The Shoreditch

Sad to see this place not getting much love among the older reviews — but for a weeknight cocktail sesh this week it was great! Helped a lot by the excellent barman — funny, friendly and set one of our drinks on fire just for the fun of it even though he only had an audience of 3. Maybe I’m just a closet pyromaniac but I was loving it (and who knew cinnamon was so flammable?!).
It was 2-for-£10 happy hour and he let us delay one of the drinks until later as we were an odd number. The cocktails we tried were all tasty and nicely non-​watery — I love elderflower flavouring so my Gin Garden ended up disappearing very speedily. I also liked the amount of fresh berries on my sister’s Happy Buddha which she left for me to eat.
It’s a bizarrely eclectic mix of décor inside but it’s all part of the charm, from the delicately-​painted parasols on the ceiling to the tiki-​style cocktail menus to the glittery murals at the entrance. It’s not swanky or themed or particularly differentiated then (confused interior décor aside), but hey it does offer booth seating, quiet weeknights and better music than the pub. Oh and a bartender who likes to burn stuff. Win.

It’s a fun place with good music. The downside is the cover charge £5 for girls, £10 for guys. I ordered a Long Island iced tea for about £12 (I guess this is average for a club). I thought the coolest part was it had 2 floors. The upstairs is where the main bar & DJ is. The downstairs is where the «disco“‘is. It’s a fun atmosphere with everyone dancing & having a good time. It’s your typical club with that gross couple who needs a room but overall it was pleasant.

Popped in for a cocktail last night during Happy Hour — great décor and chilled ambience, not too busy so we got served quickly and plenty of seats available. The cocktails were definitely both tasty AND booze-​y, ust how a cocktail should be! I had the Coconut Caipirinha and it definitely packed a punch. At two for a tenner during the Happy Hour until 8pm (doesn’t have to be the same cocktail either which I approve of!), it’s a great place to grab cocktails and enjoy Shoreditch without spending a bomb!

Went here for a friends birthday so we were based in the basement! The music was crazy loud so we mainly stayed near the bar even though we’d booked a table by the dance floor.
We missed happy hour so the cocktails were pretty expensive (around £9-£14). There are definitely better places you can go for that price around shoreditch. Drinks were also served in plastic cups, not as pictured.
The shoreditch has a kind of cheap club vibe: friendly but rammed and full of guys trying to pull. There’s also an extremely pushy toilet attendant who is reluctant to give out tissue paper without some form of tip.
When I first arrived someone had passed out and they didn’t seem to handle it too well. After trying to resuscitate her she was carried up the stairs by her arms and legs. Struggling, she was dropped a few times and her top was coming off. Not the most dignified.

Really nice music, average prices, nice spacious dance floor and fancy looking cocktails :) great for a Saturday night out

Great atmosphere, good music and had a great happy hour. We got there at 7.30pm and happy hour finished at 8. So we stocked up on cocktails. They had a good selection to choose from and they were 2 for £10 so great for London prices

This review is for the 2 Saturday nights I recently visited. Good music, different tunes on the ground floor and in the basement, and decent cocktail pricing.

The shoreditch is a place for cheap booze and that’s it. When their happy hour’s finished, run away from that place, and do it quickly! BTW, don’t order any food, they will say that the kitchen is outside, and probably is one of that chicken cottage clones places, because we ordered the £9 beef burger, and it looked (also tasted) as «crappy» as one of those £1 burgers with chips.

Not a bad bar, but I wouldn’t specifically go here…
The happy hour was decent, 4 piston head lagers (cans) or two cocktails for a tenner. That’s decent by most standards (any northerners gasping in horror at this, I’m sorry, this is London, that’s cheap here, I feel your pain).
It’s not the most exciting place, the outside seating is weird and uncomfortable, the inside seating has almost no leg room, you have these U shaped sofas, then a table in the middle that takes up pretty much all of the room, but that’s not really a big issue.
Generally it’s a solid 3/​5, if you’re in the area and fancy a drink, and aren’t feeling particularly picky, by all means pop in. If you want a conversation the music can be quite loud (even at 7pm on a tuesday) so bear that in mind.
So, that’s my advice, go here if you’re not feeling picky. Otherwise don’t, brewdog is nearby and significantly better.

Interior isn’t great and neither are the cocktails!

I can see the reviews for this place aren’t great, however I’m sticking with my 5 star rating. I’ve been here many times and have never had a bad experience. The atmosphere is always fantastic, lively, fun. Music is good, the crowd are great and I’ve always made new friends everytime I go in there. The bar staff are great too, I love the fun cocktails on offer which are always presented very well. I love the bright colours and general mish mash décor of the place. There’s a great little downstairs area too when upstairs gets really busy. Highly recommended!

