The Filling Station (a.k.a Shrimpy's)

I’ve always hated that all too familiar feeling of being judged for being drunk, chain-smoking my second packet of Malboro Reds and cooking on an open fire in a petrol station. Fortunately for me, being blessed with a near total misunderstanding of the concept of self preservation, I spend my holidays in crippled former Yugoslav republics where such behaviour is far more quotidian. 

For the rest of you, who I know have been dying to drink up and light up in a petrol station, The Filling Station (a.k.a. Shrimpy’s) is perfect. Of course, I’m a pretty cool guy so I think that The Filling Station lost a lot of its rough around the edges, ‘you might die here’ charm that us east London types love when it started serving prosecco and seafood instead of diesel oil. Then again, I don’t get a vote because half the stuff I drink may well be unleaded petrol and I wouldn’t know the difference.

To clarify, I really hope that nobody reading this genuinely considers themselves edgy enough to consider their local Texaco garage a good place to party. Health and safety, the criminal justice system, GCSE chemistry and the most basic of human survival instincts dictate that there are probably better places to spend your Friday night. One of those places is Shrimpy’s behind Kings Cross station. On the canal just off York Way, the forecourt of this former petrol station has been turned into a bar and grill which is sunny, spacious, airy and, most importantly, nothing like the Cleveland-dungeonesque basement bars we usually review. This makes it perfect for all of you engaging in our national pastime donning shorts and t-shirts and pretending you’re not cold.

In the interests of thoroughness I should mention that the Filling Station’s refurbishment began with the opening of Shrimpy’s restaurant in the former service station shop. I can’t tell you much about it because, as women often like to remind me, I don’t deserve nice things so the nearest I got to the restaurant was the toilet it shares with the forecourt bar. That was very nice though. I particularly liked the anti-heroin lights.

Now a quick word about the forecourt bar. You may find that it takes a very long time to get served. If this is the case you’ve probably fallen into the trap as most of the other people at this bar fall. You’ve seen the long single file line waiting for the bar, forgotten everything you ever knew about anything, decided that you are in fact an american tourist, assumed that this is how bars work now and joined the back of the queue. Don’t worry you’re not the only one. Fortunately I’m here to remind you that you’ve been in a bar before and this is patently not how they work. Just walk straight to the front and get served almost instantly. That’s what we did but then again most people hate us so swift service could be seen as something of a pyrrhic victory.

Once you’ve made your way to the front of the queue via whichever is your preferred route you’ll get your first glimpse of the food and drink menu. Somebody with more lyrical talent than me once said, ‘variety is the spice of life’. The clever folk at Shrimpy’s have come up with the compelling counterpoint of, ‘no it isn’t shut up’. The food menu is limited to meat or vegetable tortas, corn on the cob or a seafood bucket. Childhood memories of singing ‘there’s a hole in my bucket’ and 4am trips to KFC have given me a vague understanding of what a bucket is but what the seafood is I have no idea. This isn’t Mr Shrimpy’s fault as I never bothered to ask and I had just eaten a pizza so I didn’t order it. I also have no idea what a torta is. 

The drinks menu is equally simple: lager; cider; margarita; prosecco from a tap. In a round about way I mean this as a complement because beer that doesn’t say Carling on the side confuses me and the choice of whether I want garlic or chili sauce on my kebab is often too much for my pretty little head to worry about.

You get the point. You’re not going there to drink cocktails out of unicorn horns, discuss the relative merits of Tia Maria over Kahlua and wow your friends with how the extract of whogivesafuck has really brought out the flavour of your cocktail. You’re going there because it’s cool, it’s different and you’re so desperate to show off you’ve resorted to reading this blog. You’ll find a great place to enjoy the sun and look out over the canal with a beer discussing important  questions such as: ‘if I’m on a barge am I ipso facto a pirate?’; ‘can river people shrink your head?’; and ‘if that’s a seagull where is the sea?’.

King's Cross Filling Station 
Goods Way 
London 
N1C 4UR 

020 8880 6111 

www.kxfs.co.uk

House of Wolf

House of Wolf boldly describe themselves as: ‘a multi-sensory experimental pleasure palace’. We were keen to see whether it could live up to the hype.
This blog was born out of a hatred of shit bars rather than an appreciation of good ones and I have been looking forward to my first opportunity to go to town on some overrated shitheap. Unfortunately my first mercilessly scathing review is going to have to wait because Carlsberg don’t do cocktail bars but, if they did, they would be nothing like House of Wolf’s because Carlsberg is horrible and House of Wolf is great.
There seems to be something of a trend in London for serving caipirinhas and mojitos at 15 quid a pop to guys in suits rutting around Barrio East braying about how expensive their drinks are and, ergo, how fucking great they are. Well, I’d like to begin by assuring you that House of Wolf bucks this trend like water over a bridge.

