Sebright Arms

The slow decline of too many East End pubs is inevitable and depressing. The punters drift away, the paint peels, the pints turn sour in the lines; the clack of pool balls fades to silence and the Big D nuts go stale on their 'babe boards'. A planning notice goes up proposing change of use to residential or commercial purposes. Worse still, the building is torn down completely.

So seemed the fate of the Sebright Arms, a pub with a venerable tradition of Cockney barrel-rolling, joanna-tinkling and bawdy sing-alonging. Hidden up an alley off Hackney Road, it closed in 2009 and was scheduled for demolition. But now it's open again, and if our recent visit is anything to go by, is very popular. As is the way, there are no Barbara Windsors or Frankie Frasers drinking here any more - the crowd was young and resolutely trendy.

Perhaps some of the bustle is down to excitement about the food. Popping up in the kitchen for a two-month residency are the chefs from Lucky Chip, a guerilla grilling operation that has been flipping US-style burgers and hot dogs across the capital for the last year. Or perhaps the attraction is the focus on London beers - practically everything on draught and in bottle was brewed within the M25 (Redemption, Brodie's, Truman's London Fields, Meantime, Redchurch). Or maybe it's the entertainment (click here for details) - no longer the variety turns (or prizefighting) laid on in the good old days, but music and comedy instead provided by DJs, bands and comics, both in the main bar and downstairs function room.

The pub building is an unorthodox beauty - the new owners have wisely left the best features of this historical place unmolested. It's decked out floor to ceiling in early twentieth-century moulded nut-brown wood panels; there's a wonderful stained glass gantry and leaded windows. The Sebright Arms is dark, atmospheric and a great place to escape into.

So for once, a positive ending for a pub that looked surplus to requirements. The purists will bemoan the further trendification of east London, but at least they have somewhere nice to drown their sorrows