Covent Garden pubs

Being a pub on St Martin’s Lane is a bit like being a venus flytrap - a case of standing there, orifice open, in the knowledge that sooner or later something tasty is going to wander in. The generic nature of so many pubs in the Covent Garden area is ample illustration that, if you’re situated in the right spot, you don’t have to try very hard to catch your punters. In respect to this, it would be churlish of me to complain that the Angel and Crown doesn’t offer very much. Much like a Philip Glass opera, however, the little it does offer is at least well done. It’s a pleasant wooden box of a pub containing a cheerful mix of workies and tourists, the bar staff are usually quick and attentive, and it offers a few decent real ales and a reasonable, tourist-oriented food menu. There’s nothing here to set the world on fire, but then, it’s not the sort of place that will ever need to. Its not everyday you get to visit former underground public toilets converted into an intimate bar and jazz venue. The whole place is not much bigger than your average front room but is dripping with sexy features such as seats shaped like lips, mirrored walls and glass tables.

There was no live music on our visit, but we imagine the bar's diminutive size only serves to enhance the atmosphere. The cocktail list is as long as your arm and is complemented by a small but well-chosen selection of wines, beers and spirits. The drinks are pricey, but when you consider you're getting free live music and bowl of nuts its not too bad.

The staff were friendly, even when we knocked over a glass of wine and redecorated the walls. All in all it's a perfect place to relax, unwind and forget about the worst ravages of the great British "summer". In the words of The Fast Show's Louis Balfour: "Hmmm nice". Every so often I get asked to meet people in stupid pubs and this was one of those occasions. Before I even got there I knew this would be a dismal experience and I am sad to say my instincts were bang on. The immediate impression on entering was the noise: crowds of office workers bellowing at each other in a bid to make themselves heard over the music. Then there was the horribly contrived décor which tries to be trendy, fails miserably and the result is piss-poor version of a Slug and Lettuce. After that you have try and get a drink. The choice for beer drinkers was limited to lager, er – lager or cold Guinness all served at prices that made my wallet shrink back into my jacket pocket. They purport to serve cocktails, but depending on whom you get served by at the bar you’ll either be told they’re too busy to make any or they will labour for ten minutes alternately reading the recipe and searching for the ingredients then make it wrong anyway. Not good enough. They have a comedy club downstairs, but it’s the pub upstairs that’s the joke. Climb the stairs above a well-known pasty shop and you arrive in a mocked-up version of a Cornish pirate’s den. Avast! (in your best pirate voice), there be photos of ships, bits of old rope and tasty Cornish ales. Arrr, if its sustenance you’ll be wanting, all you need to do is be grabbing one of the wondrous variety of pasties served downstairs. Apart from the delicious pasties and beer, the other main attraction is the balcony which is the ideal spot to gaze at the hoards of out-of-towners and tourists milling about aimlessly in the Piazza. The downside is that a good proportion of that hoard spill into the pub and it gets seriously overcrowded. This pub had a change in management and it's not as friendly a place as it used to be.

I've been kicked out of the pub after asking them to lower the music a couple of times as it was impossible to speak with friends. All the people in front of the bar were forced to move to other rooms to speak with their mates! I was forced to shout to order the beer and I stated "you can't understand me if you carry on with the music at this volume". Soon after I asked for the address of the owner to write a complaint letter and they kicked me out!

Unbelievable poor service and the manager is not capable to understand what customer service is about. I doubt she's able to manage the place too as I found it unusually empty for a Friday evening (it used to be packed!).

We'll come back to the place once the management changes. The attractively verdant façade of this establishment rather resembles the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The lush creeping plants outside contrast sharply with the distinctly pub-like interior which manages to seamlessly blend hanging bits of copperware with Beatles memorabilia. It’s a small pub, so the post work rush can get a little tiresome, but once this passes the whole place settles into being a vintage traditional pub. There’s no food, no music and no TV – just good old fashioned conversation and hard drinking. The latter can make a trip to the gent’s toilets downstairs rather like descending the north face of the Eiger. Quite possibly the best pub of its type in Covent Garden. The service was OK - the bar staff were mostly uninterested and unfriendly. The atmosphere was dead - however we did visit on a week day around 12:30 pm. The pub has 2 rooms - warm with a couch or two, and on on a sunny day there are outdoor tables on the pavement. We had 1 and 1/2 pints of Stella and some pistachos ; 6.60 pounds. Toasted paninis were 3 pounds - nothing else in the way of food... Overall a pretty standard pub in the city. Crowded from the moment it opens, this still has its moments. Three o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon, for instance, watching the trendy young things flit past. Summer Saturday nights, sitting out on the pavement and listening to the hum of the West End. Expensive, packed, and often staffed by silly people with ridiculous facial hair, it is nevertheless just worth the effort Not reviewed yet.

Want to review it? Not reviewed yet.

