Nostalgic escape: the bar feels like a teenage ego run riot
(Picture: Adrian Lourie)If you want to feel desired — if you want your phone to buzz repeatedly with messages and check-ins and open-ended pleas for a response — might I suggest an online booking at Valderrama’s on Upper Street in Islington? A few hours after anonymously reserving a table at this new “sports bar like no other”, I had already been contacted multiple times by an extremely keen booking manager. And there was, I thought, something especially telling about the final bit of correspondence.
“Just as a point of reference,” began the text, “there will be football shown in the venue tonight but this should not impact your booking.” That a sports bar would feel the need to warn guests about the presence of live sport felt, to me, to get to the heart of the central predicament of this place. The roar of televised football during a meal can be both gift and curse; either a massive lure or an active deterrent, depending on who you ask. And though Valderrama’s (which is the brainchild of chef James Cochran and essentially a home for Around the Cluck, his hit lockdown-era fried chicken delivery business) is spirited, genially run, and frequently delicious, it does feel, at times, like it is caught between two versions of itself. A kind of half-and-half scarf of a venture, solidly updating rather than boldly reimagining a tricky genre.
That said, these are undoubtedly interesting times for the “sports bar” as a concept. On the one hand, it is a phrase that immediately conjures sticky black tables, horrendous buffalo wings and unsmiling men in wraparound Oakleys breathing in each other’s Bud Lite farts (I should caveat this by saying I am an unabashed fan, particularly while killing time at an American airport). But, on the other, we are unquestionably living through the Boxparkification of televised sport: a time when lively outdoor viewing arenas have accrued a memeable cultural cachet and a sort of post-ironic mass appeal. Whatever the actual weather come the World Cup in November, the forecast will be a hail of pints triumphantly chucked in the air by people in retro England shirts.
Right away, it’s clear that Valderrama’s (named after blond-afroed former Colombia captain Carlos Valderrama) is looking to nod to this playful fan culture, while also softening it. The walls are a riotous swirl of clashy, specially commissioned murals; the loos are papered with pages from Nineties editions of Match magazine; and, as a couple of mates and I arrived to screens displaying the build-up to that evening’s game on mute, the stereo was blaring Kula Shaker.
It is comfort, nostalgic escape and teenage id allowed to run riot, basically. And these themes extend to the short menu of chicken-heavy dishes that ally Cochran’s Michelin-level, Ledbury-honed technique with a true believer’s understanding of junk food’s precise, evocative power. “The Original” burger brings a weighty, craggy, buttermilk-fried piece of bird, gushing flavoursome succulence, and accessorised with squirts of blue cheese mousse, bacon scratchings and a fiery lick of scotch bonnet jam; the “Spice Up Your Life” adds a crunching Jenga pile of Bombay mix, crushed poppadom, pickled chillies, smoked yoghurt and mango chutney; boneless, burnished thigh pieces are thickly ladled in a beautifully weighted gloss of chip shop curry sauce.
Still, this tendency towards exuberant experimentation can lead the kitchen astray. “Jerk Hash Brown” was a bronzed coffin of shredded potato with a rigid outer edge and scant spicing. The tricked-out doughnuts we ordered for pudding — which included apple compote and strawberry jam — tended towards the sloppy.
But, of course, these disappointments only stuck out because of the high bar set by what had come before. They would comfortably be among the better things on the menu at other places where big-screen football was part of the proposition. And that, ultimately, is the thing to keep in mind at Valderrama’s. Does it reinvent and rehabilitate the sports bar? No. But there is very good Beavertown beer, there is the crunch of spectacular fried chicken, and there is the chance to watch sport in a joyful, elevated and not overly macho environment. That is reason enough to figuratively chuck a pint in the air.
