The Craft Beer Co. Clerkenwell — Restaurant in London

For me a pub has to tick a few different boxes. Firstly the beer has to be good. Tick, the beer here is excellent. Fantastic choices... However, another box a pub has to tick is atmosphere and service. For me here is the problem. After visiting the pub on a relatively quiet lunchtime I was told I could not sit at the bar because the owner was 'funny' about it. Normally that would be fine if there was some place else to sit, but since all the other tables were taken I would have been forced to share with a stranger or stand in the middle of the pub on my own! Frankly all I wanted was to enjoy a quiet pint and not have to listen to someone else's conversation or intrude in other people's space. For me this pub fails completely on this alone. Sorry, not for me. Very pretentious attitude, not from the bar-staff but from the management. Not an enjoyable experience that I would ever want to revisit or encourage through my patronage. I'm sure all the locals and people who like this pub will hate on this review, and that's fine, I can see the potential, but this was my first and last impression of the venue and frankly, we...

Good range of interesting craft beers at daft prices. And no stools at the bar, so there.

Apparently this place gets really busy at times, but when it's quiet in the afternoon? I don't expect to be this uncomfortable in an empty pub.

If you want to try some interesting beers, this could be your place. If you want a pub, no. Someone in da management has fixed, bossy and irritating views.

If you do go, a tip. The ragingly expensive craft beers from round the world are on the left. The normal beers are on the right. I assume the helpful young lady behind the bar thought I wanted a ragingly expensive craft beer because it was where I was standing... I got to taste several before we picked one I like. Made the seven quid a pint fair enough, if you can...

A small pub selling a wide selection of craft beers.

We visited this Craft Beer Co. pub on a Monday afternoon at about 14:00. It was pretty empty, perhaps half a dozen other customers and two bar staff serving.

Even though 7 taps were off there was an excellent selection of beers to chose from on the remaining 29 (if I recall correctly) taps, 3 of which had cider.

My one niggle was the fact that the beer menu did not include brief descriptions of the beers as I have found at the 2 other Craft Beer Co pubs I have visited. This wasn't really a problem since the staff are happy to pour a small glass for tasting as well as suggest beers if you let them know what sort of...