The Maple Leaf

As you might expect from the name, the Maple Leaf is a Canadian pub in Covent Garden.

They serve Canadian beer, English cider and show Irish sports on TV.  Despite being the heart of the West End, the pub was pretty quiet when we visited on a Thursday evening which meant that we were easily able to get a set and also have a conversation at a normal volume.  These are two things that are not always easy to find in a Central London pub.

Melodifestivalen 2013

Edgware Road is mainly known for its Arabic shops, cafes and restaurants that are open late into the night.  But the area also contains a cluster of Swedish locations.

I've been to the Swedish Christmas market before at the Swedish church on Harcourt Street but I'd never noticed that the rather unprepossessing pub across the road is actually a Swedish hangout.

The pub serves Swedish food and drinks and shows Swedish sporting events.  Most exciting of all, for me at least, is that they also host live screenings of Melodifestivalen!

The Swedes take their Eurovision song selection very seriously, as well they should, since they not only managed to win last year's competition in Baku by a landslide, but then went on to dominate almost every chart in Europe with their winning song.

Both Mark and his friend Will who attended this event with me speak a little bit of Swedish but we didn't look up the rules of the competition in advance.  Which meant that the evening passed in a pleasant haze of glitter, cheesy key changes and general confusion as to what was happening on screen.  A bit like the Eurovision itself.  Is it too early to be excited?

Pubs you could get very lost in...

So London has plenty of 'Irish' pubs but I'm going to class the Porterhouse in Covent Garden as Irish for my blog because the first two pubs in the Porterhouse Brewery chain of 6 were in County Wicklow and Dublin.   I was here for a friend's birthday but I realised when I went into this maze of a pub that I'd been here before around January 2010 with an Irish guy I know, before I moved to London.

There was a band playing and although they were good, they were so loud that it was hard to hear what people were saying.  If we had been after a more boozy night and a boogy they would have been perfect.

 Combined contexts of pockets/handbags along with a selection of beers.  All you need for a good night out in London.

 The Porterhouse has a large beer menu, with beers on offer from lots of different countries.  Even though I'm not a beer fan, I'm sure I'd find something I'd like here.  I tried a passion fruit flavoured beer which was nice and sweet.

As an aside: Waxy O'Connors in Soho is also a maze of a pub, though the connection to Ireland seems to be limited to the name and the tree inside.  But it's not often you find venues with trees inside (Portobello Gold and Rainforest cafe are the only ones that spring to mind) so I'd say it's worth a visit on that basis.  I got stopped by a guy in Waxy's once who was unable to find his way out and said he had been searching for an exit for quite some time.  If you ever stop by and he's still there, help him out will you?

For for information about the tree www.waxyoconnors.co.uk/

De Hems Dutch Bar

Country: The Netherlands
Cost: £7.30 for a pint and a glass of wine
Location: China town

De Hems is a Dutch pub on Macclesfield Street in China Town. They have a range of Dutch beers on tap. You can't miss it because it stands out in China Town like a sore thumb :)