Hoxton gets a royal rave-up

The Queen Of Hoxton isn't just another trendy bar, although it stocks a superb array of cocktails. Nor is it just another cool club, even if it boasts ultra-hip DJ line-ups including Datarock, Prince Language and Motor City Drum Ensemble. In fact it's a combination of the two — and more — designed to use as much local talent as possible.

It opened earlier this year and has been building an enviable reputation, with hugely popular parties such as Kill 'Em All and Late Night Audio pulling in the fashionable crowds. I head down on a balmy Saturday evening for a party from the highly rated Neon Noise Project to see for myself what the fuss is about.

Arriving around 9pm gives us time to take in the work that has gone into making the venue so special. After paying £10 to get in, we admire the ground-floor bar area, decorated with etchings from street artist Pure Evil, who has a gallery nearby. In a corner are old arcade games, provided by a local collector called Pinball Jeff. There is ivy hanging from the ventilation pipes, making it feel like we're outside, and behind the bar is an enormous illuminated cinema hoarding announcing tonight's line-up of DJs, from Hercules And Love Affair to The Juan MacLean.

Grabbing a beer for £3.50 we head upstairs to the roof terrace, one of the Queen Of Hoxton's most enticing features, complete with gazebo, ornate garden furniture, wooden benches and plants. It feels like a New York rooftop party, but looking out over the City of London. The calm before our inevitable dance floor storm is broken only by the game of giant Jenga being played just behind us.

We talk to Anna, who works for the venue, about the bar's name. Taken from the nickname of a celebrated local 16th-century theatre proprietor renowned for her charitable and cultural work, it reflects the venue's desire to create a space that celebrates the local community with a kind of "youth club for adults" — local illustrators, for example, use the venue as a monthly networking space and in return their graphics decorate the stairwell to the roof.

With the sun going down and the history lesson over we head back to the ground-floor bar for some serious cocktail tasting. We work our way through a delicious selection of £6.50 concoctions including daiquiris, mojitos and shots of French Martini, until the dance floor is nearly as full of people as we are of alcohol. An
11-minute Michael Jackson mega-mix from local DJ legend Warboy proves the sparking point and we're soon in the throng among the cool, urbane East End locals and thrill-seeking clubbers attracted by tonight's transatlantic names playing on the second dance floor, in the basement, which opens at 12. Before that we catch the beginning of Isa GT, a DJ from the all-female Shoreditch collective Girlcore.

While the clientele reflects the new East End, black-and-white photos on the stairs to the basement show a gallery of original, quirky locals well-known over the past few decades, still living among the new bars and clubs. What they'd make of tonight we don't know, but certainly the second dance floor with its disco balls and pounding New York house harks back to another era as well. Behind the decks is the diminutive Kim Ann Foxman from Hercules And Love Affair, playing a string of dark, dirty Nineties.

A quick pit stop on one of the many leather sofas reveals she's not the only one from New York. June, 23, a student from the Big Apple, tells me she reckons London nightlife beats New York for variety and energy. "I like the different floors here," she says. "It's more Brazilian upstairs and more dancey downstairs."

The Juan Maclean take us deeper into the night with a similarly classic sound, Lil Louis' French Kiss and Armand Van Helden's remix of Tori Amos evoking happy memories of countless club nights over the years.

The Queen Of Hoxton packs everything exciting and interesting about the East End into one place — all of which makes for a royally good night out.