The Mucky Pup

39 Queen's Head Street, N1 8NQ

It has been a while since the last post about a standalone pub, which by the way was the original purpose of the blog. This is due to several reasons, the main one I’m lastly quite lazy about posting and most of the new pubs I’m discovering are good enough for having a couple of pints on them but not good enough for sitting down in front of the computer and spend an hour or so writing about it. The Mucky Pup is obviously an exception to this.

The pub is located in Angel, about at 10 minutes walk from the tube station, and it is quite hidden in the middle of nowhere. It is a real classic on the area (it is more than 100 years old) and it has changed of owners and being refurbished quite a lot of times in the last years. The current owner (Angus) is really one of the most sympathetic and nice guys I’ve had the chance to meet in London, and that is saying quite a lot: he’s always up for a conversation about whatever, and he knows which is the friendly tone everybody should use to ask patrons to go inside the pub whenever they are boozing outside or to get everybody out when 1 o’clock comes and it’s time to close.

Apart of the friendly owner and barmen, the pub has some other pluses, as:

- Pool table, usually busy late but empty if you go for an early beer. If somebody else is playing you can always drop a quid on it in order to play the next game

- Darts board – the classic British one, with real darts and not that plastic crap we use elsewhere

- Juke Box for free. Indeed, this is one of the few places I’ve been with a free one, which indeed means you can listen the music you like and just the music you like if the pub is not too busy. If it is, be ready to wait for a couple of hours until your song is played, as song queues are frequently long. Music in the Juke Box, and hence music usually played in the Mucky Pup, comprehend bands as Syd Barrett, Jesus Lizard, Black Sabbath, Tom Waits, Girls Against Boys, Led Zeppeling, Nick Drake, Kyuss, Magnolia Electric Company, Cramps, Julie Driscoll, Black Mountain, Stones, Dead Kennedys, Creedence or Bowie.

What else… the food is q bit pricey, but the quality is really very good, much better than the average in a pub. This means this is maybe not the best place to have a quick burger, but a relaxed dinner (consisting in a burger, nevertheless :)). Drinks prices are OK (around £3-£3.20 per pint, and Guinness tastes especially well here, very likely because they clean the piping system quite frequently.


Decoration and furniture are quite common, and don’t deserve a specific reference. There are plenty of tables and chairs, but if you go on Saturday expect to find all of them busy. Also, it has a bicycles shed, it is, a small terrace where you can have a smoke. This is particularly nice as they have some heaters there, so if you are having some drinks with an addict you don’t freeze. Or you freeze less, depending of how hard is the winter at that poing.

If I had to find a flaw, I would say they only have Becks as lager, so no Carling/Fosters party over here. It is a silly flaw, as I know really very few people able to distinguish between those different brands, but it is really the only one I could find. Well, that and the fact that it is located in the very other corner of the city from my place.