Quite frankly, the White Horse was a terrible pub.

Nothing made going there enjoyable. Defeat hung in the air, fighting for headroom amongst depression and drink problems. The lights and jingles from the slots an unnerving theme tune to a nicotine stained prison.

Unfair perhaps, as I only ventured there a handful of times in the four years it competed to be my local. The Commercial that overlooks the same t-junction was a lively, friendlier place to spend time. (It was easy to choose Carling and karaoke at The Commerical over empirical research into a less salubrious side of pub going at The White Horse. And a cheerful bar manager helped too). Not that karaoke would have helped The White Horse survive.

Now the wooden boards are down from the windows, light once more hits the columns that used to block the view of the bar. It’s a Friday night and The White Horse is heaving again.

The mucky sign still hangs over the door, but it no longer lead to sticky carpets and dingy rooms. Instead the building is refreshed as a family run Italian restaurant, bustling with chatter and brimming with customers.

White walls are banded with travertine tiles, not a yellow stain in sight. Decaying lounge furniture is long gone in place of treated wooden tables and chairs with intricate iron cast finishing. Immaculate floors, a wood burning stove, walls covered in frames of family snaps, all the family, and it’s a big family, celebrating their communal efforts. The kitchen, somewhat oddly, looks out onto the street, as pizza bases fly in the air and vegetables disappear under the knife.

But it’s the noise and smell that have changed the most. The vibrancy of cooking rushes through what was a dank and musty chamber. The clatter, clash and splash of pans; a symphony of oil, ingredients, spice and chefs gesticulations; even the lick of a flame, silent but somehow resonating aurally – wispy and crackling against metal.

And cook these guys can. Chorizo – with those fatty bits that perturb me and my mediocre flash frying skills – is no trouble for the chefs at Kasa Rosa, and served with garden peas and shallots the salty meat lifts penne pasta and a tomato sauce from something you could attempt at home to something there’s no point trying.

What more could you want from a local restaurant?

And what more could you want from a broken and finished pub building, long since a lost cause to the local community?

A better pub in its place perhaps? Of course, but on this occasion I, along with many other local people, am counting my blessings.

The goofy moose head gazes down aloofly from his lofty perch below the rafters, and we sit cradling a kriek and a pilsner in a building that has almost a millenniums worth of years on us.

House of the Trembling Madness sits above the cobbled shopping street of Stonegate, York. The city walls skirt their circular path near here, the famous minster is but a Viking throw away.

Students from the continent order coffee and thirds of a Belgian tripel under bowed oak beams; York City fans grab another resinous pale Thornbridge ale and whatever fancy lager is on whilst wondering what to do on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of summer.

The pub building is overdosed on wood, much as you’d expect from a 12th century loft space. The ceiling arches high, it must have been a great hall we wonder, perhaps housing the descendants of Norse merchants or a collection of peasant families, rather than illustrious drinkers and tourists alike.

On the bar, a selection of beer to boast about: casks from the regions, drafts from mainland Europe, bottles from Brussels, Bohemia and beyond. Marinated olives and premium potato snacks peer from behind the populous beer list, and they’ll even provide a yard of ale for those game enough to call the bartenders bluff.

We whittle away 45 minutes sipping slowly and enjoying the break from the feet-heavy streets below, just wishing we had a glimpse of the Minster tower. There’s a sense though that you history you get here is ultimately more interesting, more personable than the ghost tours and tourist traps outside.

And as we leave we spot a well preserved tarantula specimen, lifeless and holed up in a deep picture frame nailed to a strong English support beam. Under the gaze of the moose and the influence of a cheeky bottle of Delirium Tremens, not even madness surprises us in this house.

The magnificent roof at House of The Trembling Madness

Afternoon Jever

The bar guard

Afternoon Timmermans

Down in the bowels of Shoreditch a little revolution is bubbling away. Or more appropriately, distilling itself into a concentrate of Dickensian drinking decadence.

Behind the beautiful mahogany bar of Worship Street Whistling Stop magical things are happening. Here innovation, care and service win out over such whimsies as cost or conformity.

Smart haircuts of perfectly uncombed hair greet us. Working uniforms are braces, well-pressed overalls and shirt collars. Knowledge is intrinsic and delivered with aplomb. These are career bartenders, dram-filling baristas of gin, and worse.

