A normal gastropub experience in a fun and friendly boozer
The term “vegan pub”, which describes the Spread Eagle in Hackney, east London, is instinctively a funny one. Merely sprinkle “vegan pub” into any sentence, and it conjures up mental images of wan-faced fun-phobes sipping half-pints of unfiltered oatmeal stout in a room ripe with high-fibre flatulence. The vegan pub’s jukebox would offer one choice: an extended, 14-minute remix of Meat Is Murder by The Smiths. “This beautiful creature must die!” Mozza screams, incessantly, as drinkers force down vegan pork scratchings made from zero-waste parsnip scrapings.
Well, the Spread Eagle is none of these things. It is, in fact, a cheerful, gregarious boozer in London’s, ahem, Vegan Quarter, which stretches from Clapton to Hackney Wick, and it serves up plentiful, Mexican-influenced food by streetfood stars Club Mexicana, as well as animal-friendly wines and, typically, 16 different vegan beers such as Camden Hells, Five Points Pale Ale, Beavertown Gamma Ray and others that don’t use “finings” such as isinglass (made from the swim bladders of fish).
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