Why this street, and not the high street
Shoreditch High Street is where most nights in the east are supposed to begin, and by ten on a Friday it shows. The pavements are full, the popular doors have queues and the traffic never lets up. Redchurch Street runs east from it, a couple of minutes from Shoreditch High Street station, and the change within a hundred yards is remarkable. It is narrow, lined with old warehouses and Victorian shopfronts, and quiet enough that you can follow a conversation on the far pavement.
By day it is known for its independent shops, and at night those shops are shut with their windows lit, which gives the street a glow the high street never manages. In between them sit bars and restaurants that fill steadily rather than all at once. At ten there is still room to sit down, and sitting down is the whole point of a first drink.
The street is also well placed for whatever comes next. Arnold Circus is a few minutes north, Brick Lane a few minutes east, Spitalfields ten minutes south, and the bars around Rivington Street and Hoxton Square are just across the high street to the west. Wherever the night goes from here, it goes on foot.
Choosing the room without a list
The desk does not publish a list of bars here, and the reason is practical rather than coy. Rooms in this part of London open, change hands and close faster than any page can follow, and a recommendation that was right last spring can send you to a shuttered door. When you write, name the street and the sort of room you want, and the reply will name one that is trading that week.
The sort of room matters more than the name. For a first drink, look for somewhere with seats rather than standing room, a bar where the music sits behind the conversation rather than on top of it, and a door you can leave by without anyone noticing. Redchurch Street has several of those, which is why it keeps coming up.
Decide as well whether you want to meet her there or have her come to the hotel first. Both work. Twenty minutes at the hotel before walking out is the calmer start; meeting at the bar is the quicker one. Either way the confirmation names the place and the hour, so nobody is left on a corner wondering.
Moving on without a plan
The best second stop is often no stop at all. Walk north up Boundary Street to Arnold Circus, the raised garden with its bandstand that forms the hub of the Boundary Estate, put up by the London County Council in the 1890s and which is often described as the first council estate in the country. At night it is dark, round and almost silent, with red brick blocks on every side, and ten minutes there resets the evening completely.
From there Calvert Avenue leads back towards the high street, and Columbia Road, known for its Sunday morning flower market, is a few minutes further north east. Heading south again, Brick Lane is the late option. Its bagel bakeries are famous for never really closing, and salt beef in a bagel, eaten standing on the pavement after midnight, has ended more good evenings in the east than any cocktail.
If the night wants more noise rather than less, cross the high street westward to the streets around Rivington Street, Curtain Road and Hoxton Square, where the later bars and the rooms with music are. It takes five minutes, and because it is the busier side, it is better visited second than first.
Queues, doors and the hour after midnight
Queues in Shoreditch are mostly a weekend problem, and mostly a problem at the busiest doors. Arriving before eleven avoids most of them, and choosing rooms with tables rather than dance floors avoids nearly all the rest. After midnight the balance shifts: the quieter bars start to close and the late rooms fill, so it helps to have decided by then whether the night is carrying on or winding down.
Evenings of this shape are arranged under out past midnight, for nights meant to go somewhere rather than sit still. A late Shoreditch night, from a first drink at ten to a walk home at two, fits properly into four hours at £900. Three hours at £700 suits a night that starts later and has a single destination in it.
Adding an hour from wherever you happen to be standing is usually possible if her night is free. Message the desk and the answer comes back within minutes, and the extra time is charged at the next rung of the same ladder, never at a figure improvised at one in the morning.
Getting back without a taxi
Most of the hotels guests use here are walkable from Redchurch Street. The hotel on Great Eastern Street and the low lit one on Willow Street are each within ten minutes on foot, and the hotels around Liverpool Street and the eastern edge of the City of London are about fifteen minutes south, down the high street and Bishopsgate. On a dry night that walk belongs to the evening instead of interrupting it.
For guests staying further out, Liverpool Street has the Night Tube on the Central line on Friday and Saturday nights, and the Overground runs from Shoreditch High Street. Black cabs pass along the high street and Great Eastern Street through the night, which is useful when it rains, although at two on a Saturday they are fewer and far between. A companion who knows these streets will usually walk you round the worst of it.
The booking ends where the confirmation says it ends, which is usually your door. Her own journey home is her business and already inside the figure, so the last walk of the night never turns into a negotiation.
Who the desk sends east
Guests who begin with the brunettes list will find the two women who know this street best among its names. Molly, wavy dark hair and an easy laugh, works the east most nights and likes the back streets after dark; a dinner with her tends to end with the walk towards Redchurch Street. She has no patience with a stuffy room, which in Shoreditch counts as an advantage.
Tiffany approaches the district from the Spitalfields side, where the old market buildings are, and will walk you up through them to Redchurch Street, a ten minute stroll that changes the neighbourhood entirely. She is fine boned, dark haired and fond of an argument conducted in good humour, which is precisely the right quality for a bar at eleven.
Both live in Soho and come east in a quarter of an hour, so a ten o'clock start is simple for either. Tell the desk where the first drink is and whether to meet there or at the hotel, and the confirmation names the place, the hour and the figure. Her fee is given to her in person as she arrives, before the first drink is ordered. Shoreditch has its own page with the stations, the hotels and the walking times, and delegates coming up from a day in EC2 will find the route described in the note on the evening after a Barbican conference.
Filed under: most of the names in this note also sit on the brunettes list in by request.