Part of our Best Pubs in London microsite. Is your local listed?
F. Cooke's pie shop was a legendary stopover on Kingsland High Street for well over a century before it closed in the mid-1990s. So much so that much of its tiled interior has been preserved through subsequent tenancies of the shop, including a Chinese restaurant and a board game cafe. Its latest regeneration sees the retro-caff interior converted to pub use, bringing a different kind of liquor to the parsley sauce of yore.
The Black Eel, as it's been appropriately named, is a truly magnificent pub. We can't recall being so impressed by any newcomer... ever. The front room alone would be enough to give the place superstar status. Exale Brewing have done a marvellous job of blending the historic tiles-and-mirrors interior with the trappings of a modern pub. It's almost incidental that they've filled it with the best range of beer in Dalston.
But this is just the beginning... be sure to explore through the small doorway at the back, for it leads into a whole range of further elegant spaces. The 'ball room' is more of a parlour, resembling the sort of drinking den that Antic pubs used to revel in, only less tatterdemalion.
The linking corridor, meanwhile, has several inviting corners to snuggle away in. This all leads to a games room at the back, with shuffleboard, table football and darts. This place is huge.
And it keeps going. At the very back, a poorly marked door leads out into a generously sized beer garden. This looks like it could hold a couple of hundred people on a summer's day. It even comes with its own boat, holding up the fairy lights in the middle of the garden, and a pétanque court.
Even the food is top class. A residency by Mediterranean-specialist Riley's brings small plates of goodness to whichever of the dozens of tables you happen to sit at. On Sundays, a roast menu materialises.
On paper, then, the Black Eel is one of the most impressive and feature-filled pubs in the capital. If it can attract the audience it so richly deserves then it could easily find itself on 'Best Pubs in London' lists in the very near future. Business can be slippery in these expensive times, but the Black Eel has success baked in.
