The latest addition to Essex Road's burgeoning bar scene was a popular, flamboyantly historic, big corner pub that was ripe for a revamp. Step forward Steve Blonde and the Medicine Bar's Rob Wheeler and the place works a treat; they're going large on 'proper drinks', fine food and lotsa leather sofas to kick back in.
A dozen cocktails are also offered – nothing too complicated or sophisticated, but nice enough – as well as around ten wines at fair prices. The food is pretty manly (burgers, steak baguettes and so on), but otherwise it’s a good cosmopolitan mix, with the crowd on any given night split roughly 50-50 between girls and boys.
On weekend nights, everyone spills outside. Entertainment is generally of the up-for-it DJ variety (think of it as a spruced-up, expanded Social), though there’s also a fine folk series staged in the comfortable upstairs room.