The Fox, E8

A large, imposing corner building with some nice architectural touches. The interior is a large open-plan room with small spur off to the left, painted in shades of dark green with a stripped wood floor. Furniture is fairly uniformly laid out and it all feels rather bland and functional though there are at least a few interesting wall posters, including the aforementioned “A Visual Compendium of Notable Haircuts in Popular Music”. Eight pumps at the bar (which is at least given a bit of character) with six ales, one cider (Welsh in origin) and one unclipped. My Marble Choc Stout was in fairly good nick though perhaps I expected a little more sparkle. Notably expensive in here, especially amongst the extensive keg offerings. A nice touch were the branded half pint goblets which I was severely tempted to smuggle out and take home but good manners got the better of me. It’s a decent ale outlet but I couldn’t really get over-excited by it as a drinking venue.

This large corner Victorian pub standing on the Kingsland Road in an area known locally as Haggerston was one that previously didn’t usually warrant a second look as you went past it on a bus up the A10. But now under new management (the same team that run the Howl at the Moon in Hoxton I believe), the Fox has been remodelled to take advantage of two current trends, namely Craft Ale and the yuppification of Hoxton. Now opened up and stripped back internally to one minimalistic large space mainly set to wooden tables with a couple of sofas dotted around the edge, it has an equal focus on food and beer. The provided food menu falls short of being full blown Gastro, but is still pretentious enough to appeal to its target Hoxtonite demographic. And although usually I would steer clear of any place that has Halloumi burger with olive tapenade on the menu, the addition of ‘craft beer house’ applied to the pub name makes it also an interesting place to visit for those not interested in eating. An impressive array of Ale pumps and craft beer taps as previously described and also a decent range of bottled continental beers. The couple of Ales I tried were in good condition and I found myself warming to this place and will definitely pop in again when in the vicinity.

In its current incarnation, The Fox is a craft beer house and gastro pub, serving excellent (but not cheap) beer and interesting, non-traditional bistro-style food. So many beers were on sale – craft and cask – I lost count, but I do remember 3 real ales and 3 ciders. Several good Belgian beers complemented the list. Decent looking food but time on a crawl didn't allow us to eat. Despite the modern theme, it had a great traditional pub feel, although the presence of several bicycles in the bar was a bit enigmatic – maybe an attempt to give it a French flavour. Wood floors, no electronics and a warm welcome combined with the presence of a bunch of mature pub crawlers all added value. I had a pint of Marble Brewery Chocolate Marble, which was a good pint, very moorish but became a bit sickly later on. I shall most definitely return here.