Archive for August, 2009
St Peter’s Bottles Changing?
Aug 21st, 2009 |
This picture was taken on a recent trip to the Jerusalem Tavern in Farringdon, London. Apologies for the poor quality – it was taken on my rubbish mobile.
For those who are not familiar with this pub, it is the only London outlet of the St Peter’s Brewery in Suffolk. It’s worth a visit if you like good beer and you’re in the area. The St Peter’s beers are very distinctive in their flavour tasting unlike beers from any other brewery. They usually have 4 or 5 on draught at any one time and most of the rest of the range are available in bottles.
I happened to notice these two bottles on the table on front of me (they weren’t mine) and was intrigued by the one on the left. If you’ve bought St Peter’s beers in the supermarket before you’ll be familiar with the elliptical shape of the base. It doesn’t come over so well in the picture but the left hand one has a circular base. I wonder if this is the new shape? It’s definitely got the St Peter’s badge moulded into the glass so they’re not brought in temporarily from somewhere else.
It would be a shame if the elliptical bottles disappeared.
St James’s Park Crawl – The Others
Aug 18th, 2009 |
I’ve already posted about the excellent Speaker near St James’s Park tube station. But it wasn’t the only pub we visited that night…
The Adam & Eve
We were meeting at the Adam & Eve which is a T & J Bernard pub right by St James’s Park tube station.
The pub has a broad mix of customers – although the suits do tend to predominate at 5:30 on a Wednesday evening. I’m guessing that the Adam & Eve is a popular after work establishment given the brisk turnover of customers.
The large windows let in a lot of light but the pub interior still seems dark, because of all the dark wooden features.
Beers available were: Adnams Bitter, Well’s Bombardier, Fuller’s London Pride and Young’s Bitter. I tried the Bombardier which was OK but tasted a little tired. Perhaps because of the disappointing pint we moved straight on to the next one when Jon arrived.
The Old Monk Exchange
From the outside the Old Monk Exchange is just a doorway in Victoria street. You descend the stairs and it opens out into a cavernous basement bar. It initially looks like a Nicholson’s pub, but actually may be Greene King given the beer selection – GK Abbot and IPA, plus Twickenham Ales Summer Gold.
Not being particular fans of GK we both opted for the Summer Gold which was light and tasty, but not we considered as good as their Naked Ladies. Still it was 10 times better than my first pint of the evening.
Tempted to eat here but decided to press on to the next one which was the Speaker in Great Peter Street. I’ve already commented on this pub so won’t repeat myself in this post.
The Abbey
The other pub we visited was the Abbey in Abbey Orchard Street. It’s another pub that’s all in the basement with just a door and porch at street level.
It’s a noisy pub – lot’s of plain walls and no carpets. Some people may find a conversation a bit tricky.
The Abbey is a Martson’s pub although you may not guess it immediately. Beer-wise, tonight it offers Brakspear’s Bitter, Marston’s Long Hop and Jennings Cumberland. There is no Pedigree, no Banks’s.
After a couple of tastings of the others I had a pint of the Brakspear’s but it was a bit disappointing. It was also quite frothy and I noticed that it had been served with a tight sparkler. As an experiment I asked for another half of Brakspear’s with the sparkler taken off. The difference was amazing – a delicious beer with almost no head. This was much more how I imagined Brakspear’s should taste. Once again the importance of the sparkler had manifested itself. See my previous post on Brains Dark where the opposite was true.
Some may like the Abbey but I doubt I’d return, especially with a pub as good as the Speaker just down the road.
Aldgate Lunchtime Options No2 – The Dispensary
Aug 17th, 2009 |
Number 2 in an occasional series of pubs I can visit at lunchtime. It follows on from my first ever post which concerned the Pride of Spitalfields.
The Dispensary is situated on the junction of Leman Street and Alie Street – just down the road from Aldgate East tube station. There used to be 3 pubs on this crossroads a few years ago. The Old Monk has now become a ‘gentlemans club’ and the Black Horse which reinvented itself as Bar Bed recently became a crime scene.
The Dispensary itself is enjoying a bit of a resurgence after having reopened some months ago. Prior to that it was closed for ages after a drastic decline in quality. It originally opened in 1998.
On the beer front, the Dispensary is now the local CAMRA group’s Pub of the Year, so you’d expect something special. I started with Hog’s Back HBB – refreshing and tasty, but I preferred the Nethergate Umbel which is a fruity, floral beer but slightly bitter. I know not everyone likes beer like this, but I do.
