Fitzrovia pubs

I don't usually like pubs that have gone all sofa lounge style. It usually attracts people with odd beards who work in advertising, are ex-web developers or do something equally useless. However, this used to be a firkin Firkin (if you see what I mean,) so this new incarnation is a big improvement. In fact, to my horror, I actually found it, er, quite relaxed, and even, um, pleasant as I lounged through a lunchtime in a smug beardy sort of manner, watching people pass by on the street. The food is crap and expensive, but to compensate the staff are lovely. I'm not sure what's coming over me. Must be time for a shave... It took me a couple of years to figure out that this pub was called Ben Crouch’s Tavern. We’ve all known it as the Scary pub – and for good reason. It’s scary.

Not scary like some working-man’s, casually-racist, piss-hole boozer in Aldershot where the locals bleat out ‘No Surrender’ until the wee hours before rolling home and smashing their wives’ faces in with an empty Newky Brown bottle.

Nor is it scary like some quasi-hidden, champagne bar off the back of Carnaby Street, where a glass (not a pint) of Peroni can fetch anything up to £12.50. Not because it tastes good. No. It will taste like a glass of Peroni, but you’re paying for the privilege of drinking it in a Tupperware box with a select committee of wankers. This committee has been hand-picked by a group of wankers. The wankers’ wankers, if you will. They wear shirts and say phrases like ‘good call’, ‘totally’ and my personal favourite ‘can I set up a tab?’ F#ck off.

The scary pub is scary because it is riddled with all manner of ghoulish decorations. The walls are pasted with skulls, gargoyles, cob-webs and other medieval horrors. I assume they had cobwebs in medieval times. Pumping out a whole spectrum of grunge, rock and a little metal. The music isn’t good enough to command any respect from any true rockers, but it’s a welcome gesture – even when some Nickleback sneaks onto the playlist, you forgive it – because it’s quiet a naïve, unpretentious pub.

The drinks are cheap, the service is quick and the food is edible. I can’t stress how amazingly, very OK this pub is.

Then there’s the toilets. Filthy. Often accompanied by an annoying weekend bog-jockey, which in this context is amusing enough as it is – but they play scary sounds. It might be the sound of Frankenstein’s monster lolloping down a cobbled London street, or some mad-professor slaving over a network of pipes, test-tubes and Bunsen burners. It doesn’t matter. It’s just some familiarity and company as you piss.

The pub smells. Since the smoking ban the air tastes like a combination of WKD and toilet duck with an after taste of sweat and vinegar. Every surface is sticky and you more than often get bothered by some extra from the Pirates of the Caribbean trying to sell you the flowers he’s stolen off some dented railings outside a primary school. But he’ll piss off and you can get on with your drink. It’s OK in the scary pub. Everything is just OK. And that’s why it’s really rather amazing. Try it.

