There’s one non-negotiable component: a superb landlady/lord – equivalent to Carol Ross, who runs the Roscoe Head in Liverpool. It’s a comfortable, welcoming place, filled with comfy corners to have a chat. It stands out in a metropolis centre filled with nice locations for a beer. Then there’s Ali Ross on the Coach and Horses in Soho, which is having fun with a brand new golden age having been taken on by Fuller’s just a few years in the past.
If I lived in Liverpool, the Roscoe Head would possibly nicely be my favorite pub – or possibly The Lion Tavern, with its pleasant “Information Room”. If I have been from Bradford, it might most likely be The Corn Dolly, a cask-ale-and-carpet traditional. However I stay in south London, the place pubs have endured a combined time of it just lately, so my favorite is the Blythe Hill Tavern in Catford.
It’s run by Con Riordan, who got here to Britain from Limerick in 1974. Like all one of the best pubs, it has its quirks. The bar employees put on ties. There’s a variety of horse-racing paraphernalia on the partitions, from fetching photographs of jockeys like Pat Eddery and Lester Piggott to a Sporting Life entrance cowl from 1981 studying: “A Lap of Honour – It Was That Straightforward For Shergar and Swinburn”. There are three rooms, TV sport, a weekly Irish music session, an enormous again yard, nice cask ale (not, alas, at £1.30 a pint). It’s bought one thing for every little thing whereas retaining its personal distinctive character. That’s the essence of a terrific pub.
