The Vine. This may be one of the oldest pubs in the Borough. There's been a pub here for hundreds of years, when it was all fields round here. Not this building of course, it's late Victorian, but a pub of this name has been on this site for yonks. Which accounts for its odd position set back off the road slightly.
And that is the only interesting thing about the pub. Everything else is a bit dull really. I met an old pal, drank some lovely beer - Dark Star Partridge 4% - and had a lovely time. Everyone was cheery and very friendly, the bar staff, other customers, my pal's pals. Even the fancy gastro food was nice. They do take-aways here incidentally - who would order a take-away from a pub?? Takes allsorts I suppose. There was a terrible quiz going on, but I felt a bit sorry for the quiz-master and his distorting PA as I'm sure only two teams were doing it. At least three others who'd paid to enter were just ingoring him. And rightly so - I can't stand pub quizzes. Do Bamboozle if you want a quiz!
So a good time was had by all, but the problem is that this pub is big, empty, cold and has no atmosphere. Often the curse of pubs that have recently been done up. Pubs rarely benefit from being 'done up'. Am I wrong? Anyways, two nice things caught my eye - all the old photos of Camden upstairs (not uncommon in pubs these days, but I'd not seen these particular ones before) and the mosaic doorstep. And the's the Vine.
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