Adjust to the dim basement to find homage to Victorian gin palaces, with just a dash of Gatsby grandeur for good measure. The seating plan is made of Chesterfields and pews; the wooden furniture houses collections of oil lamps; a piano holds various old glass bottles and steel vases. Leather, strong wood, exposed brick and gold detailing in abundance. There’s curiosities too, including a scrapheap bath tub which makes an overly cosy gin tasting snug. The trendy styling but well worn character echoes the contradictions of the age in the spotlight.

We’ve come here to drink and our creations do not arrive fast, but they do arrive with drama – simple to look at but luxurious to taste my Panacea could cure even the hardiest of sceptics of the virtues of the cocktails. Whiskey, honey and lavender caress lustily – the sage dust adds a dry love bite. It is sublime in the Victorian sense of the word, despite its physical diminutiveness.

The Cappuccino Baby arrives swiftly after. Baby is a reference to its use of formula milk, without which it wouldn’t be the creamy, coffee bean dream that it is. In a tall glass it’s gulped down rather less sophisticatedly than it arrived, and my friend orders another within minutes. Which at £9 a pop is not a sign of fiscal disregard, but of his childlike delight to say hello to this comforting friend again.

The craft involved in these drinks is to be revered, and more so because in their creation the spirit of 19th century alchemy lives on. In the poky distillation room to the rear of the bar alcohol meets mad scientist. Trial and error moulds and remoulds constituents from one concoction into another – super heat treated beer ‘Vermouth’ joins cognac and roasted yeast bitters to become a Broiler-Maker. High pressure hydrosol takes vodka and Gancia Bianco, shakes it up and bursts into an Exploded Vodka Martini. Salts, herbs, bitters, yeasts, liquors and syrups all leave the room combined with other parts to become a whole. The finished article then may meet frozen sugar or malic acid, or suffer irradiation or the dreaded ‘méthode champenoise’ (a second fermentation in the bottle, providing fizz and flavour). And all this in the name of an experience in sensory displacement and indulgent imbibing.

Rakes would have loved the booze and the theatre, but Worship Street Whistle Stop is perhaps a little sophisticated for the darker desires of William Hickey or Dorian Gray. In this dark setting nothing more intoxicating than magnificent drinks are consumed, and no destruction of character other than over indulgence takes place. Wallets may tremble in terror, but the experience is worth it.

Dram Snug at Worship Street Whistling Shop, with thanks to www.tehbus.com for the snap after my camera broke in London

Glossary of libation

Distillation equipment

Cocktail cure all?

WS2 map

Drinking den information:
Venue: Worship Street Whistling Shop
Website: http://whistlingshop.com/
Town/city: Shoreditch, London

Once in a while you stumble across a real hidden gem, and the Bridge Bier Huis is a polished diamond in the former mining and cotton mill town of Burnley, Lancashire.

The pub is off the beaten track on the fringe of a shopping centre crowded with a retinue of high street shops, Wetherspoons and many cask-unfriendly establishments. Even when you find it the unassuming sandstone exterior gives little away apart from some original etched windows heralding its heritage as the Bridge Inn.

Bridge Bier Huis, Burnley

But step over the mosaic threshold and you enter a congenial, contemporary bar blessed with an array of hand-pumps and draught dispensers. A fountain of foreign glassware framing the bar hints at what you can expect to find on closer inspection.

Hydes’ Original Bitter can always be procured on good form and is flanked by up to four other regularly rotating guest beers from all over the country. An ever-present cask cider has been added to this impressive tally in recent times too. A host of European-style lager taps adorn both ends of the long bar-front serving up a cacophony of Belgian beers, German or Czech pilsners, golden ales, dunkels, and the occasional American craft brew.

As if this selection wasn’t enticing enough already, it’s supplemented by an even wider array of bottled beers from all over the globe! A gander at a large blackboard in the far corner reveals just how extensive the collection is with over 40 different tipples available at any time.

Many Belgian classics such as Chimay, Orval, Kwak, Leffe and Duvel can be sampled, but there are plenty of other exceptional offerings. Just a few of the less common breeds lurking in the fridges have included Dragon Stout (Jamaica), Rauchbier (German smoked black lager), Goose Island 312 Wheat (USA) and Bush Trolls. There’s something to tickle any beer-lover’s taste buds.

