Friendly lumbersexuals at the Morgan Arms, Bow

Image via: thebolditalic.com

In East London where I live, there are no shortage of beards. Some are trendified. Some are religious. All are intimidating. And, so it was at the Morgan Arms, near Mile End tube station in Tower Hamlets last night, I met with a plethora of beards, many well-groomed, some rather more dishevelled, that I knew I was in a place where Tower Hamlet’s middle-class and with it (whatever “it ” is?) young would make me feel slightly past it and mortgage poor, whose reasonably well-lined pockets enable them to gather on a week night to drink expensive cider and craft beer and pretend, for a moment, that they’re back home in Berkshire and Sussex and not living on an ex-housing estate in Tower Hamlets.

I never know quite how to react when I’m confronted with well-clipped yet still bushy beard. Perhaps it’s because I feel said beard won’t be attracted to me, but not because they are gay necessarily; but still because I am somehow too female, in a lipstick, high heel-wearing way, for the rugged outdoorsy trek-boot and check-shirt- ensembled beard wearer. My charms, such as they are, are inevitably wasted on a man with a beard. Perhaps it’s my own long- buried daddy issues due to the fact my father, hiding a slightly rotund chin, used to wear one, and they never much worked on him either. And yet here, when we were greeted by the young be-bearded manager of the Morgan Arms, charmingly apologising for the lack of menus and the fact a 60-person function meant they weren’t currently serving food, I became a little giddy. Perhaps it was Johnny-the-pug sat restlessly at my feet, perched, as we were on the edge of someone else’s table, barking furiously at everyone who went past in shoes, particularly the harassed looking kitchen staff who were swooping past with interesting smells from the kitchen.

Perhaps it was the fact that my companion, Sam, taking the dog for two weeks to give me a break from the decidedly unglamorous early morning walks and turd picking, was tired from a long day creating Facebook updates, and not particularly talkative, and the fact that it was two hours past my dinner time on a cold wet night, but I grew slightly hysterical, in a giddy female way. Within moments, the charming young manager was promising to bring us burgers as soon as Chef had a break from serving 60 starters. Fifteen minutes and half a Guinness later, we not only had our own table, but I had a healthy plate of thick meaty burger, brioche bun, iceberg leaf and tomatoes, generous fries and a lovely radish and watercress salad perched on my knee, with Johnny turning hopeful circles beneath it, sauces on their way.

Suffice it to say it was gone in a further ten, washed down with the end of my Guinness which I’m now regretting 9 hours later, as I am resolutely awake despite it being only 5.00 am (being largely on the wagon has convinced me that all my insomnia is definitely alcohol related) but given how fainty I was when I arrived, and the fact that it didn’t look like dinner would be forthcoming, I needed a creamy half of carby iron goodness to keep my pecker up, and stomach from growling more than Jonny under the table.

I like the Morgan Arms. It’s a little piece of gastro pub heaven hidden amid the terraced squares that surprise you when you escape the chicken shops of Mile End Road. Grace Dent wrote a review of it in the Evening Standard a couple of weeks ago, and reminded me it was here; although she was faintly supercilious about the area, once epitomised by Pulp in the Britpop years as “a mess all right” – it’s improving apace since then; so much in fact, in fact, there’s not not just the Morgan, decent pub nosh wise, but also a clutch of nice pubs and eateries in the area, including the Lord Tredegar, where I went for my birthday last year, The Victoria, where I’m having it this year, and The Greedy Cow – where the kids have had their birthdays – which serves, among a plethora of burger products, some exotic meats (kangaroo burger anyone?) too. In a part of the capital that many would consider to be a culinary wilderness, it’s reassuring to know that decent food at reasonable prices can be found if you know where to look. Of them, The Morgan Arms is probably the best for “gastro fare” – if you don’t go in “silly season” as the nice manager with the beard described the run up to Christmas, but even if you do, you can still get a hearty meal served up to you ASAP. It’s also one of the most dog-friendly places around, and poor old Johnny was distracted by not one but two compeers – a boxer with a bully boy bark, and a bison frisée, who clearly had the hots for Johnny. They shared a bowl of ice water (honestly!) enabling Sam and I to get a moment’s relaxation before deciding we were stuffed, knackered and needed to swap our arm chairs for a sofa and some telly, so we called it a night and  went our separate ways. But we’ll be back. Only next time, I might allow my facial hair to grow that little bit, to feel more in with the locals. Damn that electrolysis.