Islington gastropub par excellence. A clean and stylish interior — tasteful shades of green, floorboards, black and white floor tiles in a pavilion-style dining room, and shelves of Penguin paperbacks — complements a well regarded British menu. This changes daily but typical offerings might include puy lentil and vegetable roast, lemon sole and brown shrimp butter, pot roast rabbit, rare breed pork chops and various sharing deals involving large chunks of animal, though with main course prices between £10-15 this isn’t bargain pub grub.
Very much worth knowing about is the small but well chosen and well served beer selection — many gastropubs let themselves down here with dull choices but the Drapers regularly offers Harvey’s Sussex Best and two others that might well come from locally connected producers like Sambrook’s, Truman or Windsor & Eton, including dark beers particularly in winter. Camden Town Hells joins Staropramen and a changing craft choice, perhaps Brooklyn, on the keg taps, while BrewDog and Erdinger are in bottles. Non-dining drinkers are welcome and the place is friendlier than you might expect.
National Rail/Overground/Underground Highbury and Islington Bus Islington Town Hall (numerous Angel, Highbury) Cycling LCN+ 7, Camden, Haggerston, link to 8 Walking Link to Jubilee Greenway
London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
Central London: Clerkenwell and Smithfield
 St John, London EC1 Bar, restaurant (St John)
26 St John Street EC1M 4AY
T (020) 3301 8069 W stjohnrestaurant.com
Open 1100 (1200 Sun)-2300 (1700 Sun). Children welcome.
Cask beers 3 (Black Sheep, Wadworth, guest), Other beers 4 keg (Meantime), 3 bottles, Also Wines, a few malts, cocktails, real bottled ciders.
Food Well-rated British cooking, bread & tapas. Disabled toilet.
Occasional tastings, functions.
This converted former smokehouse, which once hosted the offices of Marxism Today, will need no introduction to London foodies — since it was opened by Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver in 1994, it’s become one of the most influential eateries in Britain, and has even appeared in international Top 20s. It was in the vanguard of the 1990s movement that rejected French-influenced haute cuisine in favour of a reworked version of British traditional cooking, and traces of its impact are detectable on the vast majority of food conscious pubs in this guide. Just round the corner from Smithfield Market, it makes a big deal of meat, and famously champions eating the parts more squeamish diners avoid, like hearts, tails and offal. Less visceral is its espousal of great bread, with an on site bakery that also offers a takeaway service.
What you might not realise is that St John is also quite a decent place to enjoy a beer. As a traditional British drink closely related to bread, beer fits the profile well and it’s pleasing that Gulliver and Henderson have not neglected it. A reasonably sized bar area sits beside the restaurant, more than just a waiting room for diners where drinkers are welcomed, with its own bar snacks menu including quite substantial items in the house style but at more affordable prices. It’s a whitewashed, stone floored space with a glass roof that reveals its industrial past, but it’s comfortable enough — you’ll find the bakery counter here too, and crisply dressed staff are friendly and informative. The beer selection isn’t huge but it’s well chosen — Black Sheep Bitter, Wadworth 6X and a guest ale, often from Redemption, on cask, Meantime Helles, London Lager, London Pale Ale and a seasonal on keg, and a few bottles from the always admirable Kernel in the fridge, alongside Budvar, the only non-British interloper. Prices are in line with the more expensive pubs.
National Rail Farringdon Underground Farringdon, Barbican Cycling LCN+ 0, 7, 39 Walking Clerkenwell Historic Trail
London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
East London: Leyton, Leytonstone and Walthamstow
 Red Lion, London E11 Contemporary pub, specialist (Antic)
640 High Road E11 3AA
T (020) 8988 2929 W www.theredlionleytonstone.com tw red_lion_e11
Open 1600 (1200 Sat-Sun)-2300 (2400 Thu, 0200 Fri-Sat). Children very welcome until 2100.
Cask beers 10 (unusual often local guests) Cask marque, Other beers 5 keg, 60 bottles (mainly UK), Also 4 real ciders, 20+ wines.
Food Short imaginative pub grub/gastro menu, Outdoor Picnic tables on street, Wifi. Disabled toilet.
Sun fortnightly jazz, seasonal theme events, bar billiards, board games.
Pubs that are part of the Antic “collective” can usually be relied upon for a few decent beers, but the Red Lion is the innovative pubco’s most serious commitment yet to satisfying the eclectic tastes of London’s growing number of fine beer connoisseurs. It’s a big, chunky street corner pub just across from Leytonstone church and very near the Tube, which until reopening under its original name in June 2011 had endured a brief interlude as a South African theme bar called Zulus. Inside is a big single space with Antic’s usual mix of quirky decorations, lounge furniture and standard lamps and heritage features including an entrance floor mosaic that is crying out for restoration. You do wonder a little about the success of deliberately distressed decor when staff feel the need to tell you that the bare bricks and patchwork stripped paint doors are “meant to look that way.”
