Exhibit Balham – Bar, Diner and Cinema – Review

Adam (Editor)

11 years ago

When deciding on where to go out lately, we at London Life UK have made most of our decisions based on the weather. So on a rainy Thursday night, Exhibit in Balham ticked all the right boxes, it’s close to Balham tube/ train station, has a cocktail bar, an American style diner and a cinema all under one roof. This place should be a winner, or was it?

The Cocktail Bar

Upon entering Exhibit we were greeted by a rather expansive cocktail bar, we have always been fans of Be At One, but often they’re quite cramped. Therefore, the chilled out atmosphere of Exhibit, complete with fireplace and feature walls (we love a feature wall!) was very welcome. The cocktail menu offers a good range of options from the whole cocktail family and there is also a good range of beers on tap. A special shout out has to go to the bar staff who, when recommending a cocktail, rather than asking out choice of spirit enquired as to our preference of a sweet, sour or preferred flavour combination (the show of a truly skilled barman).

The Diner

This is everything you’d hope for in American style diner, complete with a working jukebox, so if you fancy jiving and dining you can. To make things even tastier, you can have dinner and a movie for £15.90 on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. We managed to munch our way through a couple of deluxe burgers which were personalised as per the waitresses wonderful recommendations. If you have the space the donut stack is a winner, although we are not sure that is a waistline friendly option!

The Cinema

The cinema is compact at only 24 seats, or should we say 12 very comfortable couches. The screen is a perfect size for the venue and whoever created that room knew their stuff. Within minutes we feared the worst, “Post burger involuntary nap syndrome”, however thankfully this didn’t happen, in part due to the lack of trailers and as it turned out ‘About Time’ was actually a pretty good film. For those of you who don’t know it, it’s a British chick flick / love story with time travel.

Conclusion

With offers like dinner and a movie for less than the price of some tickets in Leicester Square, if there’s a film on you want to see, Exhibit is an absolute bargain. Admittedly with the cocktail bar downstairs it is very easy to spend a lot more. We left full, entertained and happy, and you can’t ask for much more than that.

Also for Superbowl fans it is worth checking out what they’ve got planned

Finally if you want to do something a little different for Valentines day this year but don’t want to spend a fortune. Exhibit might have the answer, for little under £22pp you get dinner in the american diner, followed by Woody Allens classic Midnight in Paris and a glass of champagne.