Flight Club, Moorgate, EC2

There are now four Flight Club venues in London. They are all very similar in set up and only really differ in size. They are basically themed beer and cocktail bars in the same vein as the “Swingers” Bars, but instead of crazy golf, the theme here is darts. But not your traditional 501 pub darts, this is electronic party darts for a group of friends or work associates. Electronic ‘Oches which allows you to choose different darts games such as killer and donkey, and play singularly , in pairs or in teams. Then additional gimmick such as the camera that allows you to take team photos and replays videos of winning darts. You can enter just to use the bar and this one also has a basement bar without the dartboards that is well utilised by the younger demographic, but if you want to play darts the ‘oches have to be booked weeks in advance due to their popularity. This one is well described below and as mentioned no ale here, just keg products, but usually a couple of decent modern craft options and Beavertown Neck Oil is usually a fixture in these bars. 8 of us spent a cracking hour and half in this venue on the big ‘oche at the far end and went through a couple of rounds of craft keg at typical city prices. And then it’s a relatively short walk to a more traditional boozer, such as the Red Lion, to finish the evening with an ale.

Professing to the the 'Home of Social Darts', this is a mad darts themed pub that was doing an absolutely roaring trade when I popped in for a quick pint on an inauspicious Tuesday evening. You enter to the main bar area - an L-shaped room with the servery directly opposite the front door, running in the same shape. The bar has a decent dark wood counter front with a smart top, an undressed wall along the bar back and a high shelf above lined with pots, kettles, candlesticks, salvers and the like. The front section of the pub sees you in a low, concrete floored space with high copper topped tables and bar stools, some crazy looking decorative glass panes set at jaunty angles in front of the actual windows and barmy strips of lighting, strung from the ceiling and running in loops around the ceiling. Banquette seating appears further into the room, beyond which is a raised area housing the first few dart boards which come with large scoring screens which display various animations based on how well you scored in one of the many different variations of the game you seem to be able to play. The other side of the room runs to the rear and follows a similar format, with a concrete floored space giving way to a gaming area at the far end. Lots of darts themed pictures can obviously be found throughout the room and there was loud music playing but to no avail as the screams and shouts from the numerous punters each time they actually managed to hit the board was more than enough to drown it out. There's no ale in here, so I tried a pint of the Maltsmiths IPA at £4.40 a pint before spotting one of the Long Arm beers from next door was also available and at £1.00 cheaper than in the brewery tap! The service was diabolically slow, but it was insanely busy so maybe I should've adjusted my expectations a little, although that doesn't excuse the short measure I received. This is a great novelty venue that I'm sure would make a good choice of venue for a bit of workplace bonding and with dartboards in Central London in sharp decline, it's nice to see somewhere trying to bring them back in fashion again. Having said that, the party atmosphere, loud music and pricey pints mean serious darts players would be better advised to stick to their local.

Not much of a pub, but the 'social darts' proves to be quite a good evening out if you are with the right people and in the right mood. Perhaps 2/3rds of the irregularly-shaped space is devoted to tables but the features are definitely the various oches at the extremities. There is a further smaller bar downstairs, but like the main counter the 'choice' is just a few keg beers, from which the Maltsmiths IPA (£5.40) was the pick of the meagre bunch.

L-shaped room with dart boards at either end, occupied by noisy youths. No real ale - just keg.

Official site of Flight Club - flightclubdarts.com

Official site of Flight Club - flightclubdarts.com