Farringdon pubs

The Castle, 34-35 Cowcross St, Farringdon, EC1M 6DB

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Oh dear. Upon walking through the door I realise I've made a very, very big mistake. Not only is this a completely stupid pub, but I'm going to have to wait here for the rest of the RPF panel to turn up. That's 30 minutes of nu meeja speak, silly sunglasses and great big wobbly chins on young, overfed men. It would be enough to turn St Francis of Assisi into a serial killer. At least this gives me time to analyse what it is I hate so much about this place. Roughly in order of noticing: 1) The tables. These come in various ill-fitting shapes and sizes, doubtless in an attempt to be interesting, and are so badly placed that a huge wasteland of laminate flooring opens up between them. Some have padded sides. 2) The chairs. The tables are complemented by an array of chairs, some of which have recently escaped from an office, others are refugees from the rear end of the '70s revival. All are oversized, and prevent any of the tables from being used by more than about two people. Consequently, there's nowhere to sit. 3) The lights. A dangly semicircular arrangement by the entranceway looks like designer haemorrhoids, and has no place in a pub. 4) The pictures. The Castle has a screen, upon which is not shown cricket or football or whatever, but assorted pictures of "cool" icons from the '30s through to the '60s, doubtless to complement the smooth jazz oozing like vomit from the speakers. Are we meant to identify with these pictures? Is it meant to make us hep and sophisticated? It certainly hasn't helped the regulars, who are pot-bellied oafs from the more odious ends of the media industry. 5) The beer. Lager, or lager, anyone? If you're really sophisticated, you can go Belgian. 6) The people. See 4). This pub has been around since the time of George IV, at the least, but on current form it deserves to be demolished as quickly as possible, preferably with all its clientele inside it.

City Pride, 28 Farringdon Lane, Farringdon, EC1R 3AN

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This was reviewed on possibly the hottest day of the summer. The doors and windows had all been flung open and the ceiling fans spun like dervishes. This merely served to mix the muggy air with traffic fumes from the outside world. Despite all this it was still hot, very hot and my throat was parched. It needed to be quenched by a cold pint fast. The cheery barmaid served promptly and I had to make my choice. ESB (Cask Marqued), London Pride, Lager and Guinness were all present but for some reason no seasonal ale (why?). A cold pint of Summer Ale would have been nice. Seating was available upstairs, but fearing it would be hotter than the Devils kitchen up there I decided to stay put and people watch. The clientele were a typical cross section of people who work in Farringdon: 25-40 year olds, mostly men and either wearing suits or sporting silly haircuts. It was all quite relaxed though, with most people quietly chatting over their pub lunches. The dcor was light and tasteful, but looked too new to add much character. This is, nonetheless, a pleasant enough place and the Cask Marque accreditation probably pushes it up into the above average category.

Clerkenwell House, 23-27 Hatton Wall, EC1N 8JJ

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I've walked past this place many times and always presumed I'd hate it, since from the outside it looks like just another poncy bar. But when I was offered the opportunity to have free drinks all night, I could hardly refuse. And I was surprised to find I actually quite liked it. There weren't the oh so hip people I was expecting to see, the waitress service was attentive but not too attentive, the music was at just about the right level, the food was of good quality. Of course, being a trendy bar means they don't serve any of that old man's drink bitter, but there was a reasonable selection of lagers and they do wine, which my colleagues were enjoying so much they forgot all about 'drinking responsibly' and rather regretted their overconsumption in the morning.
When I popped down to the loo, I came across the other bar area. This has a completely different atmosphere, being more traditional with three pool tables and a big screen TV.
An unexpected success...

The Clockhouse, 82 Leather Lane, EC1N 7TR

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Everything about this pub looks normal, especially when viewed from along Leather Lane on a market day, its traditional Georgian facade obscured by endless rows of pants flapping in the breeze. Upon entering, this normality seems effortlessly maintained. Lots of wooden furnishings? Check. Pissed market traders? Check. Hand-pulled real ales? Check. TV showing golf, racing and Kazakhstani lower-league football? Check. Completely traditional decor, with not a hint of poncey modernity or wobbly twigs? Check. Ceiling? Er, er, oh my God. I look up, and catch me somewhere overhead looking confusedly down at me. I take another look. Yup - I'm up there, hanging upside down above myself, along with the whole pub, vertiginously hovering rather in the manner of a Vogon space ship. And then it sinks in. This pub has a glass ceiling. That's right. A traditional boozer with a glass ceiling, simple as that, no explanation needed. It means that, just like aged, rich Lotharios the world over, when they lean back in a silk dressing gown, turn up the smooth jazz and wait for their trophy wives to slip into something more comfortable, in this pub you too can live out your playboy/playgirl fantasies, stretch out, stare at your beer belly winking back at you from the ceiling and think with pleasure how gorgeous, expensive and sophisticated you are. I suppose you could even try making love on the bar-top in a 1980s soft-porn style while watching yourself, but you might get yourself thrown out. Quite what mind-bending psychedelic drugs the landlord was on when he came up with this one can, sadly, only be a topic for wild speculation.

