The Ivy House, Holborn, WC1

The Ivy House can best be described as a student bar cum Thai restaurant although to be fair, the place is not as horrendous as that may sound. The interior is a large knocked through horseshoe shape with high ceilings (albeit a large air conditioning pipe following the line of the bar distracts from the pattern work), a fairly spacious Pool table area with long wooden pews at one end and a mixed hard/soft furnished area at the other. The décor is quite plain but a long carved frieze particularly stands out. Much of the wall space is taken up with blackboards advertising various offers (mainly student deals). The floors are bare with chessboard tiling one end giving way to parqued flooring in the middle and bare planks in the pool area. There are some sofas at one end and a few potted plants to give it a bit more of a homely feel. The piped music was quite bland but not too intrusive. The Thai restaurant is upstairs and is advertised by large neon signs in the window that deflect the attention away from the pub element. The area in front of the bar can be a bit of a bottleneck and despite the lengthy nature of the bar, all the pumps are squeezed into this section so to see what’s on the pump clips you will more than likely need to wrestle through a mass of bodies (although I hadn’t noted them listed on one of the blackboards at the time.The ale choices were Bombardier, Pride & Harveys but were not particularly cheap, especially in a place that tries to attract the local student populus. The place is fine for a couple of pints if passing by but there isn’t really enough to make it stand out and make it worth a special visit.

Closed down and now covered with hoardings. Set to disappear when the Crossrail project gets going. I think they may be keeping the building’s façade.

CLOSED (11/08/09)

I had lunch here, very busy but excellent service and good value ale.