when your best mate is as obsessed with drag culture as you are, the perfect birthday present for said mate is obviously a trip to dr. kluger's olde towne tavern in canary wharf, for one of the speakeasy's infamous drag brunches. though the reviews were mixed, the earliest booking i could get (from march, when said birthday was), was for june the second - almost three months after the day of purchase; that just goes to show how popular these events are when they come to london's eastern boroughs. when the big day finally came, we made our way to the breakfast club at crossrail place, took the corridor down the left to the taverne, and waited until the doctor was ready to see us.
the following three hours were a blur of bottomless prosecco, full englishes made to order by the breakfast club's line-inducing kitchen, and a drag-off unlike anything i had seen before. there were high kicks and death drops and some absolutely awful lip syncing, but there was also outrageous laughter, drag queens drinking from anyone and everyone's prosecco glasses, and two very attractive young men who - by the end of the show, had become marilyn mun-hoe and wilhemena clit-grove much to their tables' delight. we laughed, oh how we laughed, and then there were sweet buttermilk pancakes and a final dance number before the doors were flung open and the party headed outside to the beautiful sun, and soaked up the cool air beside the canal.
the tickets aren't exactly cheap (you can grab yours here), but considering we went through more than three bottles of prosecco and three plates of food, i'd say we definitely got our value for money - especially as we got a show with our brunch. i dare say people are coming to these events for the show, and not the food, which i can account for being the better way to play it as the food is often not worth lining up for, but never leaves you wanting more. unlike the show, which i will admit had too much of the baby-queens and not enough of the real ones, though i would still recommend the event a hundred times over, because it was just *so much fun*.
check out what else is on at dr. kluger's here.