Coach and Horses, 26-28 Ray St., EC1R 3DJ

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A little pub with a small selection of quality ales and wines. Bar snacks include such delights as olives and toasted pumpkin seeds, but at £2.50 each we would rather have a bag of crisps thank you very much. For those with bigger appetites, gastro fayre is served in the dining room at the back. At the start of our visit, the pub had a warm and welcoming atmosphere, but this was soon shattered by the post-work rush and hordes of students from the art college up the road. This pub is probably at its best at lunchtimes, or perhaps after 8pm.

Deux Beers, 3 Hatton Wall, EC1N 8HX

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I was ready to hate this contrived fusion of the traditional and the trendy. Bare wooden floors are juxtaposed against space-aged lights whose tangled tentacles resemble a robotic squid that has been zapped by a laser. A glitterball dangles hypnotically above the bar. In a similar vein, the booze ranges from staples beers to trendy beers and ales. Wine, Bacardi and unusual vodkas also feature - all served by an Irishman with a floppy mullet. The food here is surprisingly good and includes number of vegetarian options. All of this is enjoyed by an eclectic mixture of punters including cockney geezers, laydeez that lunch and businessmen on clandestine meetings with their secretaries. Interesting.

The Gunmakers, 13 Eyre Street Hill, EC1R 5ET

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Much is promised by the interesting location, awkwardly caught between modernity and the winding lanes of Dickens’ London, and the fascinating internal architecture, with the pub seeming to thread itself miles back from its tiny façade. From that point, however, it’s downhill all the way. A dismally bland interior attempts to exude both modernity and sophistication, befitting of the Gunmakers’ attempt to sell itself as a gastro pub. All it succeeds in doing, however, is radiating a sense of vacuity and a blind faith that whatever is sold expensively must, by its own logic, be good. Pricey beers and wines, with a welter of posh food to match, seek to beef up its upmarket image like big straw buttresses on a straw house, while the clientele (rather in the way of mating ducks, with two males sat bullyingly close to every female) bellow at each other in the unpleasant way the rather wealthy have when they’re out on the razz. An unpleasant experience. Thankfully not open weekends.

Hogshead, Cowcross Place, Cowcross Street, EC1M 6DR

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It's a policy of the Random Pub Finder to not review chain pubs, because they're generally crap. But since I don't get out much, I don't have the chance to be too choosy about the pubs I review. On top of that, it helps to understand the true awfulness of these places to make more of an effort to avoid them in future. It was somebody's leaving do at work so I thought I had better attend. Upon entering I felt immediately at home. Hogshead used to go for a traditionalish kind of look but they've obviously decided to change and adopt the All Bar One pine everywhere style, so I felt like I'd been here before. So to the bar where I was pleasantly surprised to find the selection of beer to be quite wide. There were a few beers I'd never heard of, so well done there. After purchasing beer we hit our first problem, where are the seats? There clearly aren't enough and the ones that appear to be free are all reserved. There is some seating outside, but these are all taken by people trying to avoid the second problem with this pub, the VERY LOUD music with VERY BIG TV screens showing the accompanying videos. And for total sensory overload, we also have Sky Sports in the corner on another massive screen. So conversation is somewhat limited and I spend most of my time watching the screens. Much as I love 'Fools Gold', I don't need to come to a pub to watch the cheap and cheerful accompanying video. I can do this from the comfort of my own home by watching some dodgy FreeView channel. So with nothing else to do, I drink 3 pints in very quick succession and make my unsteady way home. Then of course I realise, this is what these chain pubs are aiming to do, get people drinking as much as possible in the shortest amount of time, so they can get the best return on their investment. Conversation doesn't make any money for these people. This is the McDonalds of the pub world and the only way to stop it is to starve it of its oxygen, cash. Lets face it, the EC1 area is not short of decent pubs, just look round the rest of the site and visit one of them instead.

