London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
Central London: Clerkenwell and Smithfield
Pakenham Arms, London WC1
1 Pakenham Street WC1X 0LA
T (020) 7837 6933 W www.pakenhamarms.com f The Pakenham Arms – Convivial London Pubs tw pakenhamarms
Open 1030 (1200 Sun)-2400 (0100 Fri, 0030 Sat, 2230 Sun). Children welcome until 2100.
Cask beers 12 (Sharp’s, Botanist,unusual often local guests) Cask Marque, Other beers 1 keg (Meantime), 20+ bottles, Also 3 ciders, specialist whiskies, 12 wines
Food Imaginative enhanced pub grub/gastro food, Outdoor Front terrace, Wifi.
Tue quiz, bring your own retro vinyl, occasional themed beer events, tastings and festivals.
Until August 2011, this medium-sized street corner local tucked off Farringdon Road in the network of pleasant but undistinguished streets linking Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell was an acceptable but not outstanding place managed by small London pubco Convivial, with a few solid real ales and a sporting slant, serving a steady stream of postal workers from the huge Royal Mail Mount Pleasant sorting office opposite. In September, partly in response to the success of sister pub the Botanist in Kew, it was refurbished and reopened under the stewardship of beer-friendly new manager Ken Davison, with the big screen TVs switched off, a significantly extended line of handpumps and a fridge full of craft beer goodies — further testament to the London beer renaissance.
The cask beer policy now focuses on rapid rotation of a great variety of beers, including more unusual and dark options, from small, unusual and often local producers — Ken once worked at the Market Porter (p59) and while the pace of change is a little more sedate than that celebrated microbrewery showcase, the pub will still reward novelty seekers on repeat visits. Beers from the Botanist’s house brewery usually feature, and others might come from Butts, Cottage, Hogs Back, Oxford, Purity, Rebellion or Twickenham. The link with the Botanist extends to commissioning beers on demand for groups and parties. Doom Bar and Meantime London Lager on keg are currentlly permanent fixtures. The bottles don’t include anything particularly rare but it’s all good stuff, from Anchor, Brooklyn, Cooper’s, Duvel, Innis & Gunn, Little Creatures, Sierra Nevada and the like.
It’s a proper pub, now with a single drinking area wrapped round a three-sided bar, mostly furnished simply but comfortably with wooden padded benches, plain chairs and solid tables on bare floorboards, though look around the back of the bar to find an attractive loungey snug. Like most Convivials it takes some care over the menu — crayfish and brie salad, halloumi and roast vegetable tart, cow pie and linguini with pancetta were on offer when I visited. Real ciders and a range of specialist whiskies complete the offer at yet another welcome new bolthole for beer lovers. And the posties still seem to like it too.
Visitor’s note. Mount Pleasant may bear an incongruous name today but once this was a grassy slope on the banks of the river Fleet, also known as Coldbath Fields after a nearby spring. Between 1794-1877 the site now occupied by the sorting office housed one of London’s major prisons. When the Royal Mail took over in 1889, workers objected to the name Coldbath Fields as it was associated with the prison, so a more attractive one was chosen. The sorting office was once thought to be the biggest of its kind in the world and is still the biggest in London.
National Rail Kings Cross, St Pancras, Farringdon Underground Russell Square, Chancery Lane, Farringdon Bus Calthorpe Street or Rosebery Avenue/Mount Pleasant (63 Kings Cross, Farringdon, Blackfriars) Cycling LCN+ 0 8
Beer renaissance is a much nicer phrase than “craft beer revolution”. Will nick it.