Bars & Pubs

By Ben McFarland

Hidden in a highfalutin Hampstead house just a two-minute walk from West Hampstead tube, the Czech & Slovak Club is nonetheless easy to spot: it’s the one with a cheesy statue of a chef holding up a menu outside. Inside it’s quirky and slightly stark: a social club as lodger in an Edwardian townhouse. Here since 1946, and partly funded from the pocket of former Czechoslovakian president Edvard Beneš, the club was set up for Czechs and Slovaks who’d fought in the British forces. It still caters to Czechs and Slovaks, as well as Hampstead types after a slice of kooky Cold War cool.

In the front room, portraits of Václav Havel peer down on white-linen diners while drinkers have two choices: either go authentically austere at the back or head for a cosy backroom that’s less barren, clad in brown and black leather and with a bona-fide Czech bar. Blessed with the sultry, spicy Saaz hop, Czech lagers are the best lagers in the world. Pilsner Urquell, the first ever golden beer, is poured alongside Budweiser Budvar on draught and Bernard, a deliciously dark, smooth-as-velvet revelation, in bottles.

If you are dining, it’s to be hoped you like dumplings, for this is Dumpling Dreamland: pork knuckle and dumpling; sauerkraut and dumpling; beef and dumpling; wild boar and dumpling; dumpling and dumpling. All hail the dumpling! Delicious, delicious dumplings.

If you have the will after your orgy of suet, there’s table football and an electronic dartboard, or you can settle back and enjoy television piped from the Czech Republic. The Czech version of ‘Deal or No Deal’ is just as baffling, but their Noel Edmonds isn’t nearly as creepy.

Time Out Issue 1990: October 9-16 2008