The Hoop and Grapes, 80 Farringdon Street, EC4A 4DH

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Farringdon Street is hardly the most attractive thoroughfare in London. Fumes from the traffic thundering north from Ludgate Circus get trapped between the grey concrete canyon of empty office blocks that line the street which conceals one of London's forgotten rivers. It is on the banks of this river, The Fleet, where the predecessor of this pub once stood. One can only imagine what it must have been like in those days sitting in a pub by the watercourse which was the recipient of half of London's sewage. I'm willing to bet that there was no riverside terrace in those days. The modern incarnation of this pub has a small terrace at the back safely out of range of the burnt hydrocarbons and a room upstairs which is available for hire. The interior although apparently new, is in keeping with pub tradition - lots of dark wood and rich colours. First impressions of the beer are good. There is a fine range of bottled ales from small independent breweries, a few draught ales, lagers and Guinness. Fans of German lager will be pleased to see Hofbrau both in bottles and on tap. The "holy trinity" behind the bar comprised of an attractive and amiable young woman making eyes at all the men, another woman who worked industriously in the background and a man who was equipped with a sort of beer radar which automatically detected when you needed another drink even when seated 10ft from the bar. In the words of mahogany faced flash northern git David Dickenson, "A bit of a Bobby Dazzler".

The Mitre, Ely Place, Hatton Garden, EC1N 6SJ

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An ancient pub hidden behind Hatton Garden. Cramped rooms add greatly to its atmosphere, as does the outside toilet. You could almost have dropped through time.

The One Tun, 125 Saffron Hill, Farringdon, EC1N 8QS

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A relaxing, unpretentious establishment serving delicious Thai food. The beer isnt bad either: Green King IPA and Adnams plus the usual lagers and Guinness. There is a big screen at the back for sports viewing and an upstairs room which is available for hire. The clientele though not old, appear to be slightly older than most other pubs in Farringdon. This is a blessing and renders it free from the types of young men who play with their mobile phones as if they are extensions of their deficient appendages. The only criticism is the hideous clash of colours in the downstairs bar. A nauseating pink and white ceiling quivers like a giant square patterned blancmange above the dark wooden bar. The blue carpet completes the assault on the senses. Despite these minor failings this is still one of the better pubs in the area.

St Bride's Tavern, 1 Bridewell Place, EC4V 6AP

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I've been working in Blackfriars for over six years and never even knew this place existed. At first it seemed as if no one else had either. Initially I shared the pub with an old man perched on a stool by the bar who looked as if he was a permanent fixture slowly gathering dust. The barmaid, although chronologically challenged herself served a fine pint of Guinness. Nice spot for a quiet drink and an afternoon nap I thought. Then something bizarre happened... lots of women started arriving. I can only imagine that they had grown tired of being pawed by lecherous young suits in the trendier bars and sought refuge here. A bit of a surreal one.

The Sutton Arms, 16 Great Sutton Street, EC1V 0DH

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We've found another Sutton Arms in EC1! Discovered at what turned out to be the final port of call in RPFs bi-centennial pub crawl, the Sutton proved to be our saviour from the plague of corporate pubs ravaging Clerkenwell. We were beginning to get desperate and the Sutton appeared to us like a lighthouse does to a ship in distress. It was a barmy summer evening and most drinkers had gravitated to the pavement outside. Despite our collective inebriated states, we decided to settle inside, our thoughts firmly set on the prospect of more beer and finding the words for the review. Bitters on offer were Boddingtons, Green King IPA and London Pride, all served with a smile. I honestly cannot remember what other beers they had; alcohol tends to do that to me. My guess is that all the usual suspects were there: Fosters, Stella, and Guinness. Decor-wise it's all a bit bland and featureless. Most punters went outside, presumably to experience more sensory stimulation. If they had bothered to stay inside they would have witnessed the drama of the suspect package which turned out to be a harmless forgotten handbag. The main attraction here is that it's a pub, but beyond that it's not all that interesting.

The Three Compasses, 66 Cowcross Street, EC1M 6BP

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Populated by refugees from The Castle down the road, the clientele here do not make you feel like Michael Douglas in the film Falling Down. Nonetheless, this is still a pretty weird place. At first all appears normal; we are in a pub, an increasingly endangered species in EC1, and the cricket is on. Ok so far. Then it hits us, we are in the pub that taste forgot. At the entrance, flagstones and fake wooden beams give the false impression of Dickensian oldyworldyness. On climbing the short flight of steps to the bar you enter a world of IKEA inspired laminate flooring and early 90s house music. The descent into the back of the pub brings you back to more familiar surroundings: dark wooden floors and little wooden tables. Then, just when you are getting comfortable you spy a fish tank. Dont get me wrong, this isnt a bad pub. Its just a bit wrong thats all.

The White Swan, 20 Farringdon Street, EC4A 4AB

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'Sorry lads, we're just closing.' What the fuck is this? It's 9 o'clock, and the pub has closed before we have even managed to enter it. This is pathetic to the ultimate degree.

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