The Pub Post I Don’t Want You to Read May 8, 2010

Fornasetti Wallpaper in the Jolly Butchers in Stoke Newington

l shouldn’t write this.  The devil on my shoulder is insisting I not to tell you.  I should keep it to myself, and let it be my little secret.  But the rational angel wins out, reminding me that the Jolly Butchers in Stoke Newington is already news and I’m late to the game  singing its praises. Pete Brown has already expressed delight, as have Boak and Bailey.

I’m just going to assume you don’t read those blogs, and you haven’t seen the new red facade, the light open space of the place filled with old wooden church furniture and decorated with the mesmerizing Fornasetti print wallpaper.

You’ve never met the friendly, knowledgeable staff who are content to offer tastings of the beer and are enthusiastic about the whole endeavor– a clear sign of good management.

You won’t be impressed by the myriad cask ale taps.  Take to heart the reviews that have said the beer wasn’t in top notch condition. When I say the Thornbridge Jaipur and Brodies Amarilla I’ve had on my two visits were  well-kept and exactly the right temperature,  you know I’m just not credible. Who’d want the many Belgians and Meantime keg beers on offer– all served in the right glass to a vibrant, fun, down-to-earth crowd?  And it is crowded.

So crowded you wouldn’t want to go.  No really.  I’ll go there for you and eat their gorgeously hearty grilled asparagus with weissbeer hollandaise and balsamic reduction sprinkled with fey, earthy beet sprouts. You’d think it’s too gastro pub, trying too hard to be perfect and maybe even coming close.

The Moon in a Vivarium* December 28, 2009

Image by Happyralph on Flickr

The Oakdale Arms is a forlorn little place, far from any bus stop.  Drunks and rowdies never seem to find their way there, and neither does anyone else.

Its clientele seemingly consist of people who work or live there: the most regular of regulars.

The whole architecture and fittings are uncompromisingly mid-80s. Everything, including the day bed covered with a zebra throw, has the solid ugliness of the late 20th century.

The great surprise of the Oakdale Arms are the vivariums.  One holds a “25 year old” bottom-feeder. Another contains exotic amphibians half submerged in black water, shimmying frantically against the glass. The landlord, almost eight feet tall in his New Rocks platforms, wears a bearded dragon around the premises.  There is no television.

It’s quiet enough to talk. All that one hears is the buzzing of fluorescent lighting in the glass tanks about the place.  Amid the peace of a menagerie stunned with existential boredom, the chirping of uneaten bugs.

You cannot get dinner at the Oakdale Arms, though the barmaid is eating crisps so they must have them. There’s no stout for your pewter pot or china mug.  Instead, there’s Santa Slayer with a dominating copper tang, and middling Milton Dionysus, not really fitting of the name.

But now is the time to reveal something which the discerning and disillusioned reader will probably have guessed already. There really is such a place as the Oakdale Arms.  It’s just down the road, past the Harringay Superstores.

*apologies to Orwell.