psimonk's Qype reviews
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12-16 Artillery Lane, The Breakfast Club (behind the Smeg fridge), London E1 7LS
psimonk
wrote on 4 August 2011
So, it’s a speakeasy cocktail bar just near Liverpool Street station/Spitalfields market. You sign up for a table on Twitter, then are ushered through a fridge into the “secret” underground bar. Nice – reminds me of New York stuff, although it’s a shame Time Out etc. have already written it up.
Just like everything The Breakfast Club crew does, there’s a lot right about this place and only a few things wrong.
Right: staff (our duo were lovely), cocktails (excellent, inventive and unusual), environment (a real NY speakeasy vibe – industrial but also scruffy and homely), music.
Wrong: the clientele. Of course, no speakeasy will remain a secret forever, so it’s hard to judge what the clientele will be like long-term. But on our Saturday night visit, a) the mix was of inebriated city-types with loosened ties and overly drunk and noise 80s-dressed hipsters, and b) they mostly were drinking wine… in a cocktail bar.
Whereas NY hipsters in hip bars are (at least on my last visit a few years back) fairly cool and laidback, British ones seem far too often to be a posho version of Geordie Shore – all drunken dancing, loud shouting/singing along and a lot of staggering. The end result brought up the volume level to shout-to-be-heard levels and spoiled the overall vibe of the bar a bit. But not so much I wouldn’t go back (in fact, as a certified oldie, it’s quite fun to watch young people act up).
Caveat: we didn’t try the food that night, so couldn’t comment on it.