With a little help from your A-Z

In New York it is very much the done thing to have 'secret', unmarked style bars housed in shabby premises in places like the Meatpacking District. This concept hasn't quite caught on here - so long as you can count you can pretty much find anywhere in Manhattan; we Londoners, on the other hand, have to resort to the A-Z when venturing to pastures new, and the last thing we want to find when we get there is the uncertainty of an unmarked venue.

Still, in the uncharted waters of Hackney you have to do things differently if you want a style bar to stand out from the ubiquitous lap-dancing pubs and strip bars, and the unlikely location of a former sweat shop near the Regent's Canal is where you'll find the unmarked Bistrotheque, a bar, restaurant and entertainment space, which opened late last year.

Former Shoreditch bar operators Pablo Flack (he of the former House Of Jazz fashion house) and David Waddington are behind this daring new concept, which is proving to be a hit with the nouveau peasants of Shoreditch and Hackney who frequent the place.

In the ground-floor cabaret room you can expect shows such as Transvestite Lip Synchronicity, Spanky Goes To Hollywood and A Night Of A Thousand Jay Astons (based on the antics of the bird from Eighties pop band Bucks Fizz) - hilarious, high-camp, viraginous entertainment.

The ground-floor bar, known to nobody other than those who own the place as the Napoleon, is where you'll find the cocktail crowd of an evening. This is a cold-looking, concrete-walled room, now smartly accoutred with the installation of a large oak bar and long parade of low-slung cocktail tables.

A concise list of 10 classic cocktails covers all the bases and doesn't leave bartenders reaching for crib notes. An average of £6.50 will get you well-made drinks that include a Cosmopolitan, Mojito, Negroni or a Margarita - drinks which add fuel to the fun-filled party spirit that prevails towards the back end of the week.

The first-floor bistro is a simply decorated, unfussy, cavernous room with an open kitchen close to the door passing out reasonably priced Modern British dishes. Regular dishes of fish pie, steak-and-mushroom pie, rack of lamb and steak béarnaise are complemented by daily specials that include roast suckling pig, crab mayonnaise, and roast beef with all the trimmings on Sundays.

At the time of writing, the entertainment is programmed Wed-Sat nights only, but don't let this stop you enjoying the quality food and drink experiences the rest of the week.

A trip to Hackney might seem a journey too far to those who regularly repeat their steps round established social circuits, but Bistrotheque's unique brand of quality food and drink and interesting entertainment makes for a superior all-encompassing night out. Dig out your A-Z and head straight for Bistrotheque.

Bistrotheque
23-27 Wadeson Street, E2