Still, such details are unlikely to trouble you once you take in the mouthwatering selection on offer at the big bar with its imposing wooden bar back. Ten handpumps offer a constantly changing selection that favours local breweries — Brodie’s, Camden Town, East London, Redemption — and unusual choices from further afield — beers from B&T, Blindman, Dark Star, Holt, Otley, Outstanding or Thornbridge might be on. Styles are likely to encompass dark beers and specialities. Camden Town Hells leads a craft keg quintet that might include BrewDog, Harviestoun, Thornbridge or a US import. Around 60 bottles are largely sourced from the UK with local offerings from Redchurch, quite a range from the rarely seen Grain, plus reliable quality from BrewDog, Dark Star, Otley and Thornbridge. Imports include Duvel-Moortgat’s Maredsous abbey beers and Sierra Nevada’s serious barley wine Bigfoot. It’s a well conceived list combining craft favourites with a few unexpected surprises that attests to the expertise of manager Mark and his staff.
Decent and not too pricey food from a shortish, changing menu is listed on the usual clipboards, ranging from snacks like chipolatas with spiced mustard to main courses of curried butternut squash, spaghetti with smoked salmon and puy lentils, steaks and posh pork chops. These can be enjoyed in the main drinking area or in a smallish, more secluded space set aside for diners. Dog friendliness extends to dog biscuits in a jar on the bar. Combining a great beer choice with a proper pub feel and a decent amount of space, this is a very welcome east London newcomer.
Insider tip. Remember your membership card — CAMRA members enjoy 10% discount on the cask beers.
Underground Leytonstone Cycling LCN+ Wanstead/Redbridge – Stratford Walking Epping Forest Centenary Walk
London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
West London: Other locations — Westbourne Green
 The Cow, London W2 Bar, restaurant (Tom Conran)
89 Westbourne Park Road W2 5QH
T (020) 7221 0021 W www.thecowlondon.co.uk
Open 1200-2300 (2230 Sun).
Cask beers 4 (Fuller’s, 3 guests), Other beers 3 keg, 12+ bottles (mostly Belgian), Also 28 wines.
Food Oysters, seafood, gastro, Outdoor Small front terrace.
Functions.
Opened in the 1990s by gastropub pioneer Tom Conran, son of designer and restaurateur Terence, the Cow is now something of a veteran in offering beers that are a cut above average alongside upmarket food, taking its cue from the traditional pairing of Guinness and oysters. It’s located in Westbourne Park, once a group of country estates west of the river now also known as the Westbourne but once called the Kilbourne (thus Kilburn), another of London’s lost waterways which rises on Hampstead Heath, crosses the Westway by Royal Oak Tube and joins the Thames near Chelsea Bridge. Developed from the early 19th century, the area is now a well-heeled residential sprawl west of Paddington and north of Notting Hill, home to a cluster of specialist restaurants and bars including several owned by the Conrans.
The house cask is London Pride, joined by guest ales also secured through Fuller’s, which might include beers from Harveys, St Austell or Uley. Classic Antwerp ale De Koninck should be in reliably good condition on keg alongside Hoegaarden and Pilsner Urquell, and Guinness of course, while the bottled selection offers Trappists from Chimay, Orval and Westmalle and more exotic Belgians from De Ryck. The three different varieties of oyster and the whole crabs displayed on ice at the bar set the tone for a menu that’s big on seafood, though besides the likes of fish stew you’ll find coq au vin, sausages, steaks and some vegetarian options. The set menu looks good value but à la carte prices are highish, and get higher upstairs.
The room is long and narrow, with a front bar section where non-dining drinkers are (in theory) welcome, a dining area at the back and further dining space upstairs. It’s attractively and atmospherically done out in a curious mixture of Belgian café and Irish pub, heralded by the Guinness and De Koninck signing outside, with wood panelling, long benches and price lists written on mirrors, recalling the classic Brussels pub Mort Subite. It should be a comfortable place to settle down with a bolleke of Antwerp’s finest or a decent pint of British ale, but unfortunately on my visit the unsmiling and rather disengaged staff didn’t encourage me to linger.
Underground Royal Oak, Westbourne Park Bus St Stephens Gardens (various Westbourne Park, Notting Hill, Ladbroke Grove) Cycling LCN+ Shepherds Bush, link to 45 and NCN 6 Walking Grand Union Canal Walk
London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
Southeast London: Camberwell, Dulwich and Peckham
 Victoria, London SE15 Contemporary pub (Capital/Greene King)
72 Choumert Road SE15 4AR
T (020) 7639 5052 W capitalpubcompany.com/The-Victoria-Inn f The Victoria Inn tw victoriainnse15
Open 1200 (1100 Sat-Sun)-2400 (0100 Fri-Sat). Children very welcome until 2100 in side bar and children’s room.
