London Fields might best be known as an after-hours destination for dive-bar martinis and small plates, but Circle13 is aiming to bring a new dimension to the area’s social offering. Recently opened by winemaker and cocktail veteran Marc Sarton Du Jonchay (A Bar with Shapes for a Name, New York’s Gage & Tollner) and former international pétanque player Monty Quaia, the space – taking residence in one of Mentmore Terrace’s railway arches – aims to bring the more than 100-year-old French sport to East London, along with an equal focus on Basque cuisine and low and no-ABV highballs.
'Pétanque has always had the reputation of being for older people, and that’s partly true but it’s also slightly unfair to the game because there are lots of subcultures playing and making it their own,' says Quaia. 'London Fields is already one of the hubs of pétanque in London. We're convinced that the future of the game is making it a bit younger, a bit more fun, and appealing to people like us and our friends.'
In keeping with this outlook, Circle13 has been designed with a thoroughly modern aesthetic in mind. Helmed by experiential designer Joseph Stone, whose work spans high-end residential design and product launches for brands including Google and Nike, its interiors have been curated to reflect the visuals of pétanque itself, where silver balls are thrown onto pitches made of gravel or grass.
'The image we’ve based everything on is as though you’re looking down at pétanque balls on a gravel surface. All of the materials have an earthy backdrop with steel cut through; the back of the bar has a sandy tile, but then the bar slices through it,' explains Stone. 'We’ve taken the elements of pétanque and expanded them, riffed off them, and tried to create a contemporary take on them all.'
Though gaming bars are increasingly rife in the city, Circle13 have approached their brand with a notably different ethos. 'The competitive socialising [scene] is great because having an activity makes it less about excessive drinking. But my biggest gripe is that they're generally quite tacky and the activity isn't coming from people that care about it, so it always feels a bit inauthentic,' says Quaia. Instead, the core mantra of Circle13 is “rebellious simplicity”. 'Petanque is so simple and it refuses to be more complicated, so we wanted everything to reflect that,' he continues.
Spatially, that means creating areas – a front seating space with cocktail tables, a bar area with high stools, pétanque pitches both indoors and out, and a secondary arch for events – that work individually but have a 'porosity' between them. 'When you're having a drink in the front area, there are screen breaks [around the pétanque pitch] at head height so you can see the game through them. Then we also worked with our friend Darran Prior from There’s Light on the expanded lighting design. We've tried to hero each area, illuminating the bar so it’s focused on groups of two, and making sure the pétanque pitches have a really nice diffused light so they have a kind of amphitheatre energy,' explains Stone.
'Pétanque can really be quite fun and chic so the idea is that you should have your sexiest picture in the pétanque pitch with the screens around it, with the lighting above when it's soft,' laughs Quaia. 'We want it to be on everyone's Hinge profile and for it to be known for being the place to get you a nice photo taken.'
The space has been designed in a modular fashion, with most features – from the screens around the pétanque pitch to the bar set-up in their second events arch – able to be rearranged depending on the night. Situated down a side road of E8, the frontage of the building has been kept open and welcoming, with floor-to-ceiling glass that allows the warm light of the interior to invite people in. 'We could have easily gone for the speakeasy feel, where you have a door and a single light and, as you go in, the world opens up in front of you. But because of it already being an industrial-feeling street, having that bigger aperture into the space was really important,' says Stone.
Staff uniforms are equally as considered, with plans for an adjacent merch line in place. A former tailor at Paul Smith, Quaia wanted to focus on 'streetwear with a sports background', working with Lithuanian streetwear brand Püga73 to develop a capsule collection of four pieces. 'Petanque has gone through many different phases, from the south of France rich guy with chinos and cigars, into something sporty with tracksuits, but none of them really spoke to us as modern Londoners,' he says.
The 'rebellious simplicity' also extends to their food and drink menu, headed up by Du Jonchay and chef Sean Donnelly. From the kitchen, Basque-centric pintxos are designed for snacking and sharing, featuring a variety of skewers, toasts and croquetas. Their pork belly and date skewer is a best-selling mix of savoury and sweet, while slices of home-baked Basque cheesecake make up their sweet offering.
Though their drinks menu still features ‘hard’ drinks, including a negroni sour and a mezcal toreador – a twist on a margarita using apricot – Circle13 have purposefully prioritised a less potent drinking culture. Here, non-alcoholic drinks are placed front and centre, with the option to add alcohol as a secondary concern. They’re purposefully kept at a very reasonable price point too: non-alcoholic cocktails are all priced at £6, with low-ABV highballs and spritzes coming in at £8.50.
'If you're not drinking, generally everything is based on non-alcoholic spirits which are more expensive in some cases than the boozy version. It makes no sense to us when there are already so many drinks in the world that don't have alcohol in them and are delicious,' Quaia reasons. 'We want it to highlight some of the ridiculousness of the industry, where £20-plus drinks and £8 pints are becoming increasingly more common.'
It all combines to create a venture that feels quietly radical, where a love of pétanque has brought about a new kind of bar, and a different way to socialise. 'We’re going to be launching different programs. We want to have Tuesday takeovers with different young chefs from Michelin kitchens, giving young people a chance to be creative and do something in the same way that we've been given a chance to open the space,' says Quaia. 'Rather than just trying to sell pétanque as a sport, we want it to be a social experience.'
Circle13, 369-370 Mentmore Terrace, London E8 3SD