The Open Guide to London: the free London guide

• Nearby tube stops: Chancery Lane Station / Holborn Station

Drinks

Samuel Smith's range: one cider, which is Strongbow-style, but nicer, more appley, �2.30 a pint. Two brewed-under-license lagers, Two bitters: Old Brewery and Museum (though the Museum is rarely on). They also have Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter in bottles, probably your best bet if you like decent beer.

Interesting-looking soft drinks in bottles including cranberry and apple juice, and other juice cocktails. Looking behind the bar is really like some kind of branding parallel-universe -- the soft drinks are all branded 'Scintilla' and are stamped with the Fairtrade logo, the spirits are all some other brand I'd never heard of.

Food

They've recently introduced full meals in the evening as well as at lunchtime; not a fixed menu, but specials written up on the blackboard. These all cost the same, around a fiver (didn't write the price down, whoops), and might include things like vegetable and chickpea balti; Mediterranean vegetable quiche; and chicken in black bean sauce.

There's also a snacks menu with things like burgers (�5.50, choices include a veggie burger), nachos (veggie or meat, both �5.95, pretty nice and very substantial, enough for two people), chips-with-things-on (curry, chilli, cheese).

Vegan options: The veggieburger is vegan (make sure they leave the mayo off) but not very nice -- it falls apart and tastes mainly of greasy fried frozen hash browns, and the bun isn't big enough. The vegetarian nachos can be made vegan by leaving off the cheese, sour cream and guacamole (which contains mayonnaise), but the vegetarian member of staff who was advising me said that she didn't think they would be too nice with just the salsa, olives and mixed beans. Can't be much worse than the veggie burger, though -- I'll try them like that at some point.

There is no food on Saturdays.

[All prices as of July 2002]

Layout

There are two rooms upstairs -- one of them at least has those nice little cubbyhole things along the side.

The cellar bar downstairs seats about 80 people and is divided into a couple of sections. It's often booked out fully or partially for private functions in the evenings. They've poshed it up a bit recently, with flowers in vases on the tables. The acoustics down here are somewhat odd, probably due to the semicircular curved ceiling (it's a bit like being in a tunnel).

Other reviews and photographs

• pubs.com review (the interior photo on that page is of one of the upstairs rooms)
• London perlmongers meeting in the cellar bar, April 2002