163 Upper Street, Islington, N1

Well reviewed by Will. Bit of a mishmash but the unfinished look doesn't work for me. Great beer selection does work for me and the 2 beers I had were good. Strangely they have 5 un-branded keg taps but they hide what is on them on a blackboard low down on the wall.I remember when it was the cask pump that was usually hidden in the corner. Good addition to any crawl around Islington.

This was a pop-up pub in a disused former office building, appearing briefly over Christmas 2012 and again in February. A permanent licence has now been obtained, and a bar plus a very impressive and apparently unique chiller cabinet have been installed, and the pub opened for business in the first week of June 2013. Apart from the bar and the chiller, no attempt has been made to make this into the sort of pub that this part of the world understands. Seating consists of plain benches and tables, there are bare floorboards (not unheard of in pubs, I know) and bare walls (ditto) and air-conditioning ducts (double ditto). But these are bare walls with a vengeance, and if I say I felt right at home, I'm sure my daughters would understand. I think the phrase that fits these walls best is hacked off, and I don't just mean the plaster. At the back of the long and narrow room are the remains of what were clearly once toilet cubicles, with accoutrements removed and any holes made good. (The actual toilets are downstairs, though there is a disabled facility with baby changing next to the bar.) When I commented that I'd never actually drunk my beer in the toilet before, the barman conceded that I might be next to the toilet but not actually in it. On the bar are just four hand pumps (two ciders, two beers) with the majority of the real ales in the aforementioned custom-built chiller. There are eight barrels on stillage in here, with the beer served via pipes and taps so that the ambient temperature is maintained at an optimum. Service was friendly and the beer was top notch, both in variety and condition. I'm told that the present state of the decor is not temporary or just scrimping, that the idea is to have a pub that people wouldn't be embarrassed to spill their beer in (though I reckon you could throw your beer at the walls without detriment). I'm not sure that this is necessarily what Islington has been crying out for - only time will tell. Final piece of the jigsaw - on the sound system during my visit was the Beatles' Abbey Road, so no complaints from me on that score either.