The Shakespeare

Best Pub Food I had so far. I’m really not that much into Rosemary, but the Rosemary flavoured fries are awesome! And they only cost 1£ as a side dish. The Shakespeare’s club sandwich was super yummy as well. A friend of mine ordered the burger and he was loving it (it really looked super tasty and juicy). Aside from the food I do like the atmosphere of this pub… and the cosy sofas and armchairs.

I thought this place was great! My family and I are tourists and it is right by one of the Big Bus Tour stops. There was a wait, but my family and I were in no hurry. It was nice to sit and soak up the ambiance of our surroundings. I had the fish and chips which were very yummy. My parents shared a platter and they both seemed to enjoy it. I was unable to finish my fish because the portions were very large, and my parent gobbled it right up. I truly enjoyed it!

Cute little place with blackboards scrawled with Shakespeare’s lines about libation. Great atmosphere. Service was meh and unfortunately so was most of the food. We dropped in because we thought it looked charming from the outside.
I had the Shakespeare club with the soup of the day, which was potato and leek. The soup was bland and watery. Our tables did not have S&P and the waitstaff were eating their own lunches between taking orders. My sandwich actually had a piece of plastic IN it, similar to a tine of a plastic fork. When I brought it up to a passing server (not ours), he took the plastic from me and apologized halfheartedly. I still had to pay for my meal. My friend quite enjoyed her pizzaola steak and mash, but they got the order of her food wrong and most of us were nearly done eating by the time her entrée came out.
I will say that the fried pizza dough strips were very tasty– the only redeeming thing about my visit there!

Spent the day running around acting like the tourists we were. Stopped in for a drink and a bite. Went back to my roots and tried the burger and a Guiness. The Guiness was perfect as usual but the burger… oh boy. It came out cooked very well done and had a strange taste. I realize I may be the typical snobbish American tourist. I can live with that but don’t eat he burgers!

Don’t be fooled by the exterior aspect of this pub, it does look creepy on the outside, but once inside, you will find a very artsy decoration, and great drinks served by friendly staff.
If you wish to eat there, excellent idea, as they have a nice selection of very tasty pizzas (all cooked by an Italian chef), as well as delicious pub food (including one of the best burger & chips I’ve had in London).
Added to the fact that Shakespeare HimSelf lived nearby, this place is one to recommend, for sure !

Edging through the door, we were met with a room in near-​darkness. Half-​closed blinds let only chinks of light through, and red curtains covering the windows gave this pub an eerie look, bathing everything in a red light. Stepping deeper inside, I honestly wondered whether we had stumbled into a séance!
Even the light over the pool table had red bulbs, making it very hard to make out which was the white ball and which were yellows. When the white ball got stuck in the table, the staff told us to just kick it until it came out.
The bar had a couple decent drafts on, Adnam’s Broadside being the best of the bunch, but nothing too interesting or unusual here. It was 2for1 on (pretty standard) cocktails when we visited, a fact we only knew from being told by a friend, as it was not advertised anywhere.
The pizzas, as other reviewers have mentioned are absolutely fantastic, and at half price on a Saturday a bargain worth getting in on. I would have bumped my score up to 3 stars for the pizza alone, were it not for the snail-​paced service. It was not particularly busy, and although we were standing at the front of the bar it took us over 15 minutes to get served. Others from our table actually came to find out where we’d gone BEFORE we were able to get our order in. Between then and the meal actually being put in front of us took so long we began to wonder whether our order had got lost or ignored somehow.
I might only ever come to The Shakespeare again for lunch, and even then only if I have nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon.

Great candle lit atmosphere! A broad selection of reasonably priced beers wines, cocktails and mixed drinks! An excellent home-​made authentic Italian pizzas, pastas and burgers (most less than £10) made by real Italian chef! Top notch taste and value! Friendly mix of people chilling, chatting, eating, playing pool or darts in a classy yet casual atmosphere. Nice music sets an upbeat classy mood without being too loud to have a great conversation with mates!
In short — I love this place!

Stop #6 — Barbican
Rarely does a pub fill me with such joy as the Shakespeare just a hop and a skip (no jump necessary) from Barbican station. It’s a fairly unassuming looking place, perched as it is on a corner spot but once you’ve entered and wound your way to the bar it starts to take on more charm. By 2.30pm on this Saturday afternoon, it had started to attract its regulars (or perhaps they’ve been there all morning) who were dotted around reading the paper and having a friendly chat.
Then we busted in, 15 strong, and bellowing at each other across the bar. Jaegerbombs were quickly served and knocked back and as we were about to leave we noticed a pool table in the corner. Great news for us, terrible luck for the poor sods who just wanted a quiet pint away from the wife. Balls were racked, bets made, and we were off in an impromptu tournament where pints were the wager and double or nothing standard fare. Apparently, my skill at ball games improves as I drink (based solely on beer pong and pool) so I won the first few before getting cocky and wagering it all on the last game. I’m not sure if I won or lost but someone bought me drinks at the next two pubs so let’s call it a win.
The downside was that we were told off a few times for being too loud, a first for me in a pub (being told off… not being loud). But I guess to be fair it was early in the day and this isn’t the place you come to get smashed before a night out. More a quieter night in with friends. But still one of my favourite pubs on the crawl.
Drink of choice: Jaegerbomb!

So, I admit, I would never have walked into this pub had I not needed to use a toilet badly.
If it’s any indication of what I had been up to, I had been travelling up from Gordon’s Wine Bar at the Embankment after consuming a bottle of wine and was trying to get off the Tube at Farringdon to do some more drinking. Except Farringdon station was closed for one reason or another (I’m not sure the Tube people even had a reason), so I got off at Barbican instead. I had the Shakespeare in my sights as soon as I emerged from underground and marched straight across the street.
Perhaps against my better judgment.
You see, the Shakespeare looks like a straight-​up local boozer of a pub. The kind that’s not particularly friendly towards out-​of-​towners, you know? Despite there being a hoard of local geezers standing outside the door smoking with their pints in hand, thanks to some good ol’ alcohol-​fuelled disregard, I barged right on by them.
‘You cold?’ they asked.
‘Yes, very,’ I answered.
‘You’re from America?’ they continued.
‘Yep,’ I said as I kept walking straight toward the toilets.
After I had the most wonderous pee of life in some pretty glamorous toilets for a pub, I figured it’d only be courteous of me to purchase a drink from the barman. The availability of beer was pretty good, and the selection of liquor was better than I would have expected to find, in all honesty. One of the locals came over and had a nice long chat with me and my sister, mostly about how my sister had come to visit me from Orlando, Florida and how he had taken a holiday there (most of my conversations with random English people transpire along these lines…).
All in all, I was impressed by my time at the Shakespeare.
Sure, it’s TOTALLY a local pub. But the locals there sure are friendly. The drinks were good, and the surroundings were top notch.