Cask beers 4 (Adnams, Florence, Greene King, Sharp’s), Other beers 4 keg (including Meantime), 9 bottles, Also Wines.
Food Upmarket pub grub/gastro menu, Outdoor Front terrace, Wifi. Disabled toilet.
Board games, table football, retro video games.
Peckham has become one of London’s most patchwork areas, with regenerated but still deprived social housing and a resolutely downmarket, if cosmopolitan, High Street mixing it with the striking contemporary architecture of Peckham Square and splashes of local bohemia. A tendril of gentrification and cultivated artiness extends northwards from East Dulwich along Bellenden Road, the axis of a pretty conservation area to the west of the High Street, where restored Victorian terraces are curiously complemented by designer street furniture by Antony Gormley and Tom Phillips, and artists’ studios rub shoulders with specialist shops. The Victoria, formlerly known as the Wishing Wells and refurbished and reopened in 2010 by pubco Capital, now part of Greene King, stands at the junction of Bellenden and Choumert Roads, at the heart of the area geographically and already an important community focus.
Designers have been at work here too, with several different styles in the knocked through space of a biggish corner pub, like a science fiction TV episode in which several dimensions intersect. One side is in stripped back gastropub style, with bare floorboards, a hatch to the kitchen and preserved heritage features like a lovely wooden bar back with mirrors and clock. Another side is like a 1970s Habitat design for a home library, with bright colours, exposed brick, retro computer games, curious seating and shelves of books. An attractive cubby hole links the two, and a street terrace catches the sun. Families are catered for on the library side which has an adjoining children’s room too, with a family loyalty card scheme. Upstairs is an 18-room boutique hotel. That these disparate and borderline pretentious ingredients gell into a coherent and comfortable venue is in part thanks to friendly and enthusiastic staff who help generate a pleasant and relaxing atmosphere.
Four real ales form a key part of the offer, with tasters on offer for the indecisive. They typically include at least one beer from the brewery at sister pub the Florence in Herne Hill, with a changing Adnams beer (often a special), a Sharp’s seasonal and something from parent group Greene King that’s usually more exciting than IPA. Vedett lager, Erdinger wheat beer and Meantime London Pale Ale and Lager are on keg, while there’s a reasonable collection of better known world bottled beers that stretches to Duvel, Coopers Sparkling Ale and Negra Modelo. Upmarket pub grub runs from prawns and bread through fish pies and posh burgers to the likes of aubergine curry and crab lasagne, with more veggie options than usual.
National Rail Peckham Rye Overground Peckham Rye (from late 2012) Cycling LCN+ 22 Walking Link to Surrey Canal path
London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
East London: Around the Olympic Park
 Tap East, London E20. Pic: Tap East Brewpub, bar, specialist (Utobeer)
The Great Eastern Market, Westfield Stratford City E20 1ET
T (020) 8555 4467 W www.tapeast.co.uk f Tap-East tw TapEast
Open 1100 (1200 Sun)-2300 (2200 Sun). Children welcome until early evening.
Cask beers 6 (Tap East, Thornbridge, unusual guests), Other beers 9 keg, 130 bottles, gift boxes to take away, Also 2 ciders.
Food Sandwiches, ploughmans, cold sharing platters, Outdoor Tables on square, Wifi. Disabled toilet.
Tastings, Meet the Brewer events.
In their quest to offer a retail experience for everyone, big shopping malls these days tend to sprinkle in the occasional enclave of independent specialists among the globalised megastores, and in Westfield Stratford City, this function is partially fufilled by the Great Eastern Market, a cluster of smallish shops and stalls selling Eastern European artisanal breads, Japanese snacks, Turkish and Indian sweets and posh chocolates. Rather hearteningly, Westfield decided with a few weeks to go before opening that a craft beer brewpub would complete the offer, and invited the people behind Utobeer and the Rake in Borough Market to come up with one, so long as it was ready by official opening date in mid-September. So when Tap East first launched, it was with a temporary bar and no brewery, and the paint literally still wet. The effort was heroic, but the haste showed. A few months on, things are more settled, the bar is properly equipped, a gleaming copper brewhouse stands proudly behind glass, and the place is growing into one of London’s essential beer destinations.