Want to review it? With the Grand Lodge looming over everything else in Long Acre, the only rival to Freemasonry's title as the least secret of secret societies must be MI6, whose frankly silly headquarters on the Thames screamed of espionage and intrigue even before it was admitted what went on in there. The proximity of the Lodge lends this place its title, and indeed freemasons can often be seen drinking within it, wedged in little groups amongst the angsty couples, leering office boys and robots in suits. Several years ago, before 'real' pubs came back into vogue again, it underwent an ill-advised refit that removed the peculiar dangling pink-coloured lights (hanging from the ceiling like so many flaccid phalluses) and inexplicably covered the rather gorgeous stained-glass skylight, leaving a bland interior embarrassed by its own dullness. But all is not entirely lost, and after several pints I found myself warming to a place that, many years before, had once been a regular haunt of mine (and no, before you ask, I'm not a freemason). On the positive side, the seating arrangement has survived intact, with a vast line of leather seating at the back and an ample profusion of tables scattered everywhere else. The food is passable, the beer good and the staff excellent, although somewhat unfortunately plagued by amorous office boys who, I suspect, fancied themselves rather more than the supposed object of their affections. A lively place and, despite the wanton architectural destruction and the testosterone-fuelled Brad Pitt wannabees, not a bad pub. Real ales, food, Sky sports, no late opening. Just about the only sane pub in the Covent Garden vicinity. The bar staff are usually astonishingly rude, but it's worth sticking with if, for whatever reason, you really have to be in the area. Less stupidly crowded than all of its neighbours, it has a large upstairs room that can easily be monopolised. Hidden just off the main thoroughfares of Covent Garden, the Lamb and Flag was once known as the Bucket of Blood, in honour of the bare-knuckle boxing that used to go on within. Covent Garden is nowadays a more genteel sort of place, and boxing has been replaced by the more passive, if equally unpleasant, sport of seeing how many people can fit in a tiny space and still manage to drink. Easily the most appealing of the area’s many pubs, retaining plenty of original features and a rugged, uncomplicated layout, it accordingly attracts a great number of people, who seem to keep coming in even after both floors are well and truly full. Does food and several decent real ales, and is well worth a visit outside those peak Mon-Fri evening hours. Not reviewed yet.

