A rounded Battersea experience

10 April 2012

This review was first published in June 2001

I spent the best part of my formative years gallivanting along Battersea Park Road. Oh, the shenanigans of it all, those recalcitrant days when a 'result' with the opposite sex was never more than a lager and lime away. It was then, much as it is now, a place for young, single people, fresh to London and with a reckless propensity to dispose of their disposable incomes.

And strolling past its unkempt frontages today, I notice that all around here has changed, and there is little evidence, save the memory, of the rapture I once knew. I'm sitting in the Circle bar - sister-bar to the eponymous venue in Stockwell's Clapham Road (click here for a review of that bar) - and I need to forget that this was once the Battersea Show Palace, the Four Chimneys, the Galanga... to name but a few.

The vast interior has been given a very smart facelift by its owners Jon Simons and Nick Tatchell, both recent graduates in Furniture And Product Design from Nottingham Trent University. An oval island bar takes centre stage with large tables scattered about the room and interspersed with squashy sofas. There's a lounge bit at the back, with a big-screen TV for sporting occasions, and a table-football game should you want to make your own entertainment.

DJs take over at weekends, when young Battersea folk get on with getting on with each other and, despite the lack of midweek daytime business, they operate a full menu at lunch and the evening.

Food is pleb-Med in the not-to-be-taken-too-seriously category, but it works as a base to absorb the endless pints of lager you are bound to consume. I am the biggest supporter of pubs that I know, and I applaud their adaptation to serve the ever-changing markets that are the communities they serve.

But what about what is, after all, a local boozer serving serious cocktails? Yes, I think it's wholly appropriate that we are offered an extensive list of delectable drinks. But not when the staff need to refer to crib sheets to make them, not on a weekend night when, and without efficient table service, too few staff are available to cope with such demands, and never, ever when vodka jellies and jokey shooters drag the level of quality down to the expectations of Battersea Park Road.

Moreover, if they can be bothered with what is the enormous task of fiddling with cocktails, why the chuff can't they bothered to push aside one of the many pedestrian lagers on offer in favour of a decent cask ale? In general terms, the Circle is hard to criticise. This is a quality venue breathing new life into an otherwise gloomy part of Battersea. But in more specific terms, it is probably attempting to provide a 360-degree level of satisfaction by trying to be too many things to too many people, and failing to excel at any of them.

If I sound like I'm bemoaning the changes along Battersea Park Road, such lamentations should rightly be dismissed as emotional bollocks from a boring old fart who really should know better. I hope the Circle works, and I hope you young-at-heart bon viveurs support it.

The Circle
317 Battersea Park Road, SW11 4LT

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