Bars & Pubs

By Ben McFarland

The Crown & Anchor is burrowed in the back streets behind Euston Square station on the corner of Drummond Street, a road renowned for its dazzling array of vegetarian Indian restaurants. Given the transient nature of the area, it’s surprisingly cosy and welcoming with friendly, foot-forward staff, while a number of deft decorative touches make it a lot more distinctive than the ordinary exterior suggests. Each individual window pane has been given over to some funky art. What looks like green bamboo pan-pipes poke down from the ceiling, grapes are draped above the wines, there’s some flashy fairy lights and some imaginative ‘installations’ involving coffee cups and spoons, all laid out to a funky folk soundtrack.

Some grandiose giggle juice is on hand, with real ales from Black Sheep Brewery, Fuller’s and Everards served in handled jugs alongside Erdinger, a fine fruity wheat beer from Bavaria, California’s Sierra Nevada, Budweiser Dark from the Czech Republic and Früli, Leffe and Chimay from Belgium, all served in the correct glassware. Which is good.

Tickled with the Mediterranean and North African stick, the Crown's food menu flits between pub classics (burgers, fish and chips) and the slightly more quirky (Moroccan lamb tagine, chargrilled halloumi and parsnip crisps). The club sandwich was a little too indulgent.

There are no plasma screens, fruit machines, vulgar price-promotion posters or anything to distract one from eating, drinking and, like a gun fight in a French cheese shop, shooting the breeze. Which is also good. Notwithstanding a paper-perusing, pint-sipping old fellow, it’s a multi-cultural mix of clientele, with tourists, in-the-know workers and some pre-curry trade, slightly distracted by some seriously loud whispered anger from a furious French female. Whatever her mari did, ‘Je suis désolé’ may not be enough.

Time Out Issue 1985: September 4-10 2008