156 Clerkenwell Road,
London,
EC1R 5DU
0871 971 3942
The ViewLondon Review
The Duke of York is the large red building that juts out onto Clerkenwell Road with reassuring normality.The VenueA little way from Clerkenwell station, the Duke of York is a grand room, full of old rickety chairs and tables and a collection of echoes that seem to be the only things that fill the large void.
The pub is painted red in the majority, but there is a vast area of white that looks as if it was set aside for a commissioned piece of art that never happened. Added to this there are the half-hearted attempts at decoration of limp flowers on tables that make the venue dangerously close to just looking like a mess. The magazine rack with up to date titles and newspapers is a good touch. The table football and pool table in the room behind the bar compete to be the cherry on top of the entertainment fixture that this seems to be. Flat screens also show Sky Sports.
The AtmosphereIt is a surprise not to see Nuts and Zoo in the magazine rack of the Duke of York and is as if the boys were taking a night off from a classy night out in their finest Prada trainers to slip into something more comfortable for a chilled one here. Beyond the swagger of lads that enter the bar with hard shoves on the door to exaggerate their arrival, the clientele is a good mix. The age starts at postgraduate level and there is a semblance of middle age cool. The barman is friendly and has the added titillation of looking like a cross between Dudley Moore and all of the Rolling Stones. As the evening arrives, the music gets louder and as the weekend nears everything is pushed upwards as the atmosphere improves with the advent of two fresh days off.
The FoodThere is a menu of authentic Thai cuisine, served Monday to Friday 12pm-3pm and 6pm-10pm and Saturday 5.30pm-10pm.
The DrinkThe tables are host to a wine list each, probably at the behest of the supplier seeing as this isn’t the type of place that needs them. The house white is a light, dry Italian and the red a bright berry from Italy too. There is Kronenbourg, Fosters, San Miguel, Heineken on draught and Bombardier ale.
The Last WordThe Duke of York has a go at spreading its wings and flying from the nest of tradition, and to an extent it succeeds.
Duke of York has been reviewed by 6 users