I came for a surprise birthday bash, on my way in I was asked if the gift I brought in was alcohol, yes, a bottle of Rum. It was taken off me to be stored in the security office, wasn’t happy with this as 1, it was my friends gift and 2) It could be seen in the window by people coming in so could’ve spoilt the surprise. I spoke to the manager who spoke to the door staff and agreed I could bring it in on the promise of not consuming it in the venue. Obviously I agreed. We went downstairs for the main do, we had a small area reserved which soon filled up and other people were coming down as there is a strange/​small dance are in the room next door where music was playing. The décor is not great, the atmosphere was great, but due to the party guests not the place. The drinks post 8pm were overpriced, hopefully to save up for redecorating and the staff were quite abrupt at the end of the night in trying to get people out. I wouldn’t recommend it for the area, although it didn’t spoil a great party, that’s more down to the people than the venue though.

Pretty run down bar, especially the toilets and everything could do with a little bit of care and attention. Good value for money if you can get there before the end of happy hour at 8 o’clock but £8.50 for a single and mixer afterwards. Downstairs can get really hot and a bit too cramped at the weekend and the drinks selection is quite as comprehensive down there either.
The bar staff were a little difficult to deal with during a birthday party that we had an area for and ended up throwing out a couple of items that were left with them. With so much other choice in the vicinity there’s not much to draw you in through the door.

Set in a very cosy and disco environment, this bar is the perfect place for after-​work drinks with a twist. Great cocktails, best enjoyed at Happy hour prices (2 for 10£), very friendly staff, a disco downstairs… What else ???

I went to The Shoreditch as part of a bar crawl through the neighborhood, which perhaps means that my experience was not typical, but I was there for quite a while, suggesting that maybe it was.
Here’s what I liked!
+ cool decorations
+ good music
+ I think I saw cake???
+ good drinks and good drinks specials
Here’s what was a bit tougher!
— space, or rather the lack of it
— hiding the bar at the back where the crowd gets impenetrable
— a strange mix of seating and walking space that leaves everyone begin bumped into
So it was a mixed bag. I think it maybe just wasn’t my kind of place, but I can certainly see how it could be fun. It’s worth a shot, if only for being a «namesake» of the neighborhood.

I was just passing through London with a friend, and at 1.30 am on a Wed night, we were not ready to go to bed yet.
We stumbled upon the place, and because we were not expecting anything more than a late-​night pub with more drinken folks than we were, we were happilly surprised to find a cool Disco-​esque place of a bar, actually playing groovy 70s music (how rare these days!), with all kinds of cool and quirky people having fun, no show offs, just folks having fun.
We made friends quickly and got to try the crazy cocktail bowls (they were actually served in a fish bowl!).
What happened later is another story (see comment about the cocktail fish bowl), but I will definitely return on my next London trip. Fun night.
Quite surprised seeing the other posts. I was just a tourist so maybe my impressions were due to my lack of knowledge of the culture in the area. Still, would kill to have that kind of place in my neighborhood in Paris.

I had a uniquely bad experience at The Shoreditch, but from reading the old reviews, it seems I am not alone.
It was the night of the Olympic ceremony and we were wandering Hoxton looking for a place that wasn’t too crowded where we could watch them and get a drink. We found this bar that was full but not crowded and hopped in.
The Shoreditch is going for a kind of camp feel. Red lights, things attached to the ceiling (disco balls, umbrella, even a bearskin rug) and leather couches. Somewhere between tacky and classy disco, you’ll find The Shoreditch.
This is a dance club and they’ve got a pretty impressive sound system. However, they have to know when to use it. They had the Olympics on their giant screen near the front and the TV in the back. And halfway through the opening ceremony that everyone was watching with rapt attention, the DJ kicked on, the sound of the ceremony was cut and music started to blast.
As you could imagine, people weren’t pleased. Giant rounds of, «Booooooo!» filled the place. Only when the complaining got so loud did they turn off the DJ and turn back to the ceremony. Come on guys, read the room.
Drinks during happy hour were cheap (it was 4 bottles for £10, nice) and the fod was reasonably priced. I ordered a falafel sandwich and my friend ordered a chicken sandwich. It took me about 40 minutes to get mine, but that’s because they were very busy as the Olympics went on. It was solid, a big platter of falafel, veggies, some cut up pita and fries for about £9, I enjoyed it.
However, my food came and I had enough time to devour the entire plate and my friend still hadn’t gotten hers! A chicken sandwich. What was taking so long? They kept saying it would be coming but then, it didn’t. It took forever but finally it arrived, way way late. They did give us three free shots to make up for the time, which was nice, but they were bubblegum flavored drinks (bleh) and still didn’t make up for the fact that it took literally an hour and a half to cook chicken. Yikes.
Maybe it’s better as a dance club … but then again, maybe not.

