Queen of Hoxton, Shoreditch, EC2

This is a very large multi-purpose venue a short walk from Shoreditch High Street, with a hipster-style pub occupying the ground floor. Entering the main bar, you find yourself in a spacious room that has been painted mostly in black and has a limited amount of bench and chair seating at the front and in a recessed area to the right. A centrally positioned staircase leading down to a basement (gaming?) room, means that the ground floor bar suffers from having a lot of dead space, which has just been left empty as adding furniture would most likely make it too cramped on busy nights. As such, the room feels bare and awkward to settle down in. The servery runs along the back wall and has a very long plain black counter and uninteresting bar back. Attempts have been made to fill some of the dead space, with unusual features such as a ping-pong table and a table football game taking up a bit of room. I found this a really unlikeable room, although it’s difficult to say whether it would’ve felt different had there been a decent crowd in, so I opted to take my pint to the rooftop garden which was signposted through a door to the rear left. A staircase, painted in yellow and surrounded by walls painted with Wizard of Oz murals, leads you up through several storeys before you eventually emerge on the rooftop. It’s a very unusual spot, as the entire garden is situated under a large circular tent with wood chippings strewn across the floor and a glazed brick path leading around the tent to various tables and chairs and also into a shed-like shelter in the centre which has a couple more seats inside. The whole effect was not entirely unpleasant, and I’d be interested to know if the tent comes down in the summer months. Posters throughout the pub advertised all manner of unusual events, perhaps none more so than ‘Neon body paint life drawing classes’! Back at the bar, a walk down the entire length of the long counter failed to turn up a single handpull, so I had to make do with a pint of Revisionist IPA which came in at a hefty £5.60. The keg fonts offered a surprisingly unadventurous craft beer selection alongside plenty of mainstream options and plenty of bottles and cans. The lone barmaid was very nice and friendly, making me feel for the briefest of seconds, like I might actually enjoy this pub. However, it was not to be and the vast, spartan interior left me with the impression of a cold, impersonal place which might just about work on a busy night with a big group of mates and a burning desire to play ping-pong but offered little for the passing drinker. I quite liked the rooftop garden and would maybe consider returning for drinks up there in the summer, but overall, this place didn’t do all that much for me.

Official site of Queen of Hoxton - queenofhoxton.com

Official site of Queen of Hoxton - queenofhoxton.com