If you are at Park Royal station and desperate for lunch, this is exactly what you need. So long as what you need is a glass of generic booze and a microwaved baked potato.
One thing The Attic is not is original. The menu has been the same since time immemorial and consists of microwaved spuds, a couple of pasta dishes including the flat, scaldingly-hot, roof-of-mouth-sticker that is their lasagne, thai curry (tinned?) in red and green flavours, chilli con carne, and sandwiches in ham, cheese, corned beef or tuna.
Bizarrely for a wine bar, they only seem to stock a handful of different wines, but they also have some lager and cider on tap, and bottled beers including Peroni and Old Speckled Hen.
Decor is white-painted woodchip and pale-green contrast colour, with fake beams across the ceiling, and various pictures on the walls including a relic of teenage boys' bedrooms past: a small black and white poster of a soft-focus 1980s model lifting her shirt so that the base of her breasts are revealed with the caption take two of these and call me in the morning.
There is a smoking-area out the back under a marquee, fenced off so that you can't see the car park in which it's situated. There are also a few tables outside the front overlooking the small turning circle of what I assume must be Hanger Green (a small green triangle next to super-busy road-of-hell Western Avenue).
There's no possible way I can call the Attic good. But I also seem to be incapable of giving it less than 2 stars. Attempting to analyse this, it's at least always clean & tidy - not seedy. The prices have remained as static as the choice on the menu (potato, filling and salad for £3 is a steal for London, even if it is microwaved). I am also quite partial to a flat lasagne from time to time. And, in such a depressing area of the capital, anywhere that serves escape juice deserves a medal.
NB: VnF does not actually condone drinking as a method of escaping your problems, even if you do find yourself in Park Royal. read more
