WEST INDIA QUAY – 25/07/12
Once again it’s been a long time since we were out drinking
on the DLR. Our last venture away from
more familiar surroundings in the City was actually on the night of the
European Championship Final. Eager to go
out and see the game (I had a few cheeky bets on – which of course I lost) but
without the tenseness or pressure of England taking part we decided to head
over to Stratford High Street. It was a
bit of an impromptu visit to be fair, the evening began with a bit of necessary
shopping (my annual trip to buy a new shirt for work) and ended with 4 DLR pubs
ticked off. This was of course over a
month ago but laziness means I have once again not blogged our findings. To try and think back and re-cap then I know
that we started in King Edward VII (King Eddy’s) although this pub actually
fell outside the jurisdiction of both Stratford DLR and Stratford High Street
DLR. But seeing as I used to briefly
live in the area (very briefly, my flatmate hated me for feeding her cat and we
never recovered from that causing me to scarper back to Benfleet sooner than
intended) I insisted on taking Tindall there because it proved to be one of my
favourite pubs.
To be honest from there on I’m not entirely sure of the path
we took, I’ll have to check with Tindall but I figured it best to jot down what
I can now and I can always alter it later.
I know we watched the game across 2 different pubs, the first being The
Princess of Wales. A dingy pub this one,
with a less than enthusiastic barmaid and some extremely worn furniture. It wasn’t particularly clean either as
emphasized by the two flies that were buzzing around and trying to mate in
front of us, I would say obscuring the view but that would be going too
far. Nevertheless we moved on at half
time to Ye Old Black Bull and watched the second half of Spain’s demolition of
their opponents in the comfort of a lovely little beer garden with an outside
TV and sound rigged up. After that we
ended across the road in the Langthorne for one last drink, a pub that I can
neither recommend nor put down seeing as all I remember is it containing what
is most probably the world’s largest disco ball hanging from the ceiling just
outside the toilets.
Of course I’m supposed to be writing about West India Quay
right now, and that does stick more firmly in the memory as it was only 3 days
ago that we were there. Many of the pubs
at Canary Wharf fit into the West India Quay radius but we decided to leave
them to their parent station and just concentrate on the bars that form a line from
the converted docklands warehouses. So
then, each pub was pretty much exactly the same in terms of facilities! We started at ‘Via’ which after much
discussion and marketing analysis from Tindall we decided was a dreadful name
for a bar. I think they were going for
‘Via – a place to visit on your way home’ but it came across more as ‘Via –
this isn’t your final destination for the evening as this bar is a bit shit and
you’ll soon want to move on’. The food
did look fantastic, although almost certainly overly expensive considering the
area we were in. There was also a very
uncomfortable ‘table for two’ situated on a tiny balcony above the entrance to
the bar – fine for a romantic meal with a loved one, if that is the couple
envisage sipping wine with a crowd of pissed up city workers in suits standing
just metres below them as being romantic.
As I said each bar on this strip was much like the one
before, Henry’s next door was much of the same although a touch less ‘covey’ as
I seem to have written in my notes. A
let down too, it was one of those bars with nobody trying to order yet
seemingly nobody getting served either.
The barman seemed busy, but I’m not quite sure what he was actually
doing. After wandering about for a bit
he did finally serve us, and proceeded to pour quite possibly the world’s worst
pint of Strongbow, to say the tide was out a bit on that one was a huge
understatement.
It turned out that most of the bars here were indeed
predominantly restaurants so we were saved from having to enter them all. So before long we were sitting in the
Wetherspoons at the end of the row of bars, tucked away as it was behind the
German Camp for the Olympics. Due to our
crazy rating scheme this pub (The Ledger Building) would actually end up being
rated as the best pub in the area, purely down to the fact that it being a
Wetherspoon meant that the prices were so much cheaper. Clearly being in the land of sticky tables
and no background music should mean it’s not a great pub, but our ratings tell
us otherwise. We opted to eat here
though, the menu was standard as expected but they do microwave a good meal for
you!
Over all, Via bar received an average rating of 3.1, Henry’s
a marginally worse 3.0 and The Ledger Building a probably a bit preposterous
3.7.
And that’s where things get a bit complicated. With time on our hands we chose to head over
the water and mix it up with the ‘wankers in suits’ as I like to call
them. They are probably all lovely
people of course (or not) but from working there for over a year, I’d seen
enough to know that this area was not for me.
Months ago now we started on the Canary Wharf side, having a pint in
Brodie’s bar (for which all I have in my notes is ‘smells a bit like a swimming
pool’) and then moving on to Davys where I didn’t make any notes at all. We decided to make some more headway at this
station and so headed for one more pint in Corney & Barrow. And maybe I’m being biased due to my
aforementioned hatred of the area but this pub came in with possibly the lowest
rating so far (an average of just 1.6).
Worryi0ngly too it scored very highly on Facilities, leaving much to be
desired from every over aspect of the pub.
The drinks menu is best described as deceitful, advertising as it did a
range of beers only for us then to discover that the only options on tap were
Peroni and Guinness. We opted for a
Peroni and a Guinness and received this time the world’s worst poured pint of
Guinness. Now bearing in mind that
Tindall is now a keen and expert Guinness drinker, (why, the man has poured his
own pint back in Ireland – and he has a certificate to prove it), he was
understandably perplexed and disappointed to see that his ‘pint’ was indeed
about 1/3 ‘head’ once it had finally settled.
Drinking up quickly we headed home, another DLR station light.