If you’re eating here and ordering from the menu make sure your bank balance is healthy. I chose the steak burger – almost the cheapest item on the main course menu at £9.50. But it was superb – cooked slightly rare, how I like it. And I was cetainly full up when I finished it.
The Dispensary is very much geared up like a restaurant at lunchtimes – you’re shown to a table and the order is taken from the table.
I was going to say that I’d be unlikely to eat there again given the prices but during a conversation with Annie who runs the pub she told me that they do offer Beer and Baguette lunches for £5, and Beer and Ploughmans for £9.50. I’ll certainly be back to try those.
I did pop back today for an excellent pint of Harvey’s Best which they usually stock. Dark Star Hophead is another regular apparently.
The Speaker in Westminster
Aug 13th, 2009 |
On Wednesday evening Jon and I had a bit of a crawl around pubs close to St James’s Park tube station. It’s not an area that either of us were familiar with but it yielded a superb pub that we shall definitely be returning too soon.
The Speaker is in Great Peter Street – away from the bustle of Victoria Street. You know when you’ve found a good pub when there are crowds of people standing outside on the pavement even when it’s raining – think of the Market Porter in Borough Market. Getting to the bar was a bit of a struggle because of the number of people inside.
We started off with a couple of pints of Colley’s Dog from the Tring Brewery . This was a delicious dark and malty beer. After some very reasonably priced sandwiches we then tried the Meantime LPA, a refreshing hoppy beer and very moreish.
Jon and I left the Speaker for a while to visit the Abbey up the road but decided to return to the Speaker to finish off the evening.
We discovered that The Speaker is holding a seaside beer festival for 2 weeks from 24th August and we’ll certainly be returning for that. Dennis the manager gave me a list of the beers that will be on (not necessarily all at once I believe). They are:
- Acorn – Summer Pale
- Arundel – Summer Daze
- Bank Top – Bowl Town Bitter
- Black Dog – Whitby Abbey Ale
- Black Isle – Red Kite
- Clarks – Sunflower Surprise
- Coach House – Summer Sizzler
- Dark Star – Sunburst
- Dorset – Harbour Master
- Elgoods – Mad Dog
- Exe Valley – Devon Summer
- Oakleaf – Donkey’s Delight
- Southport – Golden Sands
- Titanic – Lifeboat
- Woodfordes – Nelson’s Revenge
- Yates – Solway Sunset
- Yeovil – BST
The Speaker is definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area – it’s a great place for a conversation as there’s no music or TV unlike other pubs we visited during the evening.
I’ll post details about the other pubs we visited soon.
An Evening in Winchester (Part 4)
Aug 12th, 2009 |
This post carries on from a previous one describing a recent real ale pub crawl round Winchester.
The Black Boy
As mentioned in my previous post, the Black Boy is the best pub in Winchester (in my view) and well worth finishing up at. But it is also one of the furthest pubs from Winchester station – a good 15-20 minute walk. Luckily the barstaff will happily call you a taxi to whisk you back to the station in time for your train. (Actually I still owe Geoff for the fare)
The Black Boy was hardly worth a glance when I actually lived in Winchester 20 years ago, but it has grown piece by piece into a must-visit stop on any pub crawl of the city. The pub is full of bric-a-brac and stuffed animals, and rows of books. There’s enough in here to keep you occupied for days. The pub is noted for its selection of games and the regular Wednesday night games of Go were in full swing.
The many levels and areas maintain their own atmosphere even though none of them are far from the centrally located bar. There’s even a patio area outside for the sunnier days. However, we stayed inside as it was getting dark by the time we arrived.
The beer selection at the Black Boy changes, but Pots Ale from Cheriton and Hopback Summer Lightning are constants. On the night of our visit the Pots Ale was superb – tasting even fresher than that at the Hyde Tavern which seemed liked ages ago, but was just 4 hours beforehand.
We arrived just in time to get some food (kitchen shuts at 9pm) and were both impressed by the huge plates of ham egg and chips that were set down in front of us.
After the food we decided to have some games of table football, and we were soundly thrashed by a group of what turned out were championship players. We retired hurt and drowned our sorrows with one last pint before our taxi arrived.
Any time you spend at the Black Boy is never enough and I can’t wait to go back again. I recommend this pub to everyone.
Read about all the pubs we got to:
- An Evening in Winchester Part 1 – Albion, King Alfred, Hyde Tavern
- An Evening in Winchester Part 2 – Old Vine, Green Man
- An Evening in Winchester Part 3 – Wykeham Arms
And the ones we didn’t get to: