Reviews

Why it's a great pub: This stripped back, low-decor spot shines amid all the "cosy" (read: prohibitively old-mannish) pubs down Fleet Street. The beer list includes the cheeky sessioner Arise by Burning Sky, a peachy, hoppy number that slips down a little too easily.

Why it's a great roast: Go huge with the special platter, easily enough for three, and gird your loins for the melt-in-mouth pork belly and colossal Yorkies - just remember to ask for extra gravy.

As the newest member of the Pubs of Distinction group, Hack & Hop comes with good pedigree. Its siblings are among the finest craft beer pubs in the capital - the Dean Swift near Tower Bridge and the Old Red Cow by Smithfield Market.

Like its relatives, this City pub - so named for its proximity to one-time hack central Fleet Street - excels on the beer front, with more than 20 split between cask and keg. This spans a number of London and UK favourites - including Beavertown, Kernel and Siren offerings - alongside many you'll likely never have spotted before, from both home and away.

Less immediately apparent is that Hack & Hop also offers a full menu of beer snacks and really rather good British gastropub classics, with its Sunday Roast being a particular source of pride. Let's cut to the chase, the roast at the Hack & Hop is top notch and you should try it.

If you're in a group, the best way to sample it is by opting for the Sunday Sharing Feast, for three to four people. It features confit pork belly (impressively crunchy crackling), beef (served medium-rare and richly-flavoured), chicken (moist-fleshed and rubbed with lemon and thyme), a chorizo scotch egg, four fluffy Yorkshires, sweet potato mash, buttery greens, an abundance of excellent fluffy and crisp roasties, and plenty of rich red wine gravy. There's not a let down among it, and in reality it easily feeds four.

A very decent, and ever-changing selection of starters includes chorizo croquettes, merguez sausages and chicken wings. Puddings are also worth keeping room for. A New York cheesecake has an exemplary buttery biscuit base while orange sponge with lashings of custard is all about school dinners nostalgia, but done well. All in all, Hack & Hop offers some seriously excellent grub - it delivers far more than you'd ever have guessed for somewhere that appears to be all about the beer.

A new haven for craft beer lovers just off Fleet Street, with London and Yorkshire brewers, such as Beavertown, Pressure Drop, The Hop Studio and Saltaire, particularly well-represented. Food is hearty, with the venison pie a winter highlight.

This 'local beer house' serves some of London's finest craft beers in keg, cask and bottles. Foodies won't be disappointed either with a great reputation for Sunday roast alongside traditional pub grub in this modern relaxed setting.

Hack & Hop is a brilliant new craft beer pub just off Fleet Street in the City of London. It's a cosy local beer house with a modern interior and the upstairs is the perfect spot to escape the after work crowd. From its great selection of bottled beers, try Okell's 1907 or go for a local ale such as Redwell pale ale or Devon Red cider on tap.

The Hack & Hop is a craft beer lover's haven in the City of London. Hack & Hop's sister pub The Old Red Cow has been one of our favourites for a few years so we had high expectations for its craft beer offshoot. Nestled in a small side street off of Fleet Street, the Hack & Hop offers a variety of craft beers from around London and the world. From Beavertown, to ELB, to Southwark, the Hack & Hop has an on tap offering from all over the Capital. The Hack & Hop has a solid selection cask ale, keg, and bottle beers. In addition, the Hack & Hop has its own Pilsner which was a refreshing session beer and a good one to start on.

We hired the private room upstairs for an event on a Friday evening. We counted ourselves lucky to have reserved space in this busy pub where people were spilling out onto the road. The upstairs bar had 6 beers on tap, including an unlabelled potent secret brew. The secret brew was in fact an 8.5% double IPA which really helped tap that Friday feeling. Our dedicated bartender George helped ensure our very thirsty friends had a fantastic evening.

Now that we've discovered the Hack & Hop, we will be returning very soon for after work drinks and to try some of their seasonal pub fare.

We remember when this place was a proper old-fashioned 'bloke's pub'. It's not hard...the Coach and Horses only closed at the end of 2013. In its place, we find this bang-on-trend craft ale bar from the Pubs of Distinction mini-chain. You might know them from such previous works as Old Red Cow in Farringdon and Dean Swift in Shad Thames.

Hack and Hop, which opened just before Christmas, is cut from the same cloth as its siblings, with more ales than the typical stomach might handle in one sitting - 12 were listed on the beer board on our visit. These can be grabbed in standard measures, or try the dinky 1/3 pints for powerful concoctions like the 7.3% Weird Beard Five O'Clock Shadow (yes, really). More options, should you need them, are bottled in the fridge. We can see why the this place describes itself as 'a delicatessen of beer'. The winter menu looked very tempting, with stodge classics like cottage pie, fish pie and lamb kofta. The small but well-sourced wine list is specifically chosen to match the food offerings. They even do a decent cup of tea. Decor is sparse, with white walls and dark wooden furniture. In place of art, we clock a selection of big newspaper headlines from the 20th century: "Man walks on Moon", "Death of John Lennon", "Berlin Wall Falls". Well, we are just off Fleet Street. The downstairs bar is fairly small, but there's an equivalent space upstairs if things are getting cramped.

A welcome addition to an area more often associated with classic ye olde pubs.

Fleet Street's hard-drinking hacks may have hopped off elsewhere but this understated reboot of an old boozer is worth a punt. Framed original front pages - eg Man Walks On The Moon - aren't the real scoop here: that's the craft brews; including Beavertown, Pressure Drop and Weird Beard.

Fleet Street was once the greatest drinking thoroughfare in the world. In the days when all of Britain's national newspapers were based in and around the Street of Shame, the local pubs hummed with bluster, debate and, more often than not, extreme drunkenness. We live in more restrained times, alas, and the newspapers, with their huge and (by modern standards) hugely underworked staff are long gone, but this is still a good spot for a beer. The Hack and Hop is the best place around if you want quality as well as quantity: like its sister establishments, The Old Red Cow and The Dean Swift, the emphasis is on good British beer (plenty of it from London) and the best stuff from abroad, too.

Had I been of an even earlier vintage, I might have ended up on Fleet Street. By the time I took to reporting on London's bar scene, the old gutter press pack's dipso hacks had long since hopped off elsewhere. Some fled to other parts of town, others ended up in their own obit columns, felled by cirrhosis, and for one former red top editor, if it all goes pear shaped at the Bailey, a cell at her Majesty's pleasure could soon be the 'hold-the-front-page!' story. For any modern City wage slave whose liver craves a bit of light lunchtime abuse or a well-earned post-work half pint, this understated reboot of a moribund boozer, new from the gang behind The Old Red Cow in Smithfield, is worth a punt. Framed epoch-defining splashes a la Man Walks On The Moon/ Jimmy Savile Molested My Hamster aren't the real scoop here. No, that'll be fine British craft brews from the likes of Weird Beard, Beavertown Pressure Drop and Manx indie, Okell's supported by a slew of punchy imports on tap. Alternatively, order pukka wine with ham croquettes, cocktail sausages or mod-Brit pub grub - confit pork belly, pear and braised endive in a red wine jus/ boeuf bourgignon and mash/ butternut squash risotto et al - at newsworthy low prices. That's about it in a nutshell, guys. Print it!