Picture of Shooting Star, E1 7JF

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Fuller's Ale and Pie House near Liverpool Street Station, in the Good Beer Guide. Note that it's closed on weekends, like most City pubs.

Full Fuller's range including seasonals. London Pride £2.90/pint; Gales Seafarer (guest ale in September 2007) £2.85/pint.

Food served until 9pm every day, according to the 2008 Good Beer Guide. The menu looks rather good. Only a few vegetarian choices, but they all look interesting. Sample prices: soup of the day £4; brie, grape, and celery sandwich £4.75; nachos £6; sausage and mash (veggie option available) £8.75; lemon chicken and courgette salad £9.25; steak and ESB pie £8.50. They also offer sharing plates for two (from 5pm-9pm), including a pie tasting plate at £16. (Photos of the menu as of September 2007 are available here.)

We first visited on a Thursday evening in September 2007. It was quite quiet for a pub so close to a mainline station, but in a good way (no struggle for a table, but not echoingly empty). The good weather probably helped though, as there were a number of people standing outside. The music was extremely cheesy (and not in a good way) and loud enough to slightly impede conversation.

Foodwise, we tried the "lumberjack chips" (£2.75), which were to Kake's taste but not Martin's, and gained points for having the skin left on but lost them again for being pre-salted (photo). Greg tried the Toad in the Hole, aka Sausage Toad and he rated it quite highly.

pfig visited again a week later; the music was very good this time, and not too loud, unlike the previous week. It was mostly indie pop and electronica, quite a good selection of both. Food sampled on this visit was: warm goat's cheese & pomegranate salad (3/5); game, port & plum pie (5/5); chicken, ham & spinach pie (4/5); and the vegetarian winter herb garden pie (4/5).

The beers drunk on this occasion were: Grolsch (very good, but then again that's easy); Discovery, which was a bit of a let down as it was plainly flat and too warm; and London Pride and (bottled) London Porter, which were excellent. I drank mostly Bitburger Drive, which I think is the best of the alcohol-free beer-like beverages, managing not to taste of chemicals but instead like a light lager. I'm mentioning it because it's becoming more difficult to find.

Accessibility: Although there are three steps up to get into the pub, they have made an effort to overcome this problem by putting in a lift to get wheelchairs etc up from street level, and there is a disabled loo. Once you're in the pub, it's all on one level.

They have a bookable function room, with a big screen.

See also:

Last visited by pfig, 20 September 2007. Opening hours taken from the 2008 Good Beer Guide. Sample food prices taken from menu in pub, 13 September 2007. Beer prices determined on 13 September 2007.
OS X co-ord: 533412 OS Y co-ord: 181622 (Latitude: 51.517262 Longitude: -0.076998)
This is version 12 (as of 2008-01-18 19:40:13). View current version. List all versions.