The Magpie (Liverpool Street - London)

The Magpie

With excellent promixity to the giant of train stations liverpool street, the Magpie sits out on a lonly branch of the high street, difficult to spot from the bustle and once inside it feels somewhat small and somewhat disappointing. The lower floor is simply bar, stools, bar persons. Along the left of the bar appears to be signs to the toilets where in fact is a set of stiars leading up to a second bar on the floor above. Up here one can sit and dine and relative quiet while the world outside goes mental for businessmen and women franctically looking for sandwiches and soup not knowing that dining is possible in this, the most hidden of places. Okay so there is table service (good) but the food service itself is slow (bad). they have cloudy cider on tap (good) but the atmopshere feels outdatewd rather than traditional and I feel liek I am sitting in the Granny-flat of an old woman who still decorates her home like she was living before the invention of electricity, its old and not in a nice authentic pub kind of way.

Overall the service bought this pub down but it is a good 'un for lunch out of the way or real cider, even Grandma's turn-of-the-century decor couldnt give this bog-standard tradtional-pub-in-a-box lower than a 5/10.