163 Upper Street, Islington, N1

A raw industrial style interior as described below. Up to 8 real ales.

Decent enough pub with a good choice of IPAs. Bit dimly lit on my visit. Would return.

Located on the A1, a five minute walk south of Highbury and Islington station, the Taproom is a modern, craft beer style bar. You enter into a narrow bare boarded room with damaged exposed brick walls and a servery midway down the right hand side. The area closest to the entrance has a few tables arranged down the right hand wall, opposite a staircase leading down to a basement seating area. As the servery appears further into the room, the seating swaps sides and a mix of benches and high stools around large barrels fill the space before the room opens out at the rear. The walls around the bar area are decorated with modern art prints, gig posters and various blackboards listing wine and coffee options. The rear section is lacking this kind of décor - in fact, it hasn't been decorated at all, leaving a messy room with badly damaged tiles filled with long tables and benches. The servery is fairly tatty as well, improved marginally by a collection of pump clips that are essentially papering over the cracks, so to speak. The basement bar is used as a live music space, but with no act playing on my Tuesday night visit, the space had been filled with a few tables and chairs as well as some stools shaped like champagne corks. The room has brick wall painted white and a 'Taproom' logo covering the floor. Music played throughout my stay at a sensible volume and whilst I didn't see anyone eating, menus were on the tables offering snacks such as toasted sandwiches (£6.50) and scotch eggs (£4.75). The big attraction is obviously the beer, with four handpulls and eight beers on stilage behind the bar, in an unusual glass fronted, temperature controlled box. The hand pumps were dispensing Ledbury Bitter and two real ciders (London Fields Chocolate Porter having just gone off), whilst the cask cabinet offered Hackney Sauvin Pale (£4.10), Off Beat Out of Step IPA and Outlandish Pale, Goldmark Liquid Gold, Alchemy Onyx, Five Points Hook Island Red, Crate Golden Ale and East London Brewery Nightwatchman. All but one of these were priced at over £4.00 a pint, so don't bother visiting if you're on a budget, although having said that, you could try three thirds for £4.00, so you could technically save money using this option. I tried the Sauvin Pale and Outlandish Pale, both in pretty good shape, with the former particularly tasty. There's a surprisingly modest keg selection and a pretty large bottled beer range to round things out. I quite liked this bar, but the high prices and woeful décor let the place down a bit. It's certainly one of the best options around the Highbury & Islington area and is well positioned for a pre-gig visit when attending the nearby Islington Assembly Hall or Union Chapel and as such, I'm sure I'll return.