El Siete Review: 4.9, and Seven Is the Number Everybody Picks
El Siete Review: 4.9, and Seven Is the Number Everybody Picks | Ask a room to think of a number between one and ten and most of them will say seven, and nobody knows why
Tag: bar review
City Arts Bar Review: One Hundred Articles in the Square Mile
City Arts Bar Review: One Hundred Articles in the Square Mile | A coffee house in a shed, a goose who would not die, a telescope disguised as a monument, and five million books
Basement Sate Review: To Sate Is to Fill Somebody Completely
Basement Sate Review: To Sate Is to Fill Somebody Completely | It is a stronger word than satisfy, and it comes from the same root as saturate, and it means there is no room left
Bar Daskal Review: 4.7, and It Is Small, Which Is the Whole Prediction
Bar Daskal Review: 4.7, and It Is Small, Which Is the Whole Prediction | Eight postcodes and eight hundred venues, and there is exactly one variable that has ever predicted anything
High Spirit Review: The Word Spirit Comes From Alchemy
High Spirit Review: The Word Spirit Comes From Alchemy | Distillers were chasing the soul of the wine. They called what they caught the spirit, and the name stuck for eight hundred years.
Camden Pub Crawl Review: The Third Crawl, and It Is Not a Pub
Camden Pub Crawl Review: The Third Crawl, and It Is Not a Pub | It has removed every single thing that produces a bad review, and it did not do so on purpose
Fleets Review: Three Hundred Thousand People Were Married in a Prison
Fleets Review: Three Hundred Thousand People Were Married in a Prison | Fleet marriages required no banns, no licence, and no questions – and they were performed by the thousand until Parliament stopped it in 1753
Village Review: The Word Is Doing Something Specific
Village Review: The Word Is Doing Something Specific | Gay villages exist in almost every major city, and the word was chosen deliberately, and it means what it says
Sporting Club Review: The National Sporting Club Made Boxing Legal
Sporting Club Review: The National Sporting Club Made Boxing Legal | It sat in Covent Garden, it enforced the Queensberry rules, and its first president bankrupted an estate being yellow
Archer Street Review: 3.3, and It Is About the Door
Archer Street Review: 3.3, and It Is About the Door | The lowest score in the Soho file on a serious sample, and nine hundred people have told you exactly what went wrong
Be At One Regent Street Review: The Fourth One, and Now We Have a Curve
Be At One Regent Street Review: The Fourth One, and Now We Have a Curve | 4.6, 4.6, 4.3 and 4.5 – and the spread is exactly what the sample sizes predict
Dion Review: The God Turns Up Again and He Is Still Not Jolly
Dion Review: The God Turns Up Again and He Is Still Not Jolly | Dionysus, twice-born, torn apart and reassembled – and the only Olympian who was not entirely Greek
Nickel Bar Review: The Metal Is Named After a Goblin
Nickel Bar Review: The Metal Is Named After a Goblin | German miners found an ore that looked like copper and yielded none, blamed a mischievous spirit, and called it devil’s copper
Bush Tavern Review: Good Wine Needs No Bush
Bush Tavern Review: Good Wine Needs No Bush | Taverns hung an ivy bush outside to show that wine was sold. It is the oldest advertising in Europe and it is why so many pubs are called the Bush.
12th Knot Review: A Knot Is a Speed Measured With String
12th Knot Review: A Knot Is a Speed Measured With String | They threw a log overboard, counted the knots in the rope as it ran out, and the unit is still named after it
Radio Rooftop Review: The Fourteenth Rooftop, and It Landed at 3.8
Radio Rooftop Review: The Fourteenth Rooftop, and It Landed at 3.8 | Eleven of the fourteen are now at 4.2 or below, and it has never been about the altitude
Clays Review: The Clay Pigeon Exists Because the Originals Were Real
Clays Review: The Clay Pigeon Exists Because the Originals Were Real | Live birds were released from traps and shot for sport. The clay was invented to stop it, and the word trap is still in the vocabulary.
NQ64 Review: The Arcade Died Because Home Consoles Won
NQ64 Review: The Arcade Died Because Home Consoles Won | For twenty years the arcade had the better machines, and then it did not, and the whole thing collapsed in a decade
Bradley’s Spanish Bar Review: 20,000 Records and a Man in Yorkshire
Bradley’s Spanish Bar Review: 20,000 Records and a Man in Yorkshire | A Spanish bar named after an Irish regular, off a street named after the man who fought tea, with the most famous jukebox in London
Cottons Review: Rum, and the Carnival on the Doorstep
Cottons Review: Rum, and the Carnival on the Doorstep | A Caribbean bar in the neighbourhood where Notting Hill Carnival began – as a response to a murder
Drift Review: The Word Is About Losing Control Slowly
Drift Review: The Word Is About Losing Control Slowly | A drift is what happens when you stop steering – and every single meaning of the word is about the same thing
Pitcher and Piano Review: A Pitcher Is a Jug and Nobody Says It
Pitcher and Piano Review: A Pitcher Is a Jug and Nobody Says It | The word is almost extinct in British English, survives in American, and is on the sign of a chain across the whole country
Black Cap Review: It Closed, and Camden Fought to Get It Back
Black Cap Review: It Closed, and Camden Fought to Get It Back | London’s most important drag venue outside Soho shut in 2015, and the campaign to reopen it ran for a decade
Naked and Famous Review: The Bar Is Named After the Drink
Naked and Famous Review: The Bar Is Named After the Drink | A cocktail of four equal parts, invented in New York in 2011, has had a bar named after it – which is the wrong way round
Hudson’s House Review: Another Possessive Name, Another Absent Owner
Hudson’s House Review: Another Possessive Name, Another Absent Owner | A 4.4 British restaurant and bar named after a Hudson who may or may not have existed, in the modern tradition of implied proprietors
Mind Palace Review: The Memory Trick Is Two Thousand Years Old
Mind Palace Review: The Memory Trick Is Two Thousand Years Old | Sherlock made it famous. A Greek poet invented it after a roof fell on a dinner party and crushed everyone beyond recognition.
Clays Soho Review: 4.9, and It Is a Themed Activity Bar
Clays Soho Review: 4.9, and It Is a Themed Activity Bar | The highest rating in the Soho file belongs to a venue in a category we have spent five hundred articles being rude about
Lucky Goat Review: A Goat Discovered Coffee, Allegedly
Lucky Goat Review: A Goat Discovered Coffee, Allegedly | Kaldi noticed his goats dancing after eating red berries. It is the origin story of coffee and it was invented eight hundred years later.
Smith’s Bar Review: The Commonest Name in Britain, and It Is a Job
Smith’s Bar Review: The Commonest Name in Britain, and It Is a Job | One in every hundred people in this country is a Smith, and every one of them is descended from somebody who worked metal
All Bar One Review: The Chain Designed So Women Could Walk In
All Bar One Review: The Chain Designed So Women Could Walk In | Enormous clear windows, so you can see the whole room from the pavement before deciding – and in 1994 that was an innovation