London Pub Crawl a Beer F1 Grand Prix

A colleague is new in town and asked me to go for a pint in the centre, so I decided to give him a small tour and show him a few of my favourite places. We met at Waterloo station to get on our grid position waited for the fifth lights to switch off and started towards Embankment, our first pit stop for refuelling was at Gordon’s Wine bar. Probably my favourite if I’m in a Wine State of Mind, one of the oldest bars in London, established in 1890 with a lot of character and a amazing cavern lighted by candles.

Gordon's Wine Bar

We continue north towards Covent Garden and couldn’t resist to stop to change tyres in Porterhouse. Yes the Irish pub, with their microbeers, my favourite definitely the Plain, I love to go to the place on St Patrick’s and if you’re lucky sometimes in the tables to the left there is an Irish traditional band drinking and playing folk music on Sundays afternoon. If you want to read more you can have a look at a previous post.

The Porterhouse 

The Options

We kept going in the area and got to Punch & Judy, amazing pub in a sunny day, their terrace overlooking the Covent Garden piazza is just amazing, you can see the street artists performances and enjoy a pint of lager.

The View from the Pub

Then we hit the accelerator for the last laps passing chicanes and went to China Town in one of the curves we found a Scottish group that came for rugby match quite peculiar, I felt like in the middle of a mix between Mario Bros the movie and A Clockwork Orange. So our final stop for a splash and dash was De Hems the Dutch pub. Nice place, good selection of beers, and usually a busy place. Finally, we successfully ended the race now we can go to the podium to celebrate and open the champagne.

Only in London

De Hems

De Hems

All this F1 analogy reminds me the Seinfeld episode “The Race”.

George: I can't believe you're really going out with a woman named Lois.

Jerry: I know, finally. But George, guess who her boss is. Duncan Meyers.

George: Duncan Meyers?

Elaine: Who's he?

Jerry: Elaine, only one other person in the world knows what I am about to tell you and that's George. When we were in the ninth grade they had us all line up at one end of the school yard for this big race to see who was going to represent the school in this track meet.

Elaine: Uh uh

Jerry: I was the last one on the end, George was next to me, and Mr. Bevilaqua, the gym...

Elaine: What's that?

Jerry: Mr. Bevilaqua, the gym teacher.

Elaine: Oh, of course.

Jerry: He was down at the other end. So he yells out, "Ready, On your mark, Get set" and I was so keyed up I just took off. By the time he said go I was ten yards ahead of everybody.

Elaine: No.

George: I looked up. I couldn't believe it.

Jerry: By the time the race was over I had won. I was shocked nobody had noticed the head start.

Elaine: Really?

Jerry: And I had won by so much a myth began to grow about my speed. Only Duncan suspected something was a miss. He's hated me ever since. Now he's back.

Elaine: Well what happened when you raced him again?

Jerry: I never did. In four years of high school I would never race anyone again. Not even to the end of the block to catch a bus. And so the legend grew. Everyone wanted me to race. They begged me. The track coach called my parents. Pleading, telling them it was a sin to waste my god given talent. But I answered him in the same way I answered everyone. I chose not to run.

Elaine: So now Duncan is back?

Jerry: He's back. And I knew he would be someday. Man that's some tart cider!