Brew up down Shoreditch

You haven't travelled until you've flown from a military-controlled Middle Eastern airport on the fringes of a desert. I say airport, it was more a fortressed runway with a bombedout concrete shell as a makeshift terminal building.

Armoured trucks rolled round the apron, soldiers with scary dogs and even scarier weapons patrolled the terminal building, shouting orders in a language I wouldn't have been able to fathom even under torture.

I mention this because visiting the new T Bar - on the corner of Bethnal Green Road and Shoreditch High Street - seemed to transport me back to those carefree days when visiting danger zones was what life was all about. The T Bar might even have been modelled on that airport, although the airport's design had, at some prior point, been assisted in no small part by the liberal scattering of mortar shells.

The building that houses 'T' - a former tea warehouse - is not without its post-ironic, public sector charm - it's just that such a harsh environment needs a lot of softening to make it warm and welcoming. So what we have here is a vast space that is clear of comfort (save for a red-carpeted annex with nicely upholstered furniture), with snacketeria-style tables and chairs and a few battered-leather sofas.

This is as about as Shoreditch as Shoreditch gets.

My first couple of visits - I went several times, on each occasion dragging along different witnesses so they could see for themselves the savagery and brutality of the place - were during the after-work cocktail hours, when the place had an upbeat, typically Shoreditch vibe. The bar servery is about the only good-looking feature in the place, with a back-lit back bar behind shelves containing an impressive looking range of spirits.

And, although the extremely friendly staff are capable of knocking together a decent enough cocktail - drinks start at £5.50 and rise to the stratospheric heights of £8 for a straight Martini - mostly they were dishing out pints of Beck's and Kronenbourg and bottles of Sol, Peroni and Budvar.

Trying to be all things to all people is a conceit that many proprietors try and few succeed. The T Bar is trying - and I use that word after due consideration - to capture all markets by opening early for breakfast (its opening times are to jump back from 9am to 7.30am), offering a deli with takeaway sandwiches and salads, a hot food menu all day, and then getting on with the business of being a bar in the evenings.

I didn't see many folk trying the food in the evenings so, not wanting to be seen as walking the wrong way round the circle, I went for breakfast one morning and had a thoroughly pleasant 'hungry man' breakfast of eggs, homefries, streaky bacon, sausage, mushrooms, tomato, toast, and Boston baked beans (£6.50).

Nice enough, but I can't see this place working as a daytime destination, given that a) the deli is hidden far enough away from the door for it not to be noticed by passers by, and b) there are other, better venues nearby with both quality and snack foods.

Bethnal Green Road is the last scar in the division between workaday Shoreditch and the prosperous City. Give it five years or so and this will be prime real estate at the epicentre of a new part of London. If the T Bar can hang in there for that long, it might eventually succeed.