And if you fancy a nibble with your beer of choice, bar snacks and main meals are served from lunch through to early evening. The ample menu offers a handsome collection of quality homemade fare at very reasonable prices. The only downside to this happy ensemble is that the pub is usually closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Although the Bridge is not the largest pub in the world, it’s open-plan layout and lofty ceilings grant an air of roominess. There’s an elevated section opposite the bar – used as a stage for the many excellent bands that regularly help pack in the crowds – and a quieter side-room for those who prefer a chinwag. Everywhere is very modern and tastefully decorated with open-brickwork and a low-key smattering Burnley F.C. memorabilia in evidence.

Bridge Bier Huis interior

Beer list at the Bridge

I was fortunate enough to bump into Pete “Man Walks Into A Pub” Brown at the Bier Huis during the summer (okay, I knew he was going to be there so I gatecrashed like a sycophantic groupie waiting for an autograph). We had chat and he seemed a very jovial fellow – no doubt assisted by the tiresome beer sampling he’d been forced to endure throughout the day. Catch his report of the visit at the British Beer Video Blog.

So if you find yourself at a loose end in Burnley head straight for the Bridge. It’s worth a trip in itself!

It seems like a wild goose chase, this drive through tiny lanes, sloshy piles of orange and yellow leaves, under a canopy of browning greenery. Both wing mirrors brush through the amber walls of the wild hedges are pinning us to the road like tramlines of a vanishing point.

The last weekend of October is an immeasurably beautiful one in the Lake District, and after two full days of trundling around Coniston, Ullswater, Bowness and Kirkstone Pass enveloped in thick, damp fog we are heading home, via a good pub lunch recommended by the Good Pub Guide.

Hare & Hounds, Bowland Bridge, Lake District

And hence the wing mirrors scrape the thinning branches and we hit puddles that might be meres and meres that might be lakes. We see pheasants – strangely unflinching like the clueless ignorant animals of North America before the diaspora from Asia – ambling along the lane ready to be picked off by us newcomers to the area, coconuts in an alley.

Can we be that far from civilisation a mile or two from the A5074?!

Up fell and down dale we eventually arrive back on the main road having made an arcing detour and almost immediately find the well placed sign pointing along another narrow stretch of undulating tarmac. Sophisticated serif type announces: “Hare & Hounds. 1 mile”.

And a mile later we turn into the car park and cross the threshold into not only civilisation but rustic glamour – large windows framed in floral curtain; floors sometimes stone, sometimes wood, broken up by intricately stitched rugs; a variety of bright open rooms top and tailed with exposed stonework, large hearths and dining snugs to the rear. Relics of the countryside, of brewing and of nature hang from the rendered walls. It’s heaven unless you have muddy boots.

The welcome from our buxom host is smiley and honest, the barmen (or are they waiters?) genuine and doting. We grab the only available table (all the others are reserved for Sunday’s finest beef, matured in a field around the back of the pub) and we perch near the wood burning stove, under traditional pictures of huntsmen and clasping our chic menus. A half of Hare of the Dog, brewed exclusively for the pub, and a diet Coke please.

From our chairs – all of which are different, deliberately but charmingly so – the view across valley is obscured, but high on the hills opposite sits another inn, probably another 17th century coaching inn. The richness of this area for good pubs is astonishing. The richness of this area for mesmerising beauty is equally marvellous.

An empty pub fills quickly. I’ve ordered soup of the day paired with the homemade chicken liver pâté served with homemade date and orange chutney (the smoothest pâté I’ve ever tasted), my new fiancée opts for a sandwich, but she gets something eminently more exciting than the word sandwich implies – stripped loin of beef with pan fried buttered red onion in the crustiest softest fluffiest bread known to man. The food is sublime, and we’re just in time too.

The Sunday crowd are gregarious, they all know the staff (and the staff all know them) and they all opt for the dark beer (Devil’s Bridge I think, “Not as thick as a stout like Guinness” advises a member of staff), or the Shiraz. One’s had a punch up (the other chap got nicked), there’s chatter about local ne’er-do-wells and farmers and the Westmorland Gazette and the football and family events and the last time they came and the pub up the road and hushed tips about the beef from the field around the back.

Sunday comes to life and the pub fulfils its purpose. The food is amazing and it’s at the heart of the Hare & Hounds. And when the setting is this cosy, the welcome this warm, and the 17th century coaching inn this well used, this is a fine place to whittle away an early afternoon lunch before the rest of your life starts.

Rustic charm at the Hare & Hounds

Hare of the Dog?

