Manero's

After something of a hiatus following our really quite unacceptable behavior in several of these bars that we profess to love so much; we’re back, and we’re going back to our roots by telling you about a weird bar we found when we were drunk that’s located underneath a kebab shop. 

Manero’s is a yellow door located on Kingsland Road about halfway between Shoreditch High Street and Dalston Junction – it doesn’t seem to have any distinctive features apart from aforementioned bright yellow door, and entry is via knocking or a buzzer. I discovered it using the skills I picked up during my ill-spent youth in Wales, vis-à-vis; someone saying ‘go on, knock on that door, see what happens’ and the understanding that everyone fucking legs it if anyone angry answers. 

Luckily for us, no one angry answered, a very nice bloke who promised to give me a treat if I followed him into his basement did. Always one to think the best of people, as well as one to ignore those videos they make you watch in Primary School, I promptly obliged. 

Manero’s calls itself a ‘Private Members Club’, but this doesn’t seem to have any real meaning, all they ask is that you ‘please be nice’. Surprisingly enough, we managed to stick to this rule long enough to not be unceremoniously thrown out or have any threats of calling the appropriate authorities leveled against us. 

It's a dimly-lit bar with an eclectic mixture of furniture that mostly looks like it was left to the place by eccentric great aunts; in short then, brilliant. The bar itself is very small, apparently the capacity of the place is only 69 (hee hee hee). I was going to make a very immature joke about that being just the right size and number for an orgy but I’d rather just lazily throw in the fact that I’d already thought of it and let you fill in the punchline. Any laughs you gain from this are of course, as a result of my dazzling wit, not yours, so please be aware of that. 

At one end there’s a window through which all the drinks are served, and at the opposite end of the room is a raised stage bit where you can sit to drink them. I liked this, as it made me feel a bit like the central character in some sort of gritty and urbane stage play. Then again, as a self-centred narcissist with what has been described as a ‘feeble’ mind, I always feel like this, and everyone else in my life I see as basically glorified props. Basically, this stage-area bit fed my already inappropriately large ego, and you should go and sit in a big leather-backed chair and imagine you’re in the 50s and married to a woman called Marjorie for a bit too. It’s great. 

The drinks were mainly cocktails, and for once, I decided to forgo my usual pathway of obnoxiously asking for ‘lovely lager’ until I’m either given one or told ‘please, this this a garden centre’ and have to leave. The cocktail I was made was called the something-or-other, and I believe my peers had respectively, the whats-its-face and the forgotten-what-its-called. Look, I’d been drinking heavily and I’ll confess I forget what I had, but it was delicious, as was everything I had in there. Manero’s has that rarest of things; a bartender who is actually a bartender and knows his drinks, rather than some dickhead who can catch ice in a fucking cocktail shaker and doesn’t know his Bellini from his Bellend. 

Basically, Manero’s is a weird, dark basement underneath a kebab shop in East London that not many people know about, and that’s sort of the whole point of this blog. It looks cool, it has great drinks, and I like it there. Thanks for the great night Manero’s. And thanks for not bumming me in the back like in Pulp Fiction. That's always a plus.

J. Clee

Manero's
232 Kingsland Road,
London
E2 8AX

members@maneros-london.com

facebook.com/APrivateMembersClub