There are still challenges. The bar is right opposite Stratford International station, but this end of the complex has much less footfall than the section nearer the domestic station, although during the Olympic and Paralympic Games it will be the arrival point for passengers on the fast Javelin service from St Pancras. The box shaped space, with one glass wall and another open onto the mall, doesn’t encourage intimacy. A combination of high stools and sofas, designer lampshades and an attractive two-tone polished wood bar back doesn’t quite make it look like a place where you might install yourself for an evening, though the polite, friendly, helpful and well informed staff might well persuade you otherwise.
If they don’t, the beer list should — although it’s slightly more populist than you might find at the Rake, there’s still plenty of great beer to be had. Six handpumps usually dispense three home brewed beers — usually decent pale ales and stouts and exclusive to the venue — and guests from breweries like Black Isle, Dark Star, Freeminer, Oakham, Otley and Thornbridge. The keg range changes — Brooklyn Lager, Sierra Nevada pale and the like make regular appearances but others might come from British brewers like Lovibonds or Thornbridge, or from Germans like Köstritzer and Schlenkerla.
Bottled beers slant towards the USA and Belgium: beers from Ommegang, Rochefort, Saranac, Senne and Sudwerk join London’s own Kernel, real lambics from Boon and Cantillon, craft cans from Caldera in Oregon, big bottles from Dutch eccentric De Molen and classic Bavarians from Augustiner and Schneider. All the beers are also available to take away and there are gift packs too. There’s no hot food, but the sandwiches, meat and cheese boards, pork pies and Scotch eggs look tempting indeed, and there are plenty of other places to eat nearby.
With the density of the transport network that now converges on Stratford this must be one of London’s best connected fine beer haunts, a brave venture that deserves to succeed and a great opportunity to convert a new audience to craft beer. It’s well worth dodging the hordes of branded bag-clutching shoppers to make a special trip, and you certainly shouldn’t miss the opportunity if you’re passing through. For more about Stratford City, see the entry for the Cow.
Insider tip. In fine weather the outdoor tables on the public space between shopping mall and station are the best seats in the house.
National Rail/DLR Stratford International, Stratford Overground/Underground Stratford Cycling Link to NCN1, LCN+ 16 155 156 Walking Link to Capital Ring
London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
Central London: Paddington and Marylebone
 Victoria, London W2. Pic: Fuller's. Traditional pub (Fuller’s) National Heritage Pub
10a Strathearn Place W2 2NH
T (020) 7724 1191 W www.fullers.co.uk
Open 1100 (1200 Sun)-2300 (2230 Sun). Children welcome.
Cask beers 5 (Fuller’s) Cask marque, Other beers 2 keg, 7 bottles, Also 20 wines.
Food Upmarket pub grub/gastro, Outdoor A few tables on street, Wifi.
Tue quiz, occasional live music, occasional big screen sport, annual beer festival.
Occupying an unusually rotund corner building deep in elegant Bayswater, only a short step from Hyde Park, the Victoria is a lively and welcoming place that retains the feel of a characterful local while also boasting one of the most interesting heritage pub interiors in London. Most historic survivals among the capital’s pub stock were heavily refurbished in late Victorian times — the 1890s and early 1900s. In contrast, much of what you see in the Victoria — the handsome wooden bar with its elegant mirrored bar back, a regency-style fireplace, an extraordinary side wall with tiling and decorated and gilded mirrors — dates from much earlier in the eponymous queen’s reign, quite likely from 1864, the date shown on the clock that still commands the angle of the bar. There are more recent additions — the two upstairs rooms include the charming library, well worth grabbing if you can, and the Theatre Bar decked out with fittings reclaimed from the Gaeity Theatre in the late 1950s. The pub plays up to its name with numerous portraits of the unamused monarch and her family, and there’s now a single J-shaped drinking area which formerly would have been partitioned.
This is now a Fuller’s pub, and a very good one. Five cask beers always include Chiswick, Discovery, ESB, London Pride and a seasonal or special in top form. Honeydew and Blue Moon are on keg, while among the bottles are such Fuller’s treasures as Vintage Ale, Brewers Reserve and 1845 as well as Duvel and Budvar. Food might include poached haddock, chorizo stuffed chicken breast, sausage and mash, roast butternut squash and gourmet sandwiches, at slightly high prices as you’d expect in this area. Staff on my visit were remarkably friendly, cheerful and well-informed, helping bring this vintage treasure to vibrant life.
Insider tip. It’s worth ordering a whisky and water purely for the privilege of having your tipple diluted by a still functioning Victorian brass tap.
National Rail Paddington Underground Lancaster Gate Cycling LCN+ links to 0 5 45 and Hyde Park paths Walking Link to Jubilee Greenway
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London’s Best Beer  The fully updated 3rd edition of my essential award-winning guide to London’s vibrant beer scene is available now from CAMRA Books. Read more here.
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