The Baring, De Beauvoir Town, N1

Date of visit: 19th October 2016 – rating: 3 I came here once about six years ago and found the place to be a little lacklustre. A return this evening and if anything, it's now even more dull; the promises of fun made on the pub's website don't exactly stack up once you're inside the place. The Boring perhaps? Curved yes, and not that large with an insipid pale grey colour scheme throughout, spartan, bare boarded with conventional mixed furniture though really quite tatty. The main focal point is the TV over the former fireplace showing football to a rather down-at-heel local yet minimal (five-person?) local crowd, who, you guessed it, devoted their time to swearing at the referee/linesman every time a call didn't go their way. Ales: four redundant pumps, thereafter just Meantime's Yakima Red craft, cold, and £2.40 a half! A return visit? No chance, not least because the vastly superior Rosemary Branch is about 10 feet up the road from here, serves real ale, is a lot cheaper and isn't depressing. I wouldn't be surprised if this place gets converted to residential use in the near future... ------------------------- A return a couple of nights ago to a pub which dates from the 1840s and despite the width, the interior is quite shallow. This reopened in July with the original name partially reinstated, but it’s still a farewell to arms. Suffice to say, not one molecule of the original interior remains, the whole now looking much more like a restaurant/ wine bar. Gone are the TVs, but now there’s a modern boarded floor, a white ceiling and white walls, some of which are distressed bare brick, the bar is dark smoky blue field panelled with a modern pale wood top, the bar back is just very simple grey matchboard with just two basic shelves, the whole clearly geared towards cocktails. Lighting comes in the form of Anglepoise sconces with white painted exposed metal trunking, then hanging white translucent teardrop shaded lamps over the bar; jazz mood music played over the stereo. Furniture is now modern wooden stuff, with dark vinyl fluted banquettes. Customers are now the more prosperous incomers who have contributed to the area’s gentrification and very mixed in age too. There were two pumps, one unclipped the other delivering Sussex Best at a painful £2.75 a half but in very good nick, served by professional staff. This isn’t a bad place for what it is, but I don’t think that it can be described as a pub anymore and in any event, the far superior Rosemary Branch is next door. However, this place was full last Saturday night, me bagging the last table. When you consider that this place was dead in its former incarnation, it’s funny what gets the punters in.

Official site of The Baring - www.thebaring.co.uk

Official site of The Baring - www.thebaring.co.uk