Be At One, Soho, W1

As mentioned below, this has nothing available on draught.

It’s not every day that I get the chance to meet up with friends from the small Dorset village where I grew up, and it’s even rarer for these encounters to occur in London, but just before Christmas I got a call from two of my rural chums to inform me that they were going to be in London for the day and that I should join them for drinks after I’d finished at work. So, excited at the prospect, I finished all my work early in a burst of productivity that must have left my boss wondering what they’ve been paying me for all these years, and jumped on the train into town, pondering which of the capital’s fine drinking establishments we’d be frequenting. And then I got a text through informing me that out of all of the pubs and bars London has to offer, they had decided upon this place – Be at One. Somehow, giddy at the prospect of drinking somewhere other than the village local and lured by the promise of two-for-one cocktails, they had let the bright lights and shiny surfaces of this chain bar get the better of them. To make things worse, the pub has no draught products available and to make things even more awful, they had lined up three cocktails for me before I even arrived, all with stupid names like ‘Spiced Poo’ (I kid you not). The place was packed with a braying young crowd wearing a disproportionately high number of ironic Christmas jumpers and generally being loud and obnoxious. The bar itself is nothing special – an island servery sits in the middle of a split level room with muted lighting and loud music. The cocktails start at around the 7 quid mark, although the 2 for 1 offer lasted for a three hour period, making dipping into the wallet slightly more bearable. Perhaps the most redeeming feature of the place was the bar staff who were friendly, enthusiastic and did all those silly Tom Cruise style tricks with the cocktail shakers. Suffice to say, I eventually managed to drag my companions to somewhere a little more appealing before escorting them to their train home and vowing to never leave them to choose a meeting venue again.