I would never take a girl there. I have personally tried to review this pub on no less than three occasions and have been defeated by drunkenness, laziness and an apathy resulting from the pub being afflicted by “generic-Central-London-boozer syndrome”. Geclobs, as it is known in the fraternity is a kind of disease where all pubs begin to look alike: same beers, same faux fixtures and fittings and an identikit transient clientele. Finally, fate drew me back along Rathbone Place on a warm summer’s day and I was seduced by the prospect of drinking beer in a comfortably air conditioned environment. The pub offers a respectable range of beers, including regular guest ales and food-wise there are plenty of the traditional favourites you normally expect but the superb sausage menu stands out. If you are just after something to soak up the alcohol, they serve expensive bar snacks (e.g. chilli puffs). They don’t sell crisps, although they will let you buy them from the newsagents across the road. All in all it's not a bad pub, but there is not much to set your world alight. Lurking just off Oxford Street and the rear end of the Royal Mail postal depot, this pub somehow fails to make use of its killer location. A Mark II Standard Pub Interior leaves no impression at all; I felt I could have been anywhere in Britain. Wooden stuff, drinkers, beer, no personality the whole experience dribbled away without leaving much to remember it by. The vastly superior Champion is just down the road; go there. I suppose the continental equivalent of Bradley's would be Pedro's Dog and Duck Pub. But despite the surreal name, this is a tiny but wonderful bar situated just behind Oxford Street. The upstairs is ridiculously minute but a great place to watch the world go by, while the basement bar is a (slightly) larger affair, gloriously dingy with a mediaeval line in toilets. Hideously crowded on a Friday, it is best to soak up the ambiance on a Monday or Tuesday evening, or Saturday afternoon, when there's actually room to sit down and talk in a tone lower than a roar. Foreign lagers are the order of the day. A lot more fun than it should be. Nestled snugly behind Tottenham Court Road, and a real treat if caught in one of its empty moments. Otherwise, the stupidly low tables lead to smashed shins and spilt beer all round. The upstairs is far better if you can arrive early enough to get a seat. The usual warnings apply about Samuel Smith's beer (if you like it, fine, but don't expect Stella on tap...) Once a very tawdry pub, lost amongst the grey office blocks of upper Fitzrovia, the Carpenter's has been transformed beyond all recognition by a superb refit. Where the old pub was as dreary as overcooked vegetables, the new version boasts all manner of idiosyncrasies, from the back room that looks like it was stolen from the studio set for Father Ted through to the upstairs terrace, above which is strung a set of empty bird cages that bring to mind the description of Miss Flite's room in Bleak House. When it comes to drinks, there are some real ales on offer, as well as the increasingly popular selection of German lagers and other fancy foreign things seen more often than not in most trendy public houses, and in the food department it serves upwardly-mobile chips and other semi-gastro sundries. The downstairs area is the more lively, as bunches of workies cluster round the bigger tables and a cheap stereo blares tinnily through big speakers, while the upstairs is more reserved (I didn't spend much time on the roof terrace, as the rain was coming down like a bad special effect on a 50s film). There's a telly in the rear, but no-one seemed much bothered with it. Wildly popular, and deservedly so. Stained glass windows. Gloriously dark and shaded in those hot summer days when the streets of Fitzrovia just stink with traffic. It also has outside seats for those who wish to bathe in the sultry exhaust fumes of passing taxis, and an upstairs for those packed Friday nights. Hidden just north of Oxford Street, this is always well worth a visit for the thirsty. This endearing Sam Smiths pub is located a short walk up from Oxford Street. On our visit there was a large turnover of customers who mostly comprised of shoppers, students and people skiving off work. Etched windows conceal the horrors of drinking from the prying eyes of passers by. Ornate cornicing, patterned tiled flooring and heavy curtains complete the Victorian ambience. There is a bar upstairs where food is available at certain times of the day. Cheap and high quality Sam Smiths beers make this a good place to escape the mayhem of London’s most well known shopping thoroughfare. Not bad at all. This has gone the way of all too many pubs, swapping grime and dinginess for stripped-pine metropolitan chic. On the compensating side are the glorious pub snacks and meals, and a damned fine pint of Guinness. Light, airy and relaxed if you're into that sort of thing... Sky TV puts in an occasional but unobtrusive showing. Crowded, with the whole pub seemingly wrapped about a very small bar. Quite pleasant when it's half-empty (which is about five people in total) but otherwise slightly trying... Standard mark one pub interior is astonishing only because it is quite so unremarkable. Sky TV. Ah, er, I'm in a bar, bamboozled by a friend's cunning. She only referred to it as 'The Eagle', knowing there was no way I'd agree to this 'bar and diner' bit, and so I stomped up and down Rathbone Street looking for a pub-type thing, only to be confronted with something that looked as cheap and nasty as the 'Nickelodeon' offices up the road. Well, no avoiding it so I went in and was grumpy for five minutes. Waitresses! Cocktails! Booths lit up in funny colours! Loud music! Young people! Harrumph! Then the cocktails arrived, and I realised pretty sharpish that they were excellent too. And then the food, which was damn fine and prompted me to order a few more cocktails and some beer. Then things seemed to make sense, and I could even ignore the fact that several tables further down were four clones with the odd sort of hair you can only get if you work in the media. And some more clones hidden at the back. At least nobody tried any sexy dancing. A damn fine place, and I suspect a bit of a pre-club sort of venue for trendy things with pockets large enough to hide the Ark Royal in. Back in the early 90s, this had the dubious distinction of being my favourite pub for, ooh, weeks. Back then it was the Valiant Trooper, a slightly shabby affair with lots of tables that would fill to bursting point every Friday night. Then it fell under the Irish Pub Curse, becoming a Finnegan's Wake for more years than I care to remember before emerging, blinking in the dawn of a new era, under its current name. The front has been tarted up, using a combination of rich, creamy colours and outside tables (on Goodge Street - just lovely for adding the aroma of traffic fumes to your beer) while the inside has gone for the maximum bland effect, being in fact so boring that I can barely remember it at all. It boasts of holding ROCK NIGHTS with ROCK CHICKS, the very thought of which tempts me to lock myself in a monastic cell and bend my thoughts to the Great Upstairs. Does food and beer, and has little else to recommend it. International meeting place of high repute. Cheap beer (although the stout is highly dubious) and a wonderful downstairs bar. Insanely crowded on a Friday, but then no pub can have everything. Cosmopolitan crowd and a warm atmosphere. Once through the door you enter an open, high ceilinged pub decorated in the traditional Victorian style that is found in many other London pubs. This one probably isn’t so good for watching sport as the TVs have been erected in the highest, most far-flung corners of the bar. Nevertheless it does have a few things going for it. The beer selection is enhanced by the presence of (I think) three ales including one guest. The staff are friendly and it appears food is served all day. Being further away from Oxford Street, this pub’s punters tend to stick around for a bit longer. Consequently, it has a better atmosphere than The Cock down the road, however the beer prices are much closer to the London average. In spite of this it is still a decent enough pub and we couldn’t fault it. Small but inviting Greene King boozer, which endured several disastrous years boasting "ladies nights" and other faddish nonsense usually seen at the dodgier end of Dagenham. Now re-invented as a traditionally decorated gastropub with its eyes firmly set on the classier end of the market. Not open Sunday. Another recovering ex-chain pub. Oriented towards the office crowd. Food etc. Mostly harmless. Just by Great Portland Street, and a workie pub trying hard to cultivate the sort of ye olde atmosphere that would impress George Bush. It tries too hard, however, and dies a horrible death by the third suited go-getter screaming into his mobile phone I always expect to pubs with this name to be rather freakily pagan or obsessed with aliens. This is neither. It's just an ordinary boozer, cool and pleasant in summer, but nevertheless... Tiny downstairs bar equipped with an outsized TV that I felt I was drowning in. Upstairs, when it is open, serves gastronomic sausages. Real ales and a sinister fondness for rugby. Outside tables provided for the free imbibing of car fumes. I can't decide whether this is laid back, or simply devoid of life. Nice tiles on the floor. A small male audience sits round the bar listening to the witter of the barmaid for one reason only... Strangely, a gnomish group of old people appear from some secret hole and walk out in file, smiling broadly but not speaking a word... A pint of Sam Smith's stout resolutely failed to be drunk... Perhaps I was only dreaming A below average pub for the area, dark, gloomy and poor service! Bit like marmite, but 70/30 in favour of not liking! Unremarkable boozer down the lower end of Tottenham Court Road. Dark and veering to the bland side of traditional, this fills with an inexplicable mix of tourists and businessmen who can't seem to find their way to anywhere better. Decent beers and food, at least, and the minor pub miracle that is a disabled toilet. Not reviewed yet.

