Riding Trams with the in crowd

This review was published in December 2001

'Tis the season for a knees-up. And I thought that I had found the perfect place to watch the edifying pageant of seasonal inebriation: Trams in Hoxton.

I have a soft spot for Hoxton. Once upon a time, back in the late Eighties, I toyed with the idea of moving out there, barricading myself into what were then relatively inexpensive houses and creating the sort of domestic idyll enjoyed by Mick Jagger in Performance. Had I done this, I would have emerged from my private world in around 1997 to find myself in danger of becoming fashionable, which really would never have done.

But just when does an area go from 'fashionable' to 'Fulham'? When it can boast a place like Trams. When the press information about this place plopped through my letterbox during the autumn, it sounded a total nightmare. Apparently, the 'whole place is set out into distinctive areas: one for foodies, one for lads in their lunch break and for those who like a G&T before 9am in the morning' (quite different to 9am in the evening).

I was expecting 'a luscious mix between an Indian restaurant, a trendy West End bar and a gastro-pub'. The chef, Mr Kassim, 'is an expert in regional Indian cookery as well as modern European dishes, so everyone is in for a treat'. I think it was the idea of being 'in for a treat' that really grabbed me. Then again it might have been the opportunity to watch morning imbibers douse their Rice Krispies with bottles of Gordon's.

Bookings are not taken for Friday nights, and as I approached the place I saw why. The streets were heaving with a throng of young people clearly 'giving it large' with immense enthusiasm, all trying to get into an old boozer that for a moment I feared was Trams. Scenes outside the American Embassy during the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War seemed a model of decorum by comparison.

Trams, a little further along the street, struck me forcibly as a perfectly normal, nice, vaguely modern pub with a pool table. I have to say I felt cheated. I had at least expected to be able to purchase a pre-prandial pipe of crack. Instead, the place was disconcertingly pleasant.

There was a bit of figurative art on the walls that was for sale, and a bar staffed by personable people and constructed out of small glazed tiles interspersed with glass bricks. My immediate impressions proved correct - throughout the evening, we received exemplary service that could teach some West End places a thing or two.

I located my two companions, one of them the new head of Tag Heuer, Zenith and Ulysse Nardin watches in Britain, the other the 'ambassador' of Berluti shoes (think Manolos for men, Choo for chaps), sitting at a table enjoying a bottle of Sancerre and giving a very good impression of suburban gentility.

They told me excitedly of how, when they had asked for some peanuts, they were directed to a nut-vending machine. Around them were assorted groups of young, but only mildly trendy people - the most outr? we got all night was a man in a bright-orange, fake-fur donkey jacket that reminded me of the veteran pop musician Captain Sensible. Throughout the evening I did not see a single instance of drunkenness and no evidence of drug abuse - unless, of course, you count the trio of Hoyo de Monterrey double coronas we ignited after our repast.

Given the hype, we all ordered from the Indian menu and found it adequate. Fish pakora was by far the best starter, although the chicken tikka, which benefited from 'chefs (sic) secret tikka spices', was not bad. The best thing about a set of supermarket-standard samosas was the duo of dips.

Main courses were OK. The white king fish curry, billed as the 'famous fish curry of Bombay cooked with coconut and an array of masterfully blended spices', seemed to dare us to try it and with the hyperbole of the menu reverberating in my head, how could I resist? I then saw the chicken saag and felt that I had made the wrong choice.