Crowd are happy and friendly (not entirely hipster-shallow), DJ good ... but there's one member of staff who'd be better suited to running a clip joint than a local bar.

After I told her I couldn't pay the £4.80 she wanted to charge for a small bottle of Duval (no price advertised, no price mentioned in advance), she went to the trouble of following me across the (very crowded) room and started aggressively arguing with me about how I was very lucky she wasn't going to make me pay for the bottle she'd opened because of what she 'could do to me'. As I was putting on my jacket ready to go I asked her to leave me alone, but she continued the drama, asking the bouncers to make sure I 'never come back in there again'.

So - after I've recommended your bar to some friends from out of town, spent the best part of £100 with them, you decide to pick a fight with me then ban me! I wonder where you learned that approach to hospitality?!

Came back to this pub after having two bad experiences in the past. I thought i would give it another chance. It was a Sunday afternoon and it looked cosy inside. Had a great time, until after spending a couple of hours in there and a decent amount of money at the bar me and three friends were asked to leave for 'talking too loudly' as someone at the bar had complained!! Couldn't believe it. We were being overly loud or loutish, literally just having a laugh and a good time. Obviously, a bit too good to be acceptable.
A nice evening spoilt (once again) by pretentious snobbery. Real shame.

Dodgy place, where your bag will get stolen. Staff are incredibly rude and unhelpful.

This is the sort of place you'll either love or hate. The stripped brick walls and, oh so painfully trendy clientele make it great if you are of the waxed moustache/ ironic animal jumper brigade. The bar staff were a humourless couple, the barmaid with a 'f*ck off' t-shirt which she didn't seem to assume once I questioned whether she was friendlier than her t-shirt. The toilets are style over content with an enormous belfast sink opening between the ladies & gents toilets taking up virtually the whole area, and a single urinal and single cubicle for the gents!. This kind of statement is all very well if the bar is an enormous cavern in Notting hill with a 10 ft. Long pisoire, but an old Victorian pub in Dalston not so successful. The D. J's were playing good roots reggae, which seemed lost on the uber-trendy haircuts. The irony being that the pub would have played the same music twenty years earlier to an almost entirely west Indian clientele. All told I hated The Haggerston, but if you are not an oldster like myself, are born after 1980 and like to be 'seen' in the right place. Then this is probably the place.

Not sure what happened / when those other reviews were written - we were there a couple of weekends ago (April 2011) and bar staff couldn't have been nicer! Friendly relaxed atmosphere early evening, packed later on but no problem being served, with a friendly smile to boot. Cool but not pretentious - my kind of place.

Appears to be quite a nice atmospheric pub until you get to the bar. The woman serving was outragously rude. It wasn't even busy and even though it was early on a Tuesday night she couldn't run a bar let alone be civil and hospitable to the customers.

Not at all worth the visit.

This place seemed to be OK with the first drink being served after waiting at the bar for around 5mins,

not that it was outrageously busy, but we left when waiting to order a second because the bar staff decided to start talking to their pals across the bar about what class they were pretending to be in...heroin chic wannabees...

strange attitude from people who are meant to be there to serve punters and not use the place as a face to face blogging opportunity.

If you are waiting to be served you will just be greeted with a blank stare then another wait until they have downed another shot.

They are on a power trip as though its their own private party and they decide who and when they serve regardless of how long you've been standing there.

To sum up the music was good, the atmos from the public was good, the bar staff 2 females and 2 males should except that they have failed in life somewhere and should give up the hostile act and show a little friendliness.