The Globe, E9

Official site of The Globe - www.craftunionpubs.com

Official site of The Globe - www.craftunionpubs.com

This is a good sized pub in the centre of Hackney, with a fairly narrow but very deep interior. You enter into the bar area to the front of the pub, with exposed floorboards, banquette and chair seating down the left-hand side and the servery to the right. The bar has a plain panelled counter front with a diamond pattern tile frieze along the top, a modern wood slat bar back and anaglypta covered ceiling, with a series of blackboards along the canopy, interspersed with a series of decorative figurines, some of which seemed to be temporary additions for Christmas. Towards the rear, the bar becomes a food servery with a white tile back wall and two microwaves but not much other cooking gear from what I could see. The banquette seating follows the length of the bar, down the opposite wall, ending with a nice partitioning screen with an old sewing machine and some potted plants on top, whilst the walls have been decorated with a few paintings and plenty of promotional material. A few final tables and chairs are available towards the rear before you reach a raised ‘stage’ area at the back of the room, with curtains along the back wall. This may well be used as a seating area under normal circumstances, but it had been given over to karaoke on my midweek evening visit. The pub was absolutely packed to my surprise, and a quick glance around suggested I was the youngest customer by a good decade or two, as the constant stream of karaoke singers belted out interesting interpretations of 50’s and 60’s pop hits. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t great, meaning I couldn’t take advantage of the tarmac seating space outside the front of the pub, having instead to take the only remaining seat, directly in front of the stage. There are two handpulls on the bar, but one of these was unclipped, leaving Sharps Doom Bar as the sole ale option. A friendly barman poured me a pint of this fairly insipid brew, but it was in pretty good shape, so must get a reasonable amount of throughput. Card payments come with a £5 minimum spend. This is quite a nice space to have a drink in, thanks to its plentiful comfy seating and lively atmosphere, but I definitely didn’t see the best of this on OAP karaoke night. The lack of anything beyond Doom Bar is the big barrier to returning though, and the place works best as a refuge for locals who have seen a lot of their local pubs become hipsterfied over recent years.

The Globe as it was then, originally arrived in the late 19th century; I don’t know if it was bombed or just rebuilt as part of the surrounding estate, but it used to be a few metres to the north, the current incarnation arriving in 1960 as a Whitbread house, as evinced by the metal ellipse above the pub sign. The interior is essentially a long rectangle. There’s not a great deal by way of detail, but there’s a little applied woodwork to the bar back and front, with a floor that’s part carpeted, part boarded, with a raised area to the rear, perhaps where the apparent live music takes place. Furniture is conventional, with a red cloth upholstered banquette to the left side. Décor is simple, just a few framed prints really. There’s a dartboard, but the throw and oche are occupied by a pool table, so if arrows are to be thrown, then it would have to be moved out of the way; there is though evidence that it is used; a games machine is to the left. There’s some attractive dark wood wainscoting to the dado, then primrose yellow walls, with a red and green Anaglypta ceiling. Aside from me, customers seemed to be all locals, many actually watching the football on the large TV to the rear, a couple of possibly incomers playing pool. The beer department was rather predictable for an establishment of this nature, with huge gleaming chrome illuminated lager founts, constituting a near palisade fence between customer and the very friendly and welcoming barman. There were two ale pumps here, with Doom (clip reversed) and London Original. Given that this is very much a lager establishment, a choice of the real ale was going to be risky, though I decided to take a punt on the LO (£2.00 a half) which didn’t pay off, being tired and musty. This isn’t a bad pub and I suspect that many of those who drink here may perhaps not feel predisposed to drinking in the other nearby pubs, which have all been resolutely hipsterfied for affluent incomers to this increasingly gentrified area, but it seems to serve its purpose well, being just one of about a half-dozen remaining locals’ pubs in the whole borough, but it’s a shame about the beer quality, especially considering that this was a GBG entry from 2009 to 2011.

Just of the man drag a locals vibe pub serving 1 real ale.

This pub markets itself as the "last proper pub in Hackney". This would only seem to be true if your definition of 'proper pub' is a local's town bar straight out of the 1980's. The one rectangular room in the tedious 1980's building has a bar down one side, as the previous reviewer noted decorated with various out of date signs, with a fairly basic kitchen area at the back. At the front is a pool table with dart board behind, but certainly not usable simultaneously! Handpumped ales are still Doom Bar and Brakspear's Bitter, with the latter being barely drinkable. I have been to many good local pubs worth visiting: this is not one of them.

A single roomed pub that to me seemed stuck somewhere in the 70's,one of the signs across the top of the bar proclaimed the best ales in Hackney could be found here, naming London Pride,Whitbread Best and Boddingtons,none of these were in evidence of course but it didn't improve,Doombar and Brakespeare Bitter were on offer on the two handpumps and the latter was predictably ordinary.The single square room had plenty of seating scattered throughout and the raised area to the rear I assume doubles up as a stage.Plenty of keg taps dispensing a variety of run of the mill products accompanied the duo of handpumps, at the far end of the bar was an old fashioned food servery, there is a pool table and dartboard here for entertainment.A good mix of locals were in on Saturday lunch time and this pub serves that purpose perfectly,not a bad place but given the available beer I'm not likely to return in the near future.