The Light

Alors qu’un établissement voisin regorgeait de monde pour le lancement en avant-​première de la Xbox One, c’était assez étonnant de voir comme l’endroit, assez visible, était vide et calme.
Drôle d’impression quand le vigile me demande ma pièce d’identité, et qu’il a sérieusement du mal à croire qu’il s’agit bien de la même personne en face de lui et sur la photo. J’ai franchement cru qu’il n’allait pas me laisser rentrer.
On commande à l’intérieur. La musique maxi-​forte nous pousse à nous installer en terrasse, malgré le froid. C’est pas désagréable, finalement, et ça donne une bonne raison de se réchauffer le sang à la bière.
Gros + pour le service, qui était vraiment adorable (si on oublie l’épisode vigile dubitatif).

Massive bar popular with the after work crowd. Nice outdoor area if you can get a spot.
We went here for a mates birthday last night and had a good time. The bar itself is nicely layed out, with lots of exposed bricks and seating. They have loads of bar staff which helps keep the queue for drinks moving quickly. The music last night was overly loud and in my opinion rubbish (mainly poppy-​house type stuff).
I wouldn’t recommend this but it’s not really my kind of place, I’m much happier in a proper pub, with some proper beers.

A great place for after-​work drinks, well located and close to good restaurants if you fancy a bite afterwards.

The Light Bar and Restaurant has several different areas, so I want to be clear up front that I was in the upstairs-​most part… the clubbish area, with pumping music, poor lighting, a huge queue at the bar, and a bunch of awkward all around.
Nonetheless, and despite a cover charge, I actually had a pretty good time, and I was sober the whole time. Most of the guys weren’t too creepy, the couches and seating arrangements were a creative use of the space, and the patio (while freezing) offered a really nice view of the city.
I can’t attest to the drinks, or the downstairs, but it definitely was a cool enough place that I’d consider going back with a group of friends. It’s a great location too, at the main intersection of Shoreditch High and Great Eastern.

Deux diners, deux très bons diners, mais plutot YES pour le salé, NAH pour le sucré
La 1ere fois, nous avons pris 3 entrées chacun au lieu de prendre un plat car les entrées avaient l’air plus «exciting». Niquel niveau quantité & qualité, sauf peut etre le «Potted Dublin Bay shrimps, crostini & lemon», plutot ecoeurant & «grossier»…Sinon le reste était fin et vraiment miam.
Pour la 2e fois, j’ai tenté un plat: «Smoked mozzarella & spinach ravioli, crispy baby artichokes, brown caper butter», délicieux aussi.
C’est pour les desserts que ca coince: le cheesecake a un nom qui fait rever (Caramelized pear & hazelnut cheesecake, sticky toffee sauce) mais on a eu un mini gâteau rond blanc — texture un peu gelée, soit pas du tout cheesecake… la poire et toffee sauce inexistant. Puis j’ai testé l’autre fois le hot chocolate fondant-​orange fondant, qui était assez bon mais pas spécialement mémorable.
Le cadre est aussi la raison pour laquelle je suis retournée plusieurs fois: haut plafond, murs en briques, ca fait un peu industriel reconverti, very nice.
Service au poil à chaque fois, et ont meme été très patient quand des amis sont arrivés avec 45min de retard et qu’il né restait que nous a 21h30 (on était en semaine)…
Seul détail bof à prendre en compte, surtout si vous etes en date: une odeur de sorte de fish&chips flotte dans la salle, et ca reste un peu sur les fringues et cheveux quand on sort du restau…

I’ve been here several times in the past two years, and most recently this past weekend. It’s exactly as I remember it– good place to start the night. The venue is huge; the downstairs and upstairs both have an outdoor area to get air or smoke. It closed around 2am, so we had to leave for another venue, but had a solid few hours of fun here! No strict dress code, saw some guys in suits but also jeans. Music was good, no cover to enter except for the £2 to get in to the upstairs dance floor, and I don’t think the bathrooms were disgusting (my standards for east London bathrooms: «not disgusting» is all I ask for).
I prefer it to Hoxton square bars, which have the opposite vibe– too small and too crowded.

Popped in for a pint on a strangely sunny Sunday afternoon in October. It was not too busy and the building is impressive, I’m glad those cool celebs helped to stop them from knocking it down, but the bar staff were struggling to serve everyone. There must have been, oooh, 6 people at the bar and 3 staff yet it still took in the region of 10 minutes to get our drinks.
Sheesh, I’d hate to see what it’s like on a Saturday night.

