The 7 drinking options of West Hampstead High Street

With a plethora of cafes, restaurants and 12 (TWELVE) hairdressers, you can be sure of a great day out in West Hampstead having dinner, a coffee and several haircuts. Where the area is still finding its identity is with its pubs and bars, of which there are several main contenders, reviewed here for drinks choice, price and atmosphere. Locations are all five minutes walking distance from the absolute train station fiesta towards the bottom end of the high street, with the order of pubs done from the top end to the bottom, providing perfect bar crawl potential. I would have reviewed the hairdressers too but it would have taken over a year and also I’m quite loyal to this Cypriot guy near me who’s really good with curly hair.

1. The Black Lion
Pub quizzes, competitive drinks selections, a deceptively large beer garden and a really textbook pub name kick off the bar crawl in appropriate fashion.

Drinks: Variety across the board, staff that let you taste the draft varieties and changing menus make this appealing for a tipple.
Price: Average for West Hampstead, which looks like £4.50 for a pint, £4/18 for a glass/bottle of wine and £7-9 for a cocktail (although not many, but you don’t come to an establishment with a colour and an animal in the name for the gourmet cocktails, do you).
Atmosphere: It’s pretty massive, as is the multi-level beer garden. Sunday to Thursday, The Black Lion strikes a good balance between the pubby pub pub that its name suggests, and the gastropub craft beer and boardgames hipster joint that most pubby pub pubs want to morph into. Weekend nights are different, as half of North London turns up and rams the pub way too full, and there is something about the acoustics which create a noise akin to being inside an aeroplane’s engine as it takes off. No, that’s harsh. Maybe more like when it’s at cruising altitude.
Other: Pub quiz on Sundays! And as we know, Sunday nights were literally invented for pub quizzes.

2. 160
Food and beer reign supreme in a name which I wish was either a nice protractor-friendly 180 or 360 rather than a mash up of the two. I have it on good authority that the owner got a D in maths GCSE.

Drinks: Yummy and gigantic selection of beers including one brewed on site in a giant vat at the door. Otherwise the usual array of things for people who don’t like beer, but you won’t be blown away, so just have a pint will ya.
Price: This is where it all falls down for 160. Clearly that mathematical inability has extended to prices, as they regularly exceed five pounds for a pint. This is simply unacceptable. I am aware beer follows its own economic rules and levels of inflation but this is like the fermented yeast version of 1929 Wall Street.
Atmosphere: Good, open atmosphere, very large welcoming interior and well-trained staff. Way more of a restaurant/gastropub feel with socialising a distant possibility but a few rounds with a group of (ideally very wealthy and generous) friends would be pretty pleasant.
Other: Why is it so expensive?! I actually can’t frequent 160 because the beers come in at nearly a quid more than The Black Lion and my entire job is writing this blog, which gains me zero quid. On the plus side, you can hear yourself speak.

3. The Alice House

It’s not so much a Wonderland at the Alice House as a heaving throng of middle class well-dressed pretty people, great music choices and a super-sociable vibe.

Drinks: A small but solid set of beers on tap, a decent array of wines on the list and a small but very creative cocktail list, the Alice House doesn’t do spectacular levels of choice but it has more than enough to satisfy everyone’s taste. The bar is far too crowded for people to be poring over lengthy menus anyway.
Price: Average for West Hampstead (see The Black Lion above) although their £7 Jam Jar cocktails are competitive and make you feel like you’re in a postcode beginning with E.
Atmosphere: Busy, buzzing, sociable, with a lot of pretty people leading the bartenders to act as if the clientèle are far cooler than they actually are. Definitely a place you could dress up a bit on weekends although getting a seat might be a challenge, as will hearing each other/hearing a military-strength foghorn over the music volume.
Other: Nice but very small terrace front of house, open fairly late. Unsure quite whether to recommend this for everyone, although marginally the strongest contender for a more conventional central London type of night out (i.e. they have a bouncer and bag checks).

4. La Broca

Italian bistro that gets inexplicably rowdy on the weekends.

Drinks: It’s Italian, so wine is the order of the day here. They do have a couple of beers on tap, but unless you want a dirty look from the barman, order wine.
Price: At ground level this is a bar, but below the surface lies a fairly sophisticated Italian restaurant, which means prices occasionally reflect the seat-and-serve level. Perch at the bar and you can probably save a few quid with an average price range.
Atmosphere: The time of day is essential for the La Broca experience you have. Go during the week, or during the day, or even before about 9pm on a weekend, and you have yourself a fairly unassuming but enjoyable Italian bistro. Go after 9pm on a weekend and it is basically the most chaotic bar on the whole street. I am yet work out what exactly happens at 9pm to cause this to happen.
Other: The food is quite delicious, the clientèle range from families having a meal to burly aggressive men throwing chairs around, so your best bet is to go with your family and start hurling chairs around to ensure you don’t alienate anyone.