I was very unimpressed by this place. My lady friend and I came here on a Saturday late afternoon with a LivingSocial voucher. (We actually came by in the early afternoon but there were zero customers at that time so we decided to come back later rather than be the only ones. I just feel awkward in those situations sometimes.) There were about two or three people when we stayed for good at around 16:30.
The place itself is nothing special. It smells very strongly of fruity shisha, although the aroma emanates from the many, many candles that are scattered about the place. The décor is eclectic and brings to mind some sort of tacky tiki bar. Some of the seats in the booths had blatantly ripped cushions that, honestly, didn’t look very good.
We had 30 quid to spend from our voucher, so we got the meat and cheese fondue, a large salad and a pint of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (fondue £20, salad £7, beer £5, which all came to £32 so I paid £2 on top of the voucher). After placing this order at the bar (because the waitress «hadn’t arrived yet») we went to our seats (with ripped cushions) and started waiting. We ended up waiting about 30 – 40 minutes, in fact, without even getting the beer. Eventually my partner was fed up and went and asked for the beer, which we then received, and the food, which we received about 10 minutes later.
The food was not worth the wait. The fondue was incredibly disappointing. For you see, apparently they are in the habit of using cream of potato soup instead of cheese. Is this normal practice? I’ve never seen it and now that I’ve had it I can say: I don’t like it. It was watery and you may as well not have dipped anything in this soup because barely anything stuck to the chicken/​bread/​sausage/​olives/​tomatoes that were included with the fondue. Also, are these typical fondue accompaniments? Anyway, the salad was pretty decent and the Sierra Pale, to my surprise, was in great condition.
The missus and I had a good laugh about our experience; the jokes practically wrote themselves as I picked chunks of onion and potato from our fondue pot. Perhaps this place is better in the evenings. Fine fair enough. But if this is the case, why do they open at noon and offer truly poor service and food? The combination of the beaten-​up setting, long wait and lackluster food was enough for The Shoreditch to earn my fifth one-​star review.

Last days with it mock art deco styling and the efforts of beautifully dressed flappers and dandies was sadly less Evelyn Waugh than Irvine Welsh. By trying to be a speakeasy, a cocktail bar, a club and an entertainment venue; Last days has spread itself rather thin and ended up all confused.
There might have been good glimmers– like the tiled wall 20s video projects which made things all pixilated and the rather good burlesque dancers; but alas, I rather feel that Last Days, might be seeing it’s last days soon.
The Good– Some people really made an effort to fit into the 20s theme– props to the girls who were in their grannies’ cool wardrobes. Pretty cute guys.
The Bad– Couldn’t really see the naked girls, drinks weren’t up to standard (apart from a very well made Old Fashion)
The Ugly– Extreme floor stickiness. Lots of girls wearing super tight low cut dresses that showed urm, EVERYTHING. We are only here to see the boobies of the burlesque girls, dears.

I had a nice evening out but it failed to culminate into something special. I think many of these reviews are fair, the Last Days of Decadence falls short of being particularly great. At the end of the day it’s just a standard dive bar, with fun music and expensive drinks that has illusions of glossiness.
The Good —
I enjoyed looking at the clothes and lovely hair pieces of those who did dress up in the 20s style. I also found the other club goers I spoke to be friendly, and unpretentious.
I liked the decco-​décor, the leather seating in the ladies’ toilets and the fact that there was a Portuguese language lesson tape piped into the cubicles. You never know when you need to brush up.
Like most club nights based on the eras gone by, the 1920s theme is generic and broad. According to the DJs here, there were only 5 records produced in the twenties, and so they played records from twenties onwards to the sixties, with a mix of the old kind of R’n’B and jazz. Fun to dance to, and to watch. There were some expert dancers in the crowd who could really move.
The Bad —
You could indeed pretend for a minute you were back in a different time, well that is until you went downstairs which bought you back to reality with a crack.
Call me indulgent, but I think for the place to be truly decadent it would need to have working air-​conditioning units. The downstairs cabaret/​club area was so hot and uncomfortable, it emptied out as soon as the acts were over, with everyone dancing in the bar upstairs.
Saying that there was a good mix of acts on the cabaret — and it was mostly entertaining. Although I thought the band they put on was way too rocky and boring to seem appropriate. Props to the chav-​esque act of our compere Kiki, who proved Croydon can do burlesque too.
The Indifferent —
However the stage area wasn’t very well suited to watching the one man show style of the cabaret. It wasn’t very high — if you weren’t in the front rows you could not see at all. Similar to what they provide for the blind people watching TV, I needed to provide audio descriptions for some of my friends. Interesting when it comes to describing a burlesque striptease. How many synonyms are there for nipple tassels?