The Duke, WC1

The Duke site with menus - www.dukepub.co.uk

The Duke site with menus - www.dukepub.co.uk

Randomness Guide to London - Duke entry

Randomness Guide to London - Duke entry

Adnam’s Broadside and Black Sheep Bitter on when I was in. BSB at £3.40 a pint is a top of the range price though, especially for a low ABV ale. But on the plus side the young lady behind the bar topped up my pint without being asked to do so, which I regard as at least a sign of a well run establishment. Pretty good it tasted too. There were no TVs, jukeboxes, games machines or other unwanted machinery in evidence, and the music being played was some laid-back jazz – Satchmo and Ella I think – which is a welcome change from the mundane pop music one usually has to listen to. It’s still a two-roomed pub with a connecting door between the two bar areas. The back bar seems to be essentially a restaurant area, with the front room a bar area – though there was a group dining in this room when I was in. The floor looks to have the original lino still laid down on it, judging by the wear it appears to have suffered over the years. This pub retains the décor of an inter-war pub (it is on CAMRA’s inventory of London heritage pubs), and although it has gone down the “gastro-pub” route, it retains enough of its “original pub feel” for me to be happy to pay a return visit.

Oh dear, I think that this may be the most pretentious pub I have ever been into. I was at the bar for a minute and was just about to leave, but unfortunately the barmaid caught me, I'm not usually upset to get served at the bar! I'm not a fan of jazz or Art Deco so I was really onto a loser before I even walked in the place. I like to relax in a pub rather than feel like I'm on show for all around to judge and I like to have a wander around to check the place out and don't expect to be quizzed about what I'm doing. Standard and premium lagers were available alongside Broadside and Black Sheep, which was good, if not cheap. I'll not be returning here in a hurry.

With not too many changes they could almost market this as a wartime theme pub. One dark Winter's evening I was in there around 7.30pm, the blinds were drawn, the lighting was low. Whispered conversation came from groups of people huddled around rickety tables or sitting in booths. In the background the Andrews Sisters were imploring me not to sit under the apple tree with anyone else but them and Glenn Miller was trying to get me in the mood. I felt a little out of place as I stood at the bar on my own with a pint of Black Sheep, and eventually took Duke Ellington's advice and took the A train out of there for fear of some sort of communal jitterbug session developing.