What? What did you say?
I think my visit to «The Light» left me both deaf and hoarse… what an awful place to go to if you want to catch up with a bunch of friends and are not on the hunt for single bankers (which are plentiful here). Seriously, I can only chime in with Thomas A. who so wisely put it: there’s no light at the end of the tunnel for me in here!
Granted, the interior of the place might be quite cool and stylish, but it just doesn’t convince me to like this place any more, because I seriously only understood half of what the people in my group were saying. (If this were a bunch of New Yorkers, they would know how to talk loudly, but us Europeans are just not used to shout in bars!)
On top of that, the bar staff was one of the least-​enthusiastic crowd I’ve come across in a long time… which probably explains why my Cosmo was as weak as my two-​year old niece. I guess they had never heard of the concept of «customer service» before nor did they know what it entails: eye contact, a smile, a little chat, a witty comment… and bam you’ve landed yourself a nice tip! Nope… they didn’t deserve that at all.
To sum up: I was not impressed of this place… but apparently many other people are, because the place was super-​crowded. (I guess there are lots of single bankers who want to get laid…)

I love coming here on a warm summer’s night (as few and far between as those may seem in London!) to have a few drinks with friends. The beer garden is nothing fancy; a bunch of picnic tables on some gravel. When the weather is nice you will have to queue. I do like the warehouse feel of the inside and the nibbles are good. Yes, there’s a lot of douchey bankers — but who says you have to talk to them? Stick with the people you know and forget everyone else!

In the honourable words of Chamillionaire (featuring the esteemed Krayzie Bone, of course):
They see me rollin’;
They hatin’.
Patrollin’
Tryin’ to catch me ridin’ dirty.
My music so loud;
I’m swangin’.
They hopin’
That they gon’ catch me ridin’ dirty.
You see, what these poets are trying to express is that people can hate all they want, but hate away while we enjoy ourselves in one of east London’s most spacious and sun-​soaked beer gardens. Sure the music inside is louder than a tuba in an enclosed concrete stairwell, and it’s, well, pretty dirty. But trust me, you’ll want to ride on back here once you spend an afternoon sitting outside, sipping cider and observing the regular clientele in their natural habitat.
That’s actually what the song is about: Not hatin’ when people see them ridin’ dirty over to the Light Bar. (Contrary to popular belief that it refers to the NYPD, using drugs while driving, and racial profiling. It’s a common misconception, really.)

Finally! A bar that caters to the stylistically vapid city worker with really bad bathrooms. God, I’ve been searching for ages!
Well, there wasn’t much of a light at the end of my tunnel for this one, though I think it could be an ok stop if you had a large group, but I can’t imagine you’d be able to hear said group if the place ever got busy with all the cement and noise reverb.
You’re on a bizarre cusp with this location, I think if you go a bit farther in either of a couple of different directions, you’ll get a better taste of whatever it is you’re looking for.

Ahhh, the joys of a bar full of twats wearing suits. The further joys of that said bar being empty late on a Monday night after a hard days work (yes I work!).
So I stumbled in here with a few Elites after our Sushi rolling event to experience what can only be described as a truly delightful cocktail. Mind you, at £7 a pop and with more champagne than anything else in it you can’t really go wrong. Actually it did have more than champagne in it, it had gin. Wow, I could do with one of those right now. As I said, the bar was empty, us and 2 other tables in there, its actually a nice place. But as they say you can take the boy out the street but not the street out the boy… same goes for The Light, you can take the boys out the bar but not the bar out the boys. They’ll come back, in their suits the next day, and the next, and the next.

I don’t mind The Light Bar, I really don’t.
It’s bloody mental in here on a Friday night — lots of post-​work suits trying to boss the place. You know, the usual.
I was most recently here on a Saturday and I found it to be a much more pleasant atmosphere — not too busy, space at the bar, good banter. Bar staff still seemed to be carrying that Friday night chip on their shoulder though, a little presumptive and hurried.
Not a bad place to meet up with others for a few drinks before heading off!

Over priced, packed and dirty.
Toilets always have a guy who wants a pound for turning off the dryers and then handing you a towel.
Avoid at all costs.

When did people start serving large glasses as standard?
As Jess’ partner in crime a few weeks ago, it really annoyed me when we weren’t asked if we wanted small or large glasses of wine. We were on our way to another party — I didn’t particularly want a goldfish bowl of wine in me before we got there. But, they make more money by not asking and that irked me. The barmaid would have swapped the drinks, but I bet she’s been told not to ask and that gets my goat.
I liked the outside bit of this bar, but after coming back on Friday last week, I promptly left. The inside is just horrible. Awful load music and overpriced drinks. The cusp of the city/​Shoreditch is always strange — you basically get suits who think they’re cooler than they are.
It’s safe to say if I’m in here again, it wasn’t my idea.