5. The Railway

Come on, you already have an idea in your head of what this is going to look like from the name alone. You’d be entirely correct.

Drinks: This is a pub. A classic pub with some well known beers and also some wine and some gin and some other mainstream things we’ve all heard of and absolutely nothing even remotely surprising. The most notable thing about the drinks menu is just how unnotable it is. This might be the first pub that doesn’t do local craft beers or organic cider that I’ve come across in the past two years.
Price: Below average for West Hampstead, but more pricey than an equivalent pub in a different area. Ultimately this is like a Wetherspoons but without the “buy seven plates of nachos, get a Carlsberg for £1.47” deal.
Atmosphere: Very busy, the clientèle tend to be local punters nursing pints of Carling. It has recently reopened and attempted to re-brand itself a little classier, but the ITBox gives the game away. Gets busy for football matches and somewhat surprisingly, hosts a Karaoke night on Tuesdays, inexplicably attended largely by groups of international students despite there being no university nearby.
Other: A very thrifty and simple option if you want a basic pint and a conversation with a friend, or if you get one of those classic Tuesday cravings to sing Aerosmith with a bunch of appreciative Spanish nineteen year olds.

6. The Gallery

Mysterious name with giant floor to ceiling windows making for a less mysterious interior, has board games and a faithful set of regular clientèle.

Drinks: Craft beer, good wine, throw in a few cocktails and you have yourself a classy set of beverages.
Price: A classy beverage insinuates a classy price and you won’t be disappointed (with their consistency. You’ll definitely be disappointed with how empty your wallet is after a few rounds here).  Coming in at over a fiver for most beers and wines, you’ll be handed upsetting amounts of change from your tenner.
Atmosphere: Intimate, low lit, suave bar style that is always busy with lots of groups and couples. This can initially lead to a slightly less social vibe until everyone gets sloshed by about 9pm and then they’re either talking or falling out of the windows. Can be quite light and airy during daylight hours owing to the aforementioned windows. Nice upstairs “gallery” seating area (I don’t get it) and also a large space downstairs make this bigger than it seems. It’s slick and understated without being cheesy or exclusive. It’s nearly hipster.
Other: Thursday evenings are different because everyone here is a Jewish young professional looking for a life partner. Don’t ask me why.

7. Unnamed large house

This is probably the most confusing pub I have ever been to, insofar as it is literally a giant house on the residential section of the road with a chalkboard outside it saying “Have a beer £3.50” and a small Pilsner Urquell sign protruding slightly onto the pavement. I had to go in.

Drinks: Two beers on tap: Pilsner Urquell and Budvar, both of which are solid for mainstream European lagers. The same in the fridge, along with a bunch of generic ciders and wines.
Price: The chalkboard doesn’t lie: £3.50 a pint, and the notion of two pints here for the price of one at The Gallery just 200 metres away suddenly makes this very attractive. But something else makes it positively sexy…
Atmosphere: …Walk all the way through and be greeted with a quite enormous beer garden, complete with a load of tables, seating, and all of it drenched in glorious sunshine. It is like walking through a portal to some sort of delightful stately garden in Prague.
Other: Turns out they do food too – all Czech and Slovak themed, and that explains the beer selection too. I am yet to work out who owns this place, what it actually is and whether I actually just stumbled into someone’s house, but with a fairly unassuming set of customers all sunning themselves over a cheap Czech pilsner in the garden, I really can’t fault it.

Bonus Round:
8. Ye Olde Swiss Cottage

Ok, I lied – there’s an 8th! WHAT A TWIST! But number 8 requires you to deviate from the path. Hop on a tube two stops or just walk the 20 minute journey down to Swiss Cottage and you happen across an inconspicuous cottage marooned in the chaos of about eight main roads all intersecting around it, so much so that it looks inconvenient for it to exist at all. This is Ye Olde Swiss Cottage.
Drinks: It’s Sam Smith’s so its a wide array of basic old skool lagers, bitters and ciders, with the usual wine and gin too.
Price: KERCHING! I bought a round of three drinks and got change back from a two pound coin.
Atmosphere: You know how in a zoo when they put the penguin pool next to the elephant enclosure and you’re just thinking “WHERE’S THE CONSISTENCY?!” Well, this pub will probably elicit a very similar reaction.
Other: To elaborate on the clientèle alluded to in the atmosphere section, 50% of them are alcoholics who are there every day, have been there every day and will continue to be there every day, and the other 50% are quirky drama students in their early 20’s from Central drama school across the road. The result? They co-exsist in a peaceful fashion that the leaders of certain Middle Eastern countries could probably learn from.
Now go get wasted, ya boozehounds.