Slim Jim's Liquor Store

Bar in Islington

7 / 10 from 1 review

Address
112 Upper Street
Islington
London
N1 1QN

Map

History

Telephone
020 7354 4364

Region
Islington

Nearest Station
Essex Road
0.33 miles

Category
Bars

Opening Times

Monday	Open 16:00 - Closes 02:00
Tuesday	Open 16:00 - Closes 02:00
Wednesday	Open 16:00 - Closes 02:00
Thursday	Open 16:00 - Closes 03:00
Friday	Open 16:00 - Closes 03:00
Saturday	Open 16:00 - Closes 03:00
Sunday	Open 18:00 - Closes 02:00

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All In London Review

Slim Jim’s is a good-looking bar with a lively atmosphere

Fashioned on an LA Juke joint, Slim Jim’s Liquor Bar is a different world for Londoners apparently. Its exposed brick walls, music posters, dim red lights and ceiling filled with dangling bras are all supposed to represent some kind of entry into a rock and roll time warp as you step off Upper Street and inside. But you know what? It’s a little tacky; the hanging bras alone are enough to make you sigh. Add to this that tiresome door policy where boys aren’t allowed in without girls – even in groups of two at 9pm – and it really does feel like a time warp, only back to a time when Loaded was the men’s magazine du jour.

All that aside, it should be noted that Slim Jim’s is a good-looking bar with a lively atmosphere. The booths, bright red bar stools, low lighting and loud music are each intoxicating elements if you can let yourself go. The focus on American beers and spirits is something out of the ordinary and when the speakers are blaring out doses of garage rock, grunge and industrial rock it feels right to be knocking back pints of Blue Moon with Wild Turkey chasers. Clearly, there are a lot of people who feel the same. The bar is regularly packed out from Thursday onwards and it’s shoulder-to-shoulder standing room only.

If you’ve ever seen the excellent Road House with Kurt Russell then you’ll know what Slim Jim’s Liquor Bar is attempting to replicate; pure dive bar chic. If you can ignore the tackier side of the décor, can enter in a mixed group and like a great free jukebox then you might even love it.

Reviewed by T.A.O
Published on Jun 12, 2013

Best For

London's best whisky bars

This'll warm your cockles...

Not all whisky bars have to replicate Gatsby-esque sequences; there are those that fall on the seedier side of the spectrum. Slim Jim’s Liquor Bar is one of these places. Doing its best to remind you of somewhere you might have seen Kurt Russell wrap a pool cue over some goon’s back, it is without a doubt one of London’s best whisky bars. It focuses on a lot of bourbons and ryes so if you’re a fan of the sweeter side you’re in luck. The music at this Angel outpost is also thoroughly rocker.

Best bars with a jukebox in London

Choose wisely...

Slim Jim’s is the kind of bar that you really need to be in the mood for. It has cultivated an image for itself as that of a hard-liquor toting, hard-partying dive bar and that is almost how it feels – if you’ve shotted enough ‘Jack’, as they say. Whatever, the jukebox is a doozy full of rock ‘n’ roll classics.

London's best American bars

Yeeee-haaaa!

If there’s a dive bar in London that can out dive any Lower East Side dive then it’s Slim Jim’s Liquor Store. There is the grimy look of the place; the bras hanging from the ceiling, the classic rock and the way the people booze hard here.