It’s a decent use of space here — the building is impressive and a half, and there’s plenty of room to sit, lean and be merry with lots of friends in a semi-​industrial-​chic environment.
Drinks are the usual fare to expect from an after-​work bar, however, be careful when ordering ‘wine’. You won’t get asked what size you want. Luckily, I’m open minded enough to be happy drinking large glasses of wine without a second thought (indeed, might not have noticed if my partner in crime hadn’t pointed it out). This is more than sneaky — I daresay they would actually take it back if you asked — but not a lot of us british lot would actually say something, would we now? Ruthless on the trading floor, useless at the bar…

Hmmm… The Light Bar. You have the potential of being very special.
1. Space:
You are spacious, split over two floors, you have an element of that urban glitz only Shoreditch can pull off, and your beer garden is lovely.
2. Clientèle:
You’d expect to find the well known twats that make Shoreditch infamous, yet you do not. The city boys slink over from down the road and inebriate themselves to often inadvisable proportions.
3. Staff and Stocks:
Well drinks aren’t cheap and I wouldn’t expect them to be. My colleague asked for a good draught beer (pre-​warning me the draught here was naff) and was told if he wanted a decent beer to have a bottle. This may be deemed as good customer service, I call it knowing your beer is pants and doing nothing about it. My glass of Chenin Blanc was good.
4. Conclusion:
So were my expectations matched? In a word, no! In more than one word, there is a simple element of class that stops this venue being a destination bar for me. If you can snaffle me a seat in the garden on a sunny day though, I may stay for one.

Ah, what fond memories I have had at the Light. This was THE go-​to place for company lunches and after work drinks when I used to work just around the corner from here. The Light is really like the lighthouse of grungy Shoreditch — its ambiance is great for casual or business dining. No wonder it is always packed!
Go to the sunny sit-​down area for lunch; for after work drinks, enjoy yourselves at the copious warehouse lounge area. The sit-​down dining area is a lovely with lots of natural light. It’s great during late spring to dine al fresco with a glass of rosé wine. The quality of food is decent for the price. Just keep in mind that the raw oysters are not always THAT fresh. However, the bar food is nothing special, but you wouldn’t know that unless you’ve downed a few.

The Light Bar is a really interesting building with high ceilings and wooden beams. It has a light and spacious atmosphere with both an outdoor seating area and two floors kind of open planned.
Now the food is crap, don’t eat here. I ordered the chicken with rosemary risotto & leeks. The chicken was overcooked and the leeks were soggy and at 16.50 you really would expect better. My girlfriend had the salad with walnuts grapes, pickled beetroot & Wigmore cheese which she said was ok but again not worth the 6 quid they are charging (too much leafs and not enough cheese).
They do not serve ales here either so I ended up with a beer. To sum up nice atmosphere when I was there, interesting décor but the food was not worth half what they were charging.

Just a regular, albeit expansive, bar. Ultra-​large television screens and the fact that there are other rooms to retreat to above the main lounge if it gets too crowded on the first floor are about the only things that set this place apart.
I’ve only been here for a couple political events (to see a televised Obama/​McCain debate and watch the blow-​by-​blow electoral dispatches throughout the U.S. presidential election night), which could easily skew my experience, but this place was jam-​packed on both nights; I spent the bulk of November 4^th-​5^th on the top floor… craning my neck to see the television above the masses.
Drinks didn’t seem expensive, but were also fairly typical… nothing standout about them (and it’s pretty hard to screw up a Jack and Coke). Yet, I have to say that the make-​up of the crowd was rather remarkable — slews of friendly young professionals who were articulate, sharp, and unafraid of striking up an interesting conversation… but again, it probably had to do with the fact that we were all mutually invested in the events of the evening… props to The Light for hosting us!

The Light bar is not the sort of bar I would go to very often. it’s full of city workers. It’s a pretty large bar with lots of exposed brickwork and high ceilings.
They have outdoor seating which is nice for summer drinks and an upstairs area which wasn’t open when I came here.
Good place to come for a quick drink.

At the base of Shoreditch High Street stands an old former electric light station. It is an impressive large spacious building with high ceilings and metal beams, and apparatus left over from its former days.
Due to the perfect positioning right next door to high rise city banks and offices they are battling developers wishing to demolish the building
is an online petition to help prevent this.
Light Bar is essentially a weekday bar and restaurant although open on a Saturday evening, the weekdays are the busiest. In summer it is the ultimate after work destination. With a huge outdoor seating area, most in the open but some undercover with outdoor heaters and tables a plenty! You can order really good nibbles to share with a group and just relax. Inside is a huge bar area downstairs with tables and a few sofas.
On a Friday evening they have a DJ upstairs, which is like a loft party area. Amazing views of the surrounding area and a lively terrace with tables and chairs. Friday night is extremely popular, the whole room is dancing and people are having fun, drunken fun, but fun all the same!
There is also a restaurant on the ground floor situated behind wooden framed glass doors. The restaurant s delicious but mainly occupied by work functions, city workers and business meeting types. I had a delicious meal of Elvy Valley Lamb and spiced baby squid for starter — delicious!