Craft beer Company, Clerkenwell.

Doesn’t sound like a pub, sounds more like a factory. But it is a pub; it’s the new venture from the people behind the famous ‘Cask Pub and Kitchen’ in Pimlico and as such has loads of different beers on. Loads. It is in a part of London I had, up until this point, never been to before but I’m glad I have, because now I know where that scene with all the Jewish jewellers at the beginning of Snatch was set.

Yeah, Clerkenwell is weird. Not because of the ethnicity of many of the local shopkeeps, I’m no anti-semite. That large brimmed hat and long black coat vibe they rock all year round is timeless. I have big love for people who stay true to one look regardless of what the rest of the fashion world are doing. They do tend to get super pissed off when the vicious trend cycle makes another pass through and suddenly everybody is dressing like them again, though. Remember how pissed off true skins got after This Is England came out and every 18 year old in Britain started wearing braces and acid wash jeans? Well you can multiply that grief by about ten when some film about Orthodox Jews being all anti-establishment and cool comes out and all the kids start instantly dressing like them. There’ll be blood on the streets. But yeah, Clerkenwell is weird because it is apparently London’s jewellery district? I didn’t know we had need for a jewellery district. They don’t do a very good job of advertising themselves as the jewellery district, do they? If I was going to buy some jewels my first thought would not be “Fuck. Best get to Clerkenwell now.” Judging from all the ‘To Let’ signs this lack of self-promotion isn’t doing any of the hundreds of jewellery shops all vying for custom any favours. Also, the recession means that wearing shit as ostentatious as jewellery has just become socially obscene. People get their jewellery from Primark now, Clerkenwell. I’m sorry.

It is quite odd that they chose this area to start a specialist beer pub then, but judging by the amount of suits that were sitting dejectedly on bar stools we must still be near enough to the city to attract the financial class beer lover crowd (that’s a type of crowd now). There were about three of them when I entered, alone, at 3pm on a Monday. They were all sitting alone too. And it was deathly silent. Nigh on the moment I got to the bar my phone rang. It was a charity that I had previously donated to trying to get me to sign up to donating more money, on a  regular basis. I am shit at fighting these dudes off. But even more so when I am in a silent pub with three guys and a bartender all staring at me intently, listening to my every word. I managed to convince the lovely fundraiser on the other end of the phone that I was a penniless student “I just can’t commit to anything at the moment, man. When I have a solid job I promise I’ll call you back” but only after he had told me, in depth, about how horrible it was to die of cancer, alone and unloved.

So, properly negged out by cancer stories and slightly embarassed by having an entire pub listen to me claim I was too poor to cough up £3 a month, I re-approached the bar, opened a tab, and got one of their most expensive pints. Instantly forgetting that the bartender had just heard me bemoaning my complete lack of currency. He must’ve thought I was such a cunt.

I had a nice, unremarkable time reading my book in the corner, getting up every ten minutes or so to get another half pint of something I hadn’t seen before and have a quick chat to the bartender about what he would suggest. The clientele stayed fairly solidly suity and boring. The only person of note for most of my visit was this drunk American man propping up the bar and starting a conversation with you every time you got near him about how impressed he was that England had good coffee and good beer and kept repeating “I’m on holiday, y’know.” Wicked, mate. I gathered that from your accent and the fact that you have apparently dressed to cross the antarctic.

This review would probably end there (or with some tedious list of which beers I rated, complete with carefully compiled tasting notes you don’t give a fuck about) were it not for a troupe of my age-ish kids who came in and sat directly behind me. From what I could eavesdrop they were in a band and were discussing their next gigs and a single release. As everybody does when you hear people discussing their band but you can’t see them to pass judgement on whether they are cool enough to be a band, I instantly assumed they were probably a shit metal cover band and that this ‘single’ they were going to release was nothing but a CD they had burned off their laptops that was to be ‘released’ by hand at one of their ‘gigs’ at the back of a pub in Bromley. However when I heard them discussing whether to play their next show at the Old Blue Last or the Shacklewell Arms my suspicions that they might be a band I had actually heard of were duly aroused. And when I then heard them discussing their upcoming US tour I stopped reading my book entirely and just stared blankly into it whilst I actually put the entirety of my focus into eavesdropping. I had to text a few people who actually know something about music with snippets of convo I had picked up just to be sure but I am like 90% certain that the band sitting behind me was O Children. I am too musically clueless to really know who they are or to be starstruck, but when we had some friends from Eastern Europe come to visit, one of the main events in their three day London itinerary was to go see O Children so I knew they must be quite big. I adjusted the dial on the Hipst-o-meter accordingly.

Hipst-o-Meter 10/10

O Children were there. People tell me they’re cool.

Location 5/10

As we have previously ascertained I know nothing about the area I was wandering about slack jawed before stumbling upon the pub. Looks a bit grimy and rundown, but it’s in central so it’s actually more difficult to avoid boarding modes of transport out of the area than it is just bowing to the inevitable and going somewhere nicer. There were lots of windy little ye olde London streets here and there that could house any number of interesting shops and boozers though. So maybe I am just not giving Clerkenwell the proper going over she deserves.

Price 8/10

Blah blah blah considering how rare the beers you’re drinking here are it’s actualy very reasonable blah blah blah. You’ve heard me spout all this crap before. The raw facts are that I sat in the pub for a solid three hours putting away halves, reading and eavesdropping on NME fodder yet only paid £20 for the privilege. I reckon that’s alright.

Atmosphere 2/10

Not great, man. The whole silent as the grave buzz they’ve got going on here really doesn’t work for me. It made every conversation that was had in the pub a slightly cringe one. Especially when I played “show off to the barman about how much you know about beer” or the even more embarassing game of “palm off the drunk American that keeps talking to you without looking like too much of a rude cunt in front of every other person in here.” I reckon a bit of mood music wouldn’t go amiss. Silence isn’t golden. It’s awkward.

This entry was tagged as beer and loathing, pub, REVIEWS..