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| - After-work drinks?
Stop two on what turned out to be a far more exciting birthday weekend than I could have imagined was an after-work pint with a few friends at this British-style box pub at Yonge and Gerrard.
It was about 5:30 on Thursday and the after-work crowd was just starting to trickle in (there's an old man sitting next to me...). There was a private party at the back end of this giant one-room pub and the first thing I noticed was the kind of din and racket for which I had just vetoed Pogue Mahone. Notwithstanding the fact that I had had a very stressful day at work and just wanted a quiet place to guzzle a pint, I knew I couldn't get away with back-to-back vetos, even on my birthday. So here we were.
In fairness, the noise at the Elephant and Castle is largely attributable to the fact that the pub is about a hundred feet long, thirty feet wide, forty feet high and constructed entirely out of limestone. Everything echoes, but if you like massive limestone rooms, this is a nice one.
We were seated promptly, and met our server shortly thereafter. Good start. And the service was generally what you would expect form a box pub: OK.
However.
There are only a few things I absolutely insist on from my server. They don't seem to me like much to ask, but they are make-or-break matters for my impression of a server's competence and professionalism. One of them is this:
Know your beer list.
If I ask what you have on tap, it's because I'm genuinely interested and because I haven't decided what I want to drink yet. It's also because I want to know if you know what the hell you're talking about before I get your opinion on food. Don't ask me what kind of beer I feel like, don't tell me it's on the back of the menu, and don't even think about pointing at the chalkboard at the other end of the bar lest you raise my full ire. Please, if it's sixteen taps or fewer on the rail, you should be able to remember them all. And I promise, I'll order one of them.
I was starving, but trying to save my appetite for our next stop (dinner at Harlem, review to come). Had I known what was in store for me there, I probably would have abstained from eating at the E&C altogether. Absent foresight, we instead ordered a sharing plate ($16) - three finger foods from a list of eleven, with pretty good options (there's a lovely PDF menu on their website). Our choices were bruschetta, chicken kebabs and chicken picks, all of which were tasty and kept four of us happy while we killed a couple pints.
For some reason I really like this place. I think it's because it's a really neat space. I'll definitely make it a target for after-work pints more often. Special thanks to an old and good friend, Sonya F., for buying.
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