The Lexington — Restaurant in London

🚇 Angel 🍺 £6.20 Cruzcampo

Victorian London Meets The Wild West.

The Lexington is located on the border between Angel and Clerkenwell on busy Pentonville Road. The nearest Tube is Angel, it’s a five minute walk to get here.

Originally this was The Belvedere Tavern which was built in 1780, the pub was rebuilt in 1876. This boozer went through a few name changes over the years, in 2008 The Lexington opened its doors.

The main bar is located on the ground floor and has a wonderful high ceiling. The severy is at the opposite end to the entrance and spans the width of the bar. The decor here is amazing, it's a combination of Wild West Saloon meets Victorian Parlour meets 1930's Interwar Pub. The bar is split level, to the right is a raised area which has beautiful interwar panelled DJ booth with a cosy snug area behind. In the snug area you will find oxblood Chesterfields, a few cattle skulls and not forgetting a couple of musket guns with bayonets attached. By the entrance on the left are some fantastic original 1930's booths, at the end of the booths is an old Joanna with a few keys missing. To complete the look are rustic tables and chairs, flock wallpaper and an old-school Jukebox. Upstairs is a 200 capacity venue for hosting live music and events.

The beer selection offers a selection of familiar favourites, three cask ales and interestingly a selection of imported American Craft beer. There are beers from Pabst and also San Diego Brewers @stonebrewing . Me being the least adventurous drinker in the world chose a Cruzcampo. My pint hit the spot, price was just above average. The Lexington also offers a vast array of Whiskies, so if you fancy a 15-year-old Pappy Van Winkle, your in luck. The food on offer is Pizza by @alessios.pizza, a margherita pizza costs a tenner.

We arrived around 2pm on a Saturday afternoon in October. The pub was quiet as it is located in a low footfall area and is generally perceived as a destination pub for live music. Because it was quiet we got to have a good mooch around the pub and had a chat with the friendliest of bar staff who told us all about the American beers and Whiskies. The soundtrack was superb, there was a quality chill hop playlist playing in the background.

The pub hosts a Pop Quiz every Monday, DJ’s spinning an eclectic mix of tunes from all genres and a happy hour 4-7pm Monday to Friday, pints cost £4!!!. Upstairs there are regular live music gigs, check @thelexingtonlondon for who's playing.

We absolutely loved visiting this pub, especially the mix of old London Pub with Americana. Visiting during the day will be a vastly different experience than the evenings when this pub comes to life. But if I can offer a recommendation to visit a pub during the day, it would be this one so you can marvel at this unique and interesting London Boozer.

ℹ️ Info correct on...

If you go into this venue during the day when it's empty there's a very distinct pervasive smell of stale urine that drifts into the main room from the toilets. the toilets just smell bad and that’s bad enough, but the smell then travels right into the main room and hangs there all the time. I have a good sense of smell because I'm not a smoker and soon as I come into the venue I just smell this musty filth and stale urine. Unfortunately there's a lot of pubs that have this grimy fusty smell. I'm guessing it's because the smell sorta builds up and you would have to wash down the whole place the walls and everything to get rid of the smell. Or it might be that they just don't clean the toilets properly. I must admit I didn't particularly like using the toilets. They weren't clean. But then you could say that about a lot of toilets in pubs. It just has a sort of skanky unclean look about it. Some of the chairs are upholstered and I think they must attract a lot of dirt and stink. In the old days when people smoked in bars the smells of dirt and toilets was masked by the smell of cigarette smoke, but nowadays without the camouflage of cigarette smoke all the other stinky stuff is more obvious. I don't particularly like the crowd, it's kind of a young crowd think they're trendy but they're not. It looks like a bunch of youthful drinking drugging types. I get the feeling that they all think they are a bit cool and interesting and that you were lucky to be there or something but I just think the place is skanky. I can understand that new bands find it a useful platform to start playing gigs in. But I'm not terribly impressed by new bands. And I don't like squeezing into crowded places full of young "interesting" people. It's a fairly young lively crowd but it's just a little bit on the skanky side for me. And I'm not persuaded that they are as interesting as they think they are. Cleanliness isn't high on their list of priorities. There's no way I would eat here. Put it that way. They also have bouncers hanging around the entrance later on as if there's something special going on in there. it gets far too busy after about 5 PM. It's quite unpleasant. It takes a really long time to get served....

Thanks to the incredibly rude staff members, our evening was ruined. On two occasions we witnessed the bartender pour mixed drinks from the end of empty bottles - therefore actually not pouring the drinks we paid for. We politely asked him to rectify his mistake. He was none too pleased. After the second incident he handed us a card machine that read £1190.00 for three drinks (a very lage tip for this bartender) and tried to get us to punch in our pin. Luckily we caught the mistake before our bank account was violated. At first he shrugged and said that's what it costs while winking at us several times. Does he really think we are that stupid? He never apologised for the mistake - which could have been financially detrimental depending on how much was in the bank account. He behaved in a way that suggested he had entered that insanely high amount on purpose just to see if if we'd go for it and I'm pretty sure he thought it was a shame we caught him - not terrible, not incredibly embarrassing, but a shame, because it would have been fun for him to get one over on us.

When we complained to the bar manager about the bar staff's behaviour, the manager misrepresented himself as the owner. Clearly trying to get us to "go away". Unfortunately for him we were aware of what the owner really looked like - and SHE was not around that evening.

I won't be taken for a fool - I won't be treated like a moron - and most importantly I will not stand for poor customer service. This place will never see another...