Want to review it? Allegedly home of all things Canadian, its Canadian identity mostly seems to consist in looking like a fake wooden shack, serving some hideous beer and making an attempt at Canadian food. Otherwise, its primary purpose seems to lie in sating the needs of the football-hungry public who can't seem to understand that there is life beyond Covent Garden. Quite hideous, with glaring screens and blaring noise usually drowning everything else out, and not recommended unless either you like sharing a large shack with sweaty Man Utd supporters among whom none have actually been to Manchester, or you have an unquenchable desire to watch ice hockey at weird times of day. This attractive-looking pub run by the McMullen’s brewery has not changed a lot since the days of Queen Victoria. The original features, good beer and lively atmosphere are a credit to the pub. Unfortunately the whole experience is marred by selectively blind bar staff, punters that are a toxic mixture of obnoxious workie types cut with a few bewildered tourists and music booming out of the speakers. Its proximity to the tube makes this a good place to meet. It is bearable for one pint which should give you enough time to take in the 19th century décor. Situated opposite the Theatre Royal, this traditional English pub could have easily been turned into a horrendous tourist trap. Thankfully it isn’t. On walking in you are faced with the choice of drinking in the intimate downstairs bar with the banter of all the regulars or retiring to more ample surroundings upstairs, where it is often possible to get a seat at one of the tables. Numerous theatre posters from a more innocent age decorate the walls upstairs. On the drinks front, there is enough to keep most people happy and all in all the pub makes a nice change from the more raucous and expensive alternatives closer to Covent Garden. This pub apparently closes mid afternoon and is not open on a Sunday, however in spite of the more traditional opening hours we still give it our recommendation. Re-opened in January 2011 under new management Closed since March 2010 Covent Garden watering holes are split, on the main, between so-trendy-it-hurts bars serving watered-down cocktails to yapping media success-stories, and "traditional" pubs creaking under their own fakery, populated exclusively by tourists desperate for a glimpse of the real London. The Opera Tavern, which had the distinction of being bombed by a zeppelin in WWI, veers in the latter direction, but is saved from the dreadful oblivion of simulcraeity by cheerful barstaff, some decent beers and mildly interesting architecture. Shortly after my entrance, where I had taken a table at the back of the pub, an American woman abruptly breaks off from snogging her boyfriend to lean over my table, staring at herself in the mirror behind it. "I love my eyes," she announces, whether to me or her sheepish-looking boyfriend is unclear. "They're so dark, I think they almost make me look Asian." This almost-Asian continues to stand, leaning across my table as if I am not there and admiring herself for long minutes, as I sip my beer and try to look like this sort of thing happens all the time. Eventually, receiving no response either from me or the boyfriend, she gets bored of her own divine appearance and drags him from the pub. Normality returns, at least for a while, as groups of businessmen and the odd set of couples drift in and out, until around about ten, when suddenly the whole pub fills with ACTORS, a rabble of desperate thesps screaming for attention and love, clogging the atmosphere with their needy narcissism and smoking cigarettes lit from the ends of other cigarettes. In no time, the pub transforms into a peculiar mixture of a kindergarten and chemical warfare, forcing me to leave. Not a bad pub, if you can find the gaps between the tourists and the actors. It’s Friday evening and I am in a pub packed full with office workers. Nothing unusual there you might think. What if I was to say I was standing in a fake Victorian cellar complete with faux plastic riveted beams? Slightly tacky perhaps? Well, more bizarre actually as I am standing on the first floor with a view out to a backstreet from the nearby window. The architect who dreamed up this concept clearly had a screw or plastic rivet loose. Getting here had been a mission. Firstly there were the two bouncers standing like sentries in the heated patio at the front of the pub. Then there were the crowds. The crowds. It was as if every other pub in Covent Garden had been closed and the only available drinking den available was this place. The final challenge in this Krypton Factor style mission to grab a pint was the labyrinthine layout with its mezzanines and split levels above split levels, weird giant clocks and massive bits of copper piping. The prize for all this hard work was a coveted patch of floor space outside the ladies loos to drink and chat in. The drinking, it has to be said, is good here. The pub serves its own excellent range of Irish beers including Plain Porter, Porterhouse Red and the rather scary sounding Brainblasta which at 7% will leave you with a smoking void where your brain used to be the next day. If you can ignore the super fake décor and the heaving crowds this is a decent pub. A generic zone 1 pub sitting on the corner of Drury Lane and Great Queen Street. It's, well, alright. Standard beer selection, pub grub and décor. It doesn’t have to try that hard to pull in the punters. On weeknights it attracts the post-work crowd and at weekends it's the theatre-goers that make up the numbers. It's inoffensive and you could do at lot worse in Covent Garden. Covent Garden is traditionally the home of violent, egotistical wife-beating maniacs; the first recorded English performance of what would later evolve into 'Punch and Judy' happened here, and as so often with London, old ways of behaviour always resurface in the same spots, only in ever more bizarre fashions. The pub itself is, in abstract, actually rather good, albeit over-priced and under-staffed. The old exposed-brick beer cellars provide a low-ceilinged and rather attractive drinking den, with an area at the back reserved for dining, whilst the recently-refurbished upper bar is truly grand, sporting a large arched ceiling and a balcony overlooking the piazza. It's a very pleasant place to have a quiet drink on a weekday, presuming you're fairly flush and don't mind being surrounded by a million tourists and their children, at least before six in the evening when all the nutters come out to play. And that's the problem with this pub: the people. Due to its prominent position in the heart of London's vacuous, infantalised, consumer-driven culture, it fills on weekends and weekday evenings with the very worst the capital can offer: boorish, bloated rich boys like schools of nasty puffer fish, lagered up and bellowing about their large salaries and their pneumatic women; chunky rugby chaps lining the balcony, drinking 27 pints and roaring at the piazza before dispersing back to their mansions in the home counties; out-of-town lawyers in big coats and those penis-shaped shoes, bigging it up in front of each other and acting all aggressive for the ladies; London team supporting but small-town living football fans who think it's the height of sophistication to meet up in Covent Garden and have a bit of a post-match bray at each other, maybe even a fight if the results have been particularly bad. It's the Punch and Judy show, writ large and costing a lot of money, but still very definitely the same old thing that was first performed here nearly 350 years ago, and still neatly contained in a box for the viewing public's edification and general delight. That's the way to do it. Some places I just can't make out. This is a long, thin pub panelled in dark wood, the lighting fairly low, with a big neon sign indicating that it has an upstairs bar. Good job it does, really, as I wasn't too enamoured with the ground floor. There were lots of rugby chaps looking slightly subdued while listening to crap music, and some people who looked like they had just left the office, even though it was 9pm on a Saturday. There was also someone who looked very much like Jeremy Guscott. Alarming. Quickly grabbing my pint, I did as the neon sign told me and headed upstairs. I found myself in a bizarre parallel universe where everyone is portly and has hideous taste in clothes. Acres of belly and deep fleshy ravines of cleavage were on show, rather distracting me at first from the bipolar nature of the pub. While downstairs is dark and rugby-filled, the upstairs was bright, the walls covered in Dali paintings and (ahem) avant-garde 'art'. Strange curtains made of floaty material drifted unreally by the windows. Lots of young, fat and rich people sat and chatted in chunky, homogenous groups. It all should have been really, really unpleasant, but possibly because I had spent the entire afternoon watching a soviet film in which nothing at all happens over three mesmerising hours, I didn't actually mind it too much. A half-decent selection of beer, some high-calorie food, plasma screens, appalling music and schizoid tendencies - what more does a Covent Garden pub need? Oh yes, rich people. Not reviewed yet.

Want to review it? Friendly table service, quick food and drink service. The atmosphere was chilled - we were there at 2pm, and it looks as though it might get busy at night. The set-up was a large, split level room, with trendy and modern decor. Awesome toilets. Also looks like there is a seperate club downstairs for evenings. We had 2 cocktails (£6 each), and meals are 5-12 pounds. Good pub food. Also happy hours every day 5-7pm - deals on food and drinks. Overall - Great place for a drink - we'd go again for sure! Great cheap meals and an open, high ceiling venue.

---

All content © Random Pub Finder 2001-2012, website development by Doogal