About
Reflecting and responding to a trend for pre-video trivial pursuits, Draughts bills itself as ‘London’s first board game café’. A fee of £5 provides access to a library of more than 500 retro and modern classics: Cluedo, Risk, Balderdash, Boggle, Articulate, Twister and Mousetrap will resonate with those whose childhood was spent wide-eyed in Hamleys, while Smash Up: Awesome Level 9000 is new to us. Wines are reasonably priced, and you can also enjoy other ‘draughts’ in the form of Meantime ales, plus craft brews aplenty from London indies such as Partizan and Wild Card. If you’re not too excited to eat, there’s a range of filled baguettes, triangle sandwiches, panini, salads and cakes to sustain you when the Monopoly dice sends you directly to jail. Set in an E8 railway arch, Draughts is definitely not for Haggerston’s Call of Duty brigade.