Crystal Palace pubs

Crystal Palace shimmers on top of its hill like a more battered Brighton transposed to a mountaintop, the occasional road dropping down enough to offer spectacular, vertignous views across the rest of the capital. Within the tight net of streets that make up its centre, the Black Sheep stands out as the funky cocktail bar against the more traditional (The Holly Bush) and the more posh (the White Hart). All square tables, square seats, dark minimalist decor and funky music (that - importantly - wasn't so loud that you couldn't hold a conversation), it draws an age-spanning, lively and friendly crowd. Does good food, coffee, opens late Friday and saturday and has various quiz and entertainment nights. Quirky and extremely enjoyable. A large traditional pub located just down the hill from the station. The pub is divided into a lounge bar, saloon bar and dining room, all of which are served by a centrally located bar area. This place is lucky to be here as in 1944 a German V1 flying bomb flattened a nearby row of houses. In contrast to the pub’s heritage, the clientele largely comprises younger locals who have a penchant for stomach-churning shot concoctions at £1.50 a throw (or should that be throw-up?) and £2 doubles. Cheery, battered and old-style, the Railway Bell occasionally suffers from bipolar disorder. Split into two rooms about a central bar, I sat in the middle and watched as one half filled up with young shouty yakkers seemingly keen on televised Championship football, while the other half filled with middle class wine drinkers who popped in to watch the rugby. Odd, but not unpleasant. The danger, at least in Crystal Palace, of appealing neither to the fifteen-pints-of-lager-and-a-fight crowd, nor the gastropub luvvies, is that your pub may end up with no visitors at all. Such is the area’s radical social divide. The Royal Albert, stuck firmly in the middle – traditional but not upmarket, unpretentious but not full of screaming bevvied-up maniacs – has managed to steer a course of modest success. A quiet, dark pub that seems to appeal to an ordinary bunch of people, its painted wooden walls and pictures of ships decorating the front (even though, being on a hill, Crystal Palace would seem unlikely to harbour any nautical associations) set the subdued, pleasant tone of the place. There is plenty of seating, some arranged into cosy two table booths separated by frosted glass panels, with a beer garden for those acclimatised to Crystal Palace’s thin mountainous atmosphere. Does real ales and food. Crystal Palace's very own people who think they're somebody rush in here on a Saturday evening after a hard day shopping, steely-eyed and with hands like claws, determined to play whatever deep down'n'dirty tricks needed to bag a table for themselves and their effortlessly wealthy accountant/PR/management friends. This is the place that tells them they're cool, they're funky, and they know how to have a good time, with smooth jazz and soul oozing from the speakers just like the "Best Of" collections they've got at home (next to "Back To Mine" Vols 6, 7 and 8). Having ripped a table from the grasp of some unsuspecting oik (hey, the law of the jungle, right?) they order a few bottles of Argentinian Pinot Grigio and some bar snacks before settling back to enjoy a quality night surrounded by shrieking gaggles of atom-hearted clones. It's where it's at, dude.

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