Since the dawn of my drinking days I’ve been a big fan of the dark side. Stouts, porters, milds or brown ales, I’ve always enjoyed savouring their brooding malty richness. And as autumn has arrived with a bang, it’s fitting that I happened across a couple of unusual and very worthy offerings from Wentworth on my travels last week. This South Yorkshire brewery is one step ahead of the game in the stout stakes this year and has concocted a delicious selection of flavoured fancies for their “2011 Stout Festival” (as advertised on the pump clips). So if you aren’t a fan of wacky adjuncts or prefer your beer plain and simple you may want to look away now….

My first find was at the Narrow Boat in Skipton, a fantastic backwater pub with a cracking reputation and repertoire of real ales and foreign beers. Nestled amongst a typically eclectic mix was Wentworth’s Medium Chilli & Chocolate Stout (4.8%). The dusky half pint certainly lived up to its billing. A rich coffee and chocolate aroma persisted after the initial sip oozing into a silky palate. With perfect punctuality a fiery crescendo kicked in and lingered through the finish; a great counterbalance to the soft cocoa foundation. An explosion of taste and just up my street!

The Narrow Boat Skipton by Bob W

A few days later I found myself in Bury for lunch. This good-sized town just north of Manchester is famous for its fish market, but it also has a peppering of top-notch real ale outlets if you know where to look. One such place is Malt Bar at The Met (which also plays host to the enticing Bury Beer Festival in November). Despite being quite a classy modern cafe bar it always serves a few cask beers, usually from Outstanding Brewery with occasional guests. This was my lucky day as they had another Wentworth special on tap: Vanilla & Almond Stout (4.8%). A faint whiff of vanilla guided me into a maelstrom of sour cherries, dark fruits and berries riding on an undercurrent of mild bitterness. I was just beginning to wonder where the almond was lurking when it caught me by surprise in a delectable marzipan finish. Well-crafted with a powerful yet nicely balanced punch. Mmmm….

Peculiar and flavourful craft brews are growing in popularity and are well worth sampling if you get a chance, if only to illustrate just how different quality real ales can be. I’ll certainly be on the lookout for more weird and wonderful stouts while the season lasts!

Wentworth Chilli and Chocolate Stout

Wentworth Vanilla and Almond

Just like Mike Parker, the author of Map Addict, for years I’ve been mesmerised by the enigmatic Spurn Point, that strangely shaped strip of almost-land that stretches from the tip of the East Riding of Yorkshire and awkwardly attempts to reach back downstream towards the sands of the Humber estuary.

Spurn Point (or Spurn Head for many) is a sand bar that has been precariously edging it’s way westwards over the last millennium of geological time as the sea plays out its role of destroyer and replenisher in equal measure (Spurn currently aims its point towards the revellers of Cleethorpes and the fishing boats of Grimsby, but has had 5 different versions of itself in the last 1000 years as the tides have breached it and rebuilt it time after time).

Brooding skies and dull tinted flora reflect the eeriness of this surreal spur set perpetually to a state of precarious balance, a place demanding reflection, that screams silently, in the same way as Munch’s famous frozen moment of fear, of solitude. It’s not a place you’d expect to find myriad good pubs, but then this windy forgotten corner of Yorkshire is exactly the type of place where a haven from the North Sea weather is required. Read the rest of this entry »

So the hotel didn’t have a drying room, and in a half hearted tantrum of half hearted petulance we walked up the stairs and threw the muddy boots and soggy packs vaguely towards the radiator under a completely inadequate layer of quality drying paper. Or the hotel welcome brochure as it may or may not have been.

Oops.

It was one of those provincial hotels, smart and classy from the outside, but inside brimming with big-fish-in-a-small-pond syndrome. Antiquated decor, about as aesthetically pleasing as a pair of shabby walkers stepping in from the rain, couldn’t paper over the hollow product offering and hi-falutin’ charm, nor stop the building creaking under its own despairing inability to embrace the modern world.

Well at least we could look forward to a beer and the Champions League final, eh?

If they had have had a drying room I’d have swapped it for a reasonably sized telly in an instant. I’d have probably traded in the rain cover plus my new and flashy laminated OS map if they could guarantee Sky coverage…

Low and behold, no footy, not even ITV, plus an uninspiring beer selection. Great. We headed out to find food.

The chippy seems crawling with snarling boys and girls in woolly training pants and hip-hop zip-ups, the males greasy and the fairer sex not much different (or fairer), oozing slightly more perfume and modelling marginally longer hair.

