Canary Wharf’s new experiential bar promises an Electric Shuffle revolution

Have you ever walked into a bar and felt as though you've strolled right into the combined minds of Dorothy Gale and Jay Gatsby? Me neither. Well, I hadn't until I went to the opening of Electric Shuffle.

From the street outside, you can see flashes of white and multicoloured lights – my first thought was: "Am I entering a rave, a speakeasy or a bar?" The answer was seemingly a seriously cool combination of all three. 

The new experiential bar, which sits on Canary Wharf's North Colonnade, is not your regular drinking spot. It's rare an entire wall is designed to look like the inner workings of a machine, which customers can literally light up themselves by pressing the ironically labelled "Do not press" buttons. But then this is a rare bar, for many reasons.

More than its stunning look is its overriding unique feature: lifesize shuffleboard tables which you can book a spot on to play, and join in with groups of people you've never met before. For those of you who – like me – had to Google what shuffleboard is, it's essentially a game where players push weighted discs down a tiered points board to score as many, from 1-5, as possible.

Almost all Scandanavian bars have shuffleboard in them – we wanted to bring that to London and start the shuffle revolution

Electric Shuffle has updated the game by asking players to be divided into teams and designing the boards to be less wood more air hockey-esque, which allows the discs to glide elegantly as an electronic points system tallies up the totals as you go. I can't be sure if beginner's luck took over or not, but I managed to win every round I played. Just saying. 

Alan Ellis, founder and managing director of Ellis Design Studios who created the bar's entire look, said the bar is following in the footsteps of venues all across Scandanavia and the US. "Pretty much every Scandanavian bar has shuffleboard in it. They're obsessed! Some bars in the US do as well. We wanted to bring that to London and start the shuffle revolution," he told me fresh off the back of my victory on the table I was playing on. 

Safe to say the bar impresses and if the launch night is anything to go by, Ellis may well be right: London's shuffle revolution has indeed begun. 

For more details, head to electricshuffle.com