Recently, we visited East London’s third best Lewis Carroll themed cocktail bar. I won’t do them the disservice of naming it, but it begins with 'C' and ends with ‘allooh Callay’. It won’t be featuring on this blog because I tend to assume that if nothing positive stands out in the sporadic memory-bytes of a heavy night, the bar was probably fairly pedestrian. That said, having sifted through the haze of broken images in my head-box, I remember a prolonged altercation with a barman in which he refused to serve me a ‘Lady Boy’ (if you don’t know what that is I suggest you start watching I’m Alan Partridge). In fairness, it was perhaps not the most fashionable order. But get over yourselves. I had done everything that this half-heartedly Jabberwocky-themed twat-den had asked of me: re-mortgaged my house to pay for their horrible Estonian lager; put up with rubbing shoulders with the self-entitled wankers that make up their clientele; not punched anyone in the face. I don’t think it was too much to ask for them to produce a couple of Lady Boys when, however bat-shit mental that may be, that is what I wanted.

House of Wolf, in stark and refreshing contrast, will produce anything you want. But that isn’t it. Their entire staff have been trained by the Delphic Oracle to produce the drink you want most in the world based on the most vague of instructions. With instructions such as, ‘he only likes lager and fags, what can you do?’ and, ‘can I have something that tastes of despair in a good way?’, they will work their magic. The result is a drink that is so much better than what you thought you wanted that it will make you question your ability to ever decide what’s in your own best interests ever again. Of course, I’ve never been able to get even the slightest inkling as to what my own best interests are so I’m rather hoping that I can hire one of their bar staff as my carer because I can't be trusted and it seems they know what's best.

Once you’ve had a bespoke cocktail and decided that you trust the bar staff with your taste buds, sobriety and credit card, I would strongly suggest an alcoholic experiment in the ‘Apothecary’. The House of Wolf’s Apothecary is the forum that inspired J.K. Rowling’s portrayal of potions classes, discovered what Tiggers really like and is the alma mater of Professor Wheeto. And that’s all true (it isn’t). Never has numbing your mind with hard liquor entailed such a degree of artistic merit as it does when exploring the Apothecary cocktail list. With everything from popping candy to Szechuan flowers making up the ingredients, the cocktails are a sensory experience akin to losing your virginity: excitement; followed by confusion; followed by euphoria; followed by a nagging regret that you finished it so quickly; followed by a lifelong desire to do it again and again.

At this point I should mention that, because I’m a child and I only like new shiny things, I never made it past the Apothecary cocktail list. Can you blame me? They’re served with edible desert islands and blocks of cheese. However, the other writers on this blog moved on to the House Cocktail list. They’re idiots so the only feedback I could get was ‘I want to go for a kebab on the way home’. However, had they spent more of their lives training to be sommeliers and less getting drunk behind bins I’m sure they would have said something like: ‘I enjoyed some creative twists on the classics as well as some totally new flavours. They were a pleasure to drink and came at a very reasonable price’.

Of course, you don’t always want a cocktail that is infused with black pudding, designed by NASA and produced by Gandalf (actually, I do, I want to stay there and never leave). Sometimes you just want one of the classics. House of Wolf’s non-exhaustive list of classic cocktails, all at £7.50, with a promise to make anything that isn’t on the list, is exactly how classic cocktails should be done. I like a Martini as much as the next man, but I don’t like B@1 bar staff pretending that there’s anything complex about making one.

What makes House of Wolf great is the imagination and creativity that goes, not only into their cocktails, but into everything they do. From the decor to the food menu the House of Wolf offers something new and different and borderline arousing to the London overindulgence scene. Of course, we didn’t try the food because we’re kebab-munching pikeys.

What makes House of Wolf the best cocktail bar in London is that all of this comes without an ounce of pretension. With cocktail ingredients listed as ‘some stuff from the garden’, vintage Placebo and Bloodhound Gang playing through the speakers and staff who are happy to indulge idiots like us, the whole set up is a relaxed and enjoyable beacon of hope in the all-too-wanky London drinking scene.

Well done, and can I come and live in you?
181 Upper Street,
Islington,
London
N1 1RQ

020 7288 1470

www.houseofwolf.co.uk