Want to review it? A rough pub, which has managed to escape six years of unprecedented economic boom completely unscathed. Which is certainly part of its undoubted charm. That chips occasionally fall from upper windows in the summer is another. Well worth at least a pint. The facade is painted a most intriguing green, all sort of interesting and unusual, luring the unwary pub wanderer within its depths. From the outside, it looks huge, but is actually rather intimate. Dark wood and grubby seating abound. Rather monopolised by suits nattering loudly about digital editing and other such nonsense. Not to be mistaken for the other 33,000 or so pubs in London with the same name. Remarkable only for its anonymity, it is nevertheless rather pleasant on a hot sunny Saturday when you're trying to avoid shopping for more socks. Down-at-heel but well-loved. A cramped downstairs and a surprisingly expansive upstairs. Well worth a visit for the astonishing pies, which look like chunks of a meteor left over from a Seventies disaster movie, and taste like they have fallen from the heavens of an alternative England... This is definitely the most interesting building on the whole street. A very hazy memory, smashed out of my skull on a Christmas pub crawl. Not only did the bar staff not throw us out, I believe they actually served us. Whenever I walk past it now the very thought brings a warm glow into my heart... A fairly pleasant wooden box with some tables and beer taps, the only standout feature is the opening hours - til 1am every night, including Sunday. Not reviewed yet.

Want to review it? Mildly pleasant if unremarkable Young's boozer just along from Middlesex Hospital. It used to have an Ambient Dub club on Fridays, but all the weirdness seems to have been squeezed from it by Sensible, Profit-Based Management. The pub equivalent of listening to a Travis album. An expansive dark wooden interior. Expensive. A good meeting point but not a place to dwell overlong. So neither will this review. It used to be an Elvis Pub, and now it's not. Not reviewed yet.

