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The Drapers Arms, Barnsbury, N1
N1
N1 1ER
Reviews (Current Rating Average: 6½ of 10) see review guidelines
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Moby Duck left this review about The Drapers Arms
Absoloutely rammed on a Saturday afternoon with what appeared to be a wedding reception going on upstairs, It also seemed pretty full on gastro, one for midweek.
On 12th June 2022
- rating: 5
[User has posted 1872 recommendations about 1845 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Tris C left this review about The Drapers Arms
Little can be added to that below. A late Georgian pub, externally the pub is very blue and internally it's also quite pale blue/grey with interesting internal cellar flaps which you cross on entering. Décor is minimal, furniture is solid with large tables. Friendly staff, good loos. Very much a gastro-pub but the acoustics are very poor making for a lot of white noise when busy.
Ales: a reversed pump clip, Harvey's Sussex Best and Hammerton's N1, brewed in the next street so on good form but at £4.60 a pint.
I'd come again as this is one of N1's best, but not on a Friday or Saturday when the pub's at its busiest as the noise from conversation alone is deafening; makes for a great mini-crawl with the Hemingford, Albion and Crown.
On 9th February 2019
- rating: 7
[User has posted 1985 recommendations about 1951 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Just a quick pint, then I'm off left this review about The Drapers Arms
Relaxed Barnsbury hostelry, with an opened-out and thoroughly refurbished 'J'-shaped interior with the bar centre-front and a dining area in one branch. Fairly basic furniture but attractive, understated light decor. Three decent real ales on handpump: Harvey's, Siren Under Current and Dark Star Antares red ale (£3.80).
On 20th March 2016
- rating: 7
[User has posted 8117 recommendations about 8117 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Rex Rattus left this review about The Drapers Arms
They had three ales on in here - London Fields Broadway Blond, Harvey's Sussex Best, and London Beer Factory Summer Pale Ale, the latter at a fairly reasonable £1.90 a half. There were also loads of less usually seen keg offerings, such as Weird Beard Mariana Trench, Camden Helles, and Brooklyn Lager. I didn't see a menu (I guess you are given one if you want to eat), but did see food being delivered to another table. One of the girls there was having a pint of prawns. This seems to be coming back into vogue now in gastropubs, as I saw another pint of prawns in a pub last week, which was the first that I had seen for many years. Fair enough if you like prawns.
The floor's bare-boarded with what must be the original boards as they are just about the most distressed and/or well worn boards I've ever seen. On the matter of distressed state, the old brown armchairs and sofa at the back on the right are also contenders for the most distressed furniture award. The rest of the furnishings are also very basic - scrubbed tables with hard wooden chairs, and a large table accompanied by hard backless wooden benches of the old school dining room type. It's all very shabbily plain and simple. The bar counter looks original, but the tapered frontage is painted emerald green in counterpoint to the suppressed pastel shades everywhere else.
The main bar area at the front leads back to another to another room the the left of the servery (more normal tables and chairs), and which in turn leads out to a garden at the back. Perhaps this pub's most interesting features are the round cut glass panes in the doors at the front of the pub.
This one's OK in a sort of minimalist gastropub kind of way. A couple of ales from local micro-breweries always goes down well with me, and my London Beer Factory ale was in good shape, and at a welcome sub-£4 a pint. This old pub has gone down the gastropub route, but I guess that's what pubs around here have to do to survive.
On 22nd August 2015
- rating: 7
[User has posted 2606 recommendations about 2520 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
john gray left this review about The Drapers Arms
Very impressed by this large food led pub.As mentioned in other reviews very friendly staff.Very busy with mostly female customers.Scruffy overgrown rear beer garden but pleasant enough.Small but good bottled selection.3 cask beers from Hackney,Harveys and a really good beer from Truefitt,s.Only a few minutes walk from the Taproom so will be back.
On 10th May 2014
- rating: 8
[User has posted 1023 recommendations about 1009 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Steve C left this review about The Drapers Arms
It was reasonably busy in here when I visited last Saturday evening and I found the staff to be very friendly. Harveys Best, Brakspear and Wandle were the three ale options and there was a selection of standard and premium draught products. A chalk board behind the bar lists some proper bar snacks including a pickled egg and packet of crisps for £1.75 and pork pie with pickles for £6.50, hopefully the latter is a sharing plate. There is a dining room upstairs that is available for hire and I would imagine that a full menu is available.
There are a couple of plasma screens, that were off, in the front bar area and to the right there are a few armchairs and a couple of tables. More seating stretches up the left hand side of the bar to the rear where a well kept and good sized paved beer garden can be found.
This isn’t really my type of pub as I prefer a proper boozer, but it does what it does well and although I don’t plan to return I do know of people that I would recommend this place to.
On 14th October 2010
- rating: 6
[User has posted 5254 recommendations about 5222 pubs]