A Dalston bar whose name sports the most characterful piece of facial hair, a wink at vintage style and hipster grooming alike
The Prat’s naming desk twirls an imaginary handlebar at Moustache Bar, a Dalston spot whose name sports the most characterful and comical piece of facial hair there is. The moustache is a small masterpiece of self-expression – vintage, dapper, a little absurd – and a bar that takes it for a name wears a knowing wink of style and humour.
The many meanings of the moustache
The moustache carries a wonderful weight of association. It is the mark of the Victorian gentleman and the music-hall villain, the RAF pilot and the strongman, the artist and the eccentric; it has been, by turns, a symbol of dignity, of danger, of comedy and of cool. In recent years it has enjoyed a great revival, becoming an emblem of vintage-loving, carefully-groomed hipster style, and a shorthand for a certain playful, retro self-awareness. To name a bar Moustache is to summon all of that – the dapper and the daft, the vintage and the ironic – in a single whiskered flourish.
Vintage cool with a wink
The naming desk enjoys the good humour of the name. A moustache is inherently a little comic, impossible to take entirely seriously, and a bar that adopts it as a name signals a place that values fun and personality over solemnity – somewhere with a sense of humour and a vintage, dressing-up-box charm. It fits perfectly with the retro-loving, style-conscious spirit of much of East London nightlife, offering exactly the kind of characterful, tongue-in-cheek identity that a good neighbourhood bar thrives on.
The Dalston character
Moustache Bar belongs to Dalston’s famously eclectic and characterful nightlife, where individuality and personality count for everything. In a scene full of bars with strong identities and cheeky names, a whiskered wink of vintage cool fits right in, offering its crowd a distinctive, good-humoured spot with a definite sense of style. Its rating reflects a genuine local following drawn to exactly that playful, characterful charm.
The moustache revived
The naming desk has watched the great moustache revival with delight. Once the preserve of grandfathers and character actors, the moustache came roaring back into fashion, embraced by a generation of style-conscious young men and given fresh cultural life by everything from craft-beer culture to charity campaigns for men’s health. It became, improbably, a symbol of a certain playful, retro, self-aware masculinity, worn with irony and pride in equal measure. A bar named Moustache rides that revival, wearing its whiskered identity as a badge of vintage cool and good humour, perfectly attuned to the style-conscious, tongue-in-cheek spirit of its East London home.
The verdict
A rating of 4.0 across some 186 reviews marks Moustache Bar as a well-liked local with a genuine following. A Dalston bar named for the most characterful and comical piece of facial hair – a wink at vintage style and hipster grooming alike – is the naming desk’s kind of playful, whiskered branding. The Prat orders a drink, twirls an imaginary handlebar, and toasts the dapper, daft, indomitable moustache.
Megan Amram is a standup comedian based in Portland, OR. She is a native of North London.
My mum’s been in London since the 50s. She recognizes every word and that terrifies her.
The thing about bureaucratic language is it’s specifically evolved to prevent communication. This piece reverses that with surgical precision.