Want to review it? Not so much scraping closer to the bottom of the barrel as drilling determinedly to the earth's core, each successive refit has seen the Smuggler's Tavern sink further away from any hope of redemption. Given plastered white walls and minimalist decor in this latest incarnation of crapness, it has simply become a void with some beer taps at one end. To stoop any lower would involve rewriting the laws of gravity. No contraband on show. Or indeed offered. Most disappointing. Packed to the rafters with suited sorts playing the golf machine most days of the week. A pleasant, if undistinguished tavern, good for meeting people. A dark interior is still slightly too new, but is starting to moulder pleasantly. Seats usually available. Nice food, cool in summer with tables outside should one wish to sample the 'delights' of Warren Street Every so often I do something stupid and agree to go somewhere that is Not A Pub. I fall prey to illusions that these Not Pubs will be full of beautiful and sophisticated people talking about Derrida and postmodernist economics while supping incredibly exciting cocktails. The reality is usually cheap, shabby chic populated by people so vacuous they can't even think of anything to talk about and so need their music LOUD while they attempt Sexy Dancing. The Social is a case in point. behind frosted glass windows one enters into a brightly lit, white-painted corridor, the whole effect clearly tilting at the current architectural vogue for angular minimalism, but producing an effect rather closer to the experience of wandering into a cleaner's cupboard. Stairs then lead the unwary down into the bar and dancing area. The bar itself is small and very crowded, the overwhelmed staff trying to cope with too many cocktail orders at once. Chairs and tables have been fashioned from cheap and shoddy concrete angles, and the plasticky stuff that sits on the walls to diffract the light is falling off. We were present on ska night, and the music really was relentlessly ska for the whole night, and I found the unflagging metronomic tedium of four hours of it to be almost hypnotic. Men in checked shirts, drainpipe jeans and braces galumphed on the spot like chickens fed with strychnine, while a woman in co-ordinated dog-tooth two-tone gyrated around them, much to their obvious pleasure. Everyone else tried their damnedest to be sophisticated, and heaved into their Sexy Dancing routines like a group of beached whales attempting one last, dying orgy. The whole experience was horrible, depressing. I know what I like, and it isn't this. Mine's a pint of bitter. The BT Tower stands on the approximate site of the house where the French poets Rimbaud and Verlaine briefly lived while in London, its phallic form rather appropriate to their torrid affair. Squatting in its shadow is the somewhat dismal-looking Tower Tavern, built at the same time as the tower, if not with the same lofty ambitions. A two-storey, greyish-yellow tiled lego brick, everything from the cheap metal outside tables to the squawking melee emerging from its open windows suggests this is less than a class establishment. And indeed, upon entering, I swiftly realise that the semiotics aren't wrong. Fat blokes in suits ooze over stools, conversation clatters like dirty dishes being stacked, a TV showing nothing of interest fights it out with the shouting boys clustered in one corner. The inside decor has tried hard to be as offensively bland as the exterior, leaving me with the nasty feeling that if I'm walking through the pub equivalent of a Geoffrey Howe speech. And then, as I approach the bar, I am suddenly transfixed by the counter's shiny red metallic surface, all tiny sparkles and glittering reflections, my eyes seeming to slide off into vertiginous infinity. It's just...completely out of place. I stand mesmerised, mouth flapping uselessly as the patient barman (who has probably seen this reaction a thousand times before) waits for me to recover and actually, like, order a drink. The Greene Kinge beers go down very well; it does food (indeed, for a while, it was having a 'Food Sale' - not the wisest of campaigns, for my money) and has TV, but it's only really worth going in if you happen to be standing right next to it and are really thirsty, or conversely, if you're obsessed with weird shiny things. As without, so within. Small but pleasing traditional pub not far from Oxford Street. The downstairs has a long narrow bar with a lounge at the rear, while the generous upstairs can be hired out for parties and other frivolity. Not much in the way of decoration or fancy trimming, it has cheerful barstaff and decent beer. There are tables outside so in summer one can admire the unedifyingly large Post Office depot across the road. I love Samuel Smith pubs. The beer is as good as it is cheap, and I admire the way they’ve stuck to their own range, rather than shipping in Stella, Staropramen and the rest. I like the absence of TV and loud music, and the commitment to preserving traditional pub appearances. I’m even fond of the stodgy, unspectacular, filling pub fayre. Sometimes, however, outside of their spectacular showstopping properties – Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street, for example, or The Angel in Rotherhithe – some of their smaller pubs can feel a little, well, generic. The Yorkshire Grey is a case in point. It’s situated in a great location, on a quiet street with a pleasant stretch of tables running down one side, and while there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, it’s just a little, well, dull. I’m not saying I want flaming pits by the bar or alcoves in which Sadean torture scenes are brought to life, but it is lacking something of the chutzpah of its better known siblings. A little managerial invention wouldn’t go amiss.

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