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Disappointment of the week with Bucking Fastard
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Detail Pages
The Crown & Castle, E8
E8
E8 4AH
Reviews (Current Rating Average: 5 of 10) see review guidelines
Bucking Fastard left this review about The Crown & Castle
Although covered in scaffolding,this street corner boozer was full of life on a Friday evening.The interior is open plan and quite small,dominated by an attractive U shaped bar extending into the pub and with exposed brickwork and well lit.There is bench seating in light brown leather,some dining type tables dotted about,some small high tables and bar stools.The muzak was enjoyable if a tad loud.At least the flatscreens were off.
The handpumps were unclipped ,the keg selection includes a lot of craft offering from decent brewers from which I chose Two Tribes Campfire,a hazy IPA making a decent half.
With no ale this would never be a destination pub for me,but for a quick bit of craft keg I thought it was decent and maybe your best option in the immediate area.
On 10th March 2024
- rating: 6
[User has posted 2727 recommendations about 2727 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Pub SignMan left this review about The Crown & Castle
This is a large open plan on a very busy intersection next to Dalston Junction Station. An entrance porch leads you into the single spacious room, with bare floorboards throughout, overlaid with a chequered design, a patterned tile ceiling and a mix of two-tone tongue and groove panels and exposed crumbling brick walls. Hard bench seating with nice cushions run around the perimeter, supplemented by chairs which also serve a small number of tables opposite the bar. To the rear left is a single table with low stools under some huge ugly pipes, the purpose of which is unclear. The bar is to the rear, slightly off centre, fronted by a square counter with a dark painted wood panel front, a metal top and a very short section of exposed brick wall around which the bar back is formed - presumably this is a former partitioning wall for a multiple bar setup. Behind the bar is a dark recess with metal frame shelving and cool backlighting which makes for an effective bottle display area. A large screen to the left of the servery was turned off, with 70s tunes playing quietly in the background instead. Windows down two sides allow a good amount of light in, despite the presence of some extensive venetian blinds, and have lots of potted plants on their sills. Decor is almost entirely non existent - one large plain mirror in an elaborate frame is the only feature of any note to break the monotony.
Sadly, the pub doesn’t offer a cask beer option, but they did have no fewer than 15 keg lines with beer from Camden, Beavertown and some US and European breweries. I tried the Old Street Brewery Infinite Bliss at £5.80 a pint and thought it was quite a tasty brew. A very upbeat barman busied himself throughout my stay whilst his polar-opposite, a distracted barmaid, dithered about, doing a whole load of nothing.
This place gets bonus points for its very handy location and decent selection of craft beers, but that’s about all. The open-plan interior is soulless and impersonal, the beer is expensive with no cask option and the service appears to be pretty hit and miss. Even if you’re tight for time before jumping on the Overground, there are other better options just a short distance from here.
On 14th August 2022
- rating: 5
[User has posted 3114 recommendations about 3114 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Tris C left this review about The Crown & Castle
It's not often that one gets to be the first person to review a 19th century pub, but that's because this one closed in 2001, was converted to restaurant use, only to reopen as a pub again in 2020.
The original pub was built in 1818 but I suspect that the current incarnation was rebuilt at a later date in the Victorian era. It's a very commanding pub, located right on Dalston junction. The façade features a ceramic depiction of both the eponymous castle and crown with the name applied to the parapet atop the corner splay. However, this ensemble is really rather tatty. There's also a good example of a green Watney Combe Reid roundel with stag motif to the left side - it's good to see these increasingly rare items of brewery regalia being retained. What is also of note is that the name of the pub has been applied to the fascia in the original Watney's typeface.
Once inside and it's clear that not one molecule of the original interior remains. There are large clear picture windows, beneath which there's a peripheral wooden banquette which wraps around the wall below the windows and features double electrical sockets. Walls seem to be clad with planking, the lower half slate grey, white above leading up to a white patterned tiled ceiling (and ugly aircon units) from which hang lights with multiple circular cells. Wall lights are white translucent spheres with exposed metal trunking. To the rear is a little bare brick but sadly a very ugly piece of industrial ductwork, presumably for the downstairs kitchen's air handling; to the left of this is a large rococo gold wall mirror. The bar features an attractive field panelled front with a little bare brick to the rear along with some exposed structural ironwork which is probably original. The floor is bare boarded, painted with an appealing checkerboard pattern of light and dark brown. Furniture is a mix of traditional old school chairs with restrained and quite attractive modern tables, each sporting a bottle of disinfectant gloop - necessary or not, a lot more attractive than bottles of sauce. Music played at an agreeable level and no TVs were in evidence. Lavs are good and modern with two cubicles, no less!
There seems to be a push towards cocktails here, no doubt favoured by the young trendy crowd, but there were also two banks of chrome founts dispensing craft ales, but sadly nothing real, my pint of Camden Pale being brought to my table by a very friendly barmaid, though at a very unfriendly £5.30; it wasn't too bad once it had warmed up and dispersed much of its CO2.
This is a decent modern take on a traditional pub and it's good to see that it hasn't fallen back on awful electronic entertainments or ugly thuggish interior features like huge metal lampshades.
I'd be interested to come here again if in the immediate vicinity, but it would really have to provide a couple of quality real ales - Hackney has no shortage of breweries and this should go down well with the local community, especially in these uncertain times as the borough is the spiritual home to hipsters and 'locally sourced' is always a winner.
On 24th September 2020
- rating: 4
[User has posted 1983 recommendations about 1949 pubs]