The local bar/bistro was empty; the local pub described to us as a veritable den of iniquity. We saw the snarling youths head off in that direction jettisoning chips and curry sauce in their wake and ruled the pub out.

Unprepared to give up on football, but increasingly concerned that the night would be spent sitting in our shabby hotel room, we slip into an unassuming cafe advertising evening meals, hoping to fill our bellies and devise a plan for beating the odds of missing the biggest match of the season.

A beaming smile greets us; our host, the owner, proudly shows off her continental beer selection. There’s a feisty glint in her eye and a warming grin when we order lagers and ask for menus

Cold beers arrive slopping on the table; specials on the board are recited with a smile. “My husband might be bringing the telly down for the match in a bit” she announces.

We ask for a tab.

Two hours later, robust, fatty meals devoured, port and cheese and bread and butter pudding accepted eagerly, and the cafe is bursting at the seams; in one corner a romantic meal for two couples (the women had arrived early and ensured the blokes would have their backs to the screen, every other customer in on the joke and waiting for the look on their faces when they arrived); at the bar two friends who’d tried half of every beer at a local beer festival (which just so happened to be located at the village we planned to stay at the next evening, what luck!); an assortment of friends and couples vying for the ‘fancy Japanese lager’ and the attentions of various members of the opposite sex; and even at various points dog walkers rounded up with shouts out the door and convinced to nip in for a coffee, a hot chocolate or a perfectly chilled pint.

And us, perched at the back thoroughly engrossed in the magnetic whirlwind of Lionel Messi. Joined by the owner’s father, a Nottingham-lad born and bred, we spend the evening coining increasingly dramatic cooings at each graceful twist and pivot of Barcelona’s talismanic midfielder, and ‘Ooo’ at every completed pass from his comrades in attack.

The cafe is alive, welcoming and entertaining. We’re part of the fabric of the evening; we’re embraced, entertained, well fed and gratefully watered, and presented with a remarkably inexpensive bill as we rise early to sleep off the evenings excesses.

Behind us a homely din emanates from the cafe, a hub of life and love and laughter. It’s exactly what the local pub should be, and for one evening we glimpse the real soul of someone’s community.

Strange how the best pub evening on The Way was found in a cafe in Teesdale.

Chef's Teesdale specials

Teesdale Lead Miners Pasty

Cafe1618, Middleton-in-Teesdale

You can’t beat a good hand pulled cask beer and there’s no better place than Belgium to get it. You what? Yes, Belgium!

I came across six hand pulled beers in a fantastic bar right in the middle of the capital Brussels. It took me by surprise too to be honest, you just don’t expect it, but it was a welcome sight.

“So what did they have on” I hear you ask? Thornbridge Jaipur? Darkstar Hophead? Timmy Taylor’s Landlord maybe? Well no, non of those, they were all lambic – and I bloody love lambic!

Moeder Lambic Fontainas: It's over in that there Belgium, they've got hand pulls and everything

Those who’ve been to the bar in question will know I’m talking about Moeder Lambic Fontainas, a short meander from Grand Place and the Mannequin Pis. It also has an older brother – the original Moeder Lambic in the Saint-Gilles district of the city, which has a more traditional cafe feel. The newer bar at Place Fontainas, open just over a year now, has a very modern feel to its decor with bare brick walls and a stainless steel and light coloured wooden bar. The staff are friendly and more than happy to talk you about the beers they’re serving and there’s chalkboards all over the bar to let you know what’s on the vast array of taps. Read the rest of this entry »

I had the pleasure of being invited to the re-opening of a pub this week. Someone has paid a visit to what used to be the Three Horseshoes in Otley and replaced its worn out steel trotters to get the place back on its feet.

The newly named Horse and Farrier on Bridge Street in Otley is the fifteenth addition to Market Town Taverns’ portfolio, which stretches across North and West Yorkshire including Arcadia in Leeds, Brigantes in York and Bar t’at in Ilkley).

Now, I’ll lay my cards on the table, I’ve long been a fan of Market Town Taverns, I like the cut of their jib and I like that there’s always a selection of 8 real ales available, as well as a handy selection of bottled beers. The Old Bell Tavern, another Market Town Taverns pub, is my local in Harrogate it’s very traditionally styled, has real character and I even had my wedding reception in the restaurant there.

Horse & Farrier, Otley, formerly the Three Horseshoes

Read the rest of this entry »