Smugglers Tavern, Fitzrovia, W1

Quiet backstreet pub, noticeable for the life-sized smuggler figurehead peering down at you from the front of the building. Quite a nice interior, small and rectangular with a tasteful half wall aquamarine and white colour scheme. Plenty of nautical ephemera on the walls including a ships wheel, maps and charts. Decent set of tunes being piped through the speakers. Bar at rear, dispensing two ales on my visit - a muted and hazy Purity UBU Gold and ELB Foundation at a preposterous £2.30 a half. Plenty of craft bottles also available but Lord knows how much you’d get fleeced for one. It's a pleasant pub but the beer quality and prices preclude a revisit.

Official site of Smugglers Tavern - thesmugglerstavern.co.uk

Official site of Smugglers Tavern - thesmugglerstavern.co.uk

Hogsback TEA and Purity Mad Goose were available here – a pint of the Mad Goose and a coffee came to £7.10, which seems a tad expensive to me, but the MG was in good shape. There were no menus on tables at the tail end of lunchtime on Thursday, but the aroma of food was in the air so I guess it must be available. Table service is available, but obviously I eschewed this in favour of a personal trip to the bar. This is a basic single-room pub. The walls and pillars are painted a sort of nautical light blue aquamarine colour. As you might expect with a pub called the Smugglers Tavern there’s a bit of a nautical theme here with a ship’s wheel and masses of framed maps and charts on the walls. Furnishings are fairly basic, with mainly normal tables and chairs and some small round stools, plus tall stools at ledges around the sides. There was the inevitable World Cup flag bunting, and of course some music playing, but admittedly not too loudly. This is a fairly straifghtforward bar – nothing exceptional but OK. The staff were friendly, and the beer was in good shape, so a couple of pluses there, but it’s not really somewhere to which I would choose to make regular visits.

Randomness Guide to London - Smugglers Tavern entry

Randomness Guide to London - Smugglers Tavern entry