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Yelp Makes Friends at The Easton



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Sometimes, you just want to go where everyone knows your name.

Yelpers filled the wonderfully local pub The Easton for a night of great eats, amazing drinks and meeting new people with some Speed Yelping, which is like Speed Dating*, but without the awkwardness, (and thank heaven for that). Welcome to Yelp Makes Friends!
Heading to Clerkenwell, The Easton is a beautiful pub tucked away from the main street. Filled with soft lighting, long wooden tables and a solid selection of beers, ales and wine, this was clearly the place to be for an evening.
Food
Drinks
Servers broughy down hot bowls of chips for each table and made their way around the room with delicious items like roast beef with horseradish and pork sliders.
"There were tempting morsels of beef on Yorkshire pudding dotted with horseradish, a rice and mushroom risotto ball, (the concept or deep frying a risotto had never occurred to me, is that up there with the deep fried Mars Bar?), a very Moorish haddock croquette and, oh dear me, I didn't quite manage to nab one of those burgers," Meena L told us between bites. Next time, Meena!
The Easton also provided yelpers with an amazing selection of red wine on the tables, chilled white wine on the bars and whatever was on draft during the entire event. It made everyone in a very talkative mood…
Talking
Leading right into the night's highlight: Speed Yelping (aka Speed Elite-ing)! Yelpers were separated into two groups: newbies and guests in one, veterans (with two or more Elite Badges) in the other.
Random questions like, "If you could be the evil tyrant of one country, which country would it be?", we're placed on the table and people were paired off to get to know each other. Then, switch, and new pairs were made!
"As 'Yelp is not a dating site', we did speed-Eliting instead where the emphasis was to rotate and chat to new friends.It worked so well that there was a reluctance to change tables as Alex tried to keep a semblance of order!" Yee Gan O wrote. "Judging from the 'tips' which were facts you learned about your new friends, I'd say it was a roaring success."

Start
At the end of each round, Yelpers wrote a tip on the event page about the person they just met. Here's a few of our favourites:
"Hridi C has a silent H in her name."
"Jules H wants to rule the world."
"Brinda A won't eat anything with a face. Even a watermelon."
"Chloe D is American. She eats eggplant in an elevator rather than aubergine in a lift!"
"Alex S wanted to be a cowboy when he was 6 years old."
"According to Vicky L, Bruce Willis is the man to be stuck in an elevator with because he could open the door with his bare hands."
This was clearly a time to make new friends during the fantastic night. Samir S even wrote us a little letter about it:
"Dear Yelp,

I would wholeheartedly appreciate it if you would kindly stop me from meeting wonderful inspirational people while while being plied with alcohol and snacks and being taken to random awesome places.

Dear yelp, I am also a serial liar."

Sounds like quite the evening But don’t just take our word for it. You can read all the reviews right here as well as check out all the pics by Natalya Spicker on the Official Yelp Flickr Page.
Until next time we meet,
Alex

Alex S, London Community Manager
*Yelp is not a dating site! We are, though a friend making site. And now you know.
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