The Pilot, Greenwich, June 2019

South of the river? Whatever next. Greenwich is in the famous bend in the Thames, so you can easily spot it on the Eastenders title sequence. It’s also the bit where you’ll find the O2 (Millennium Dome in old money). Sadly, James Bond was nowhere to be seen.

The Pilot is situated in a little block of old London Georgian cottages (grade II listed) constructed for workers from the nearby tidal mill and chemical works, and dates back around 200 years, built in the early 1800s to serve the local coal workers. A painted stone tablet on the wall of the pub reads “Ceylon Place New East Greenwich 1801”, so it could be the oldest surviving building on the Greenwich Peninsula. It certainly sticks out amongst all of the modern tower blocks and student flats that are just a stone’s throw away. Several of the massive O2 car parks can be seen across the road.

You might be aware of the cottages and the pub, as they featured in the video for Blur’s “Park Life”. You know what I mean?

Anyway, on to the pub. You can get here by cable car (not many pubs you can say that about), plane (London CIty airport is just on the other side of the river), boat and train. Or you can just walk from your nearby hotel, which is what I did. It’s a lovely old London pub, one of many in the Fuller’s estate that they are now concentrating on since they sold all of their brewing activity to Asahi earlier this year.

It’s definitely got the feel of a “food pub” as opposed to a “pub pub”, lots of dining space, and staff on the prowl as you arrive to find you a table to eat at. There is a little spot along the bar where you could have a pint and a chat, but on this overcast June evening, most people were dining.

I was shown to a little table just up the stairs and my order was taken. The barman/waiter seemed to struggle with it a little bit, as I’d ordered Misprized, one of the recent Fuller’s and Friends collaboration brews, and I suspect most tourists who come in here order London Pride. It was soon sorted out and my pint arrived.

It wasn’t really worth the wait. Slightly woody, slightly mild, and mostly meh. I think I can see what they were trying to do, but it just didn’t work for me. However, the food was much better.

Even though we are just ten days away from midsummer night, it felt very much like a pie and mash kind of night, and a steak and ale pie with caramelised shallot & button mushrooms, spring greens and red wine gravy was enough to warm the cockles on a grey evening. A proper pie, completely encased in lovely crusty pastry, and none of this “pastry lid on a small casserole dish” nonsense.

It was very tasty (juicy meat, crisp pastry and very nicely seasoned) and it was also soon hoovered up and I made my way off into the grey night. Some more veg and gravy wouldn’t have gone amiss, but everything worked well together.

A nice little food pub which offers a small number of menu options that they probably do well (based on a sample size of this one pie) rather than twenty different things in five or six cuisine styles which are all done to mediocrity.

Recommended if you find yourself looking for some food when you are south of the river.

The Royal Redgate, December 2018

The pub is in Warwickshire, the pub car park is in Leicestershire (according to the boundary signts outside at least). It describes itself as the most central pub in England, and was awarded the “Country pub of the year” award by the “Living in the Shires” magazine.

It was our destination for Sunday lunch today, as we had taken some plants over to Mrs MOFAD’s sister’s new house, after her recent stay with us. It was also a chance to say hello to our former feline house guest Holly, who is adjusting to her third house in as many months.

As the pub is only a mile and a half away, it was the ideal choice for lunch. They serve the full menu on a Sunday lunchime alongside a choice of roasts (beef or chicken today). Between us we chose pies and a chicken burger, from the rather mucky menus (they really need a clean folks).

Five beer engines available, although only two populated, with Hobgoblin, and a Ringwood beer. This tells you that this is a Marston’s pub, which tells you that the beer will be meh. Lime and soda it was then, although this turned out to be £3 a pint – ouch!

The food arrived, and it was very nice. All of the pies came on plates, with chips and veg. My chicken burger came on a silly bread board. Maybe they only had 3 plates, so didn’t have one for me. It was very tasty, as were the pies that everyone else had (although they all left their greens!) Proper good pub chips too.

We decided to have pudding, and as ever, the chocolate torte was the right choice, which Mrs MOFAD and I shared. Rich and dense, with a nice blob of pistachio ice cream, a hazelnut tuille sort of thing, and some crushed nuts too. And some saucy cheffy squiggles.

A pleasant Sunday lunch, but clean up those menus please, and check your lime and soda pricing 🙂

Brewhouse and Kitchen, Islington, June 2018 #2

A second visit this week. My course is over, and my train home isn’t for a few hours, so there’s time for dinner and a couple of beers as I wander my way through the streets of London from Old Street to St Pancras.

A couple of drinks to accompany dinner. First up, Britton, a 5% American Brown Ale brewed on site, a brown ale with good balance of malt and hops.

I also had Chaplin, a 6% American IPA also brewed here on site. It’s sweet and malty, but your brown ale shouldn’t have more hop character than your IPA…

After I had paid and ordered, they let me know about their secret offer where you could get three halves for a special price. Thanks for that.

Dinner next, chicken ham and leek pie with a dollop of mash and broccolini. It looks a bit uninspiring, but the pie was very tasty. There wasn’t really enough mash and the broccolini wasn’t cooked to perfection, a touch on the soggy side.

A decent dinner though and enough to keep me going until I get back home later on.

The Devonshire Arms, Kensington, March 2018

We decided not to back into central London tonight. After a day out in Bermondsey we came back to the hotel to unwind with a cup of tea, and then headed out just around the corner for a hearty pub dinner.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that we are in Derbyshire, given that is full of pubs called The Devonshire Arms (the various Dukes of Devonshire having owned much of the land in the area), but we are still in Kensington.

This was another pub taking part in the Thornbridge “craft beer residency” and once again my Thornbridge polo shirt caused a little confusion, as I was mistaken for an employee again 🙂 However, I didn’t have any Thornbridge tonight, because they were approaching the end of their residency, and I’d already had the one that they had left on keg. “What about these bottles” came the reply from the lady behind the bar. “Nope, had them too.” In fact I’ve had 58 different Thornbridge beers according to Untappd, so it was statistically unlikely that they would have one in stock that I hadn’t had.

Although perhaps I should have just had one anyway, as my first pint of Adnams Fat Sprat proved to be nothing more than a bog standard malty bitter.

On to the food, and a rare sight in a pub, a “fish pie for 2” served with beans and broccolini. Given that it has been freezing cold all day, and with snow swirling around outside as we arrived, a warm and hearty fish pie was just the thing, presented in this big cast iron pan to allow you to serve yourself.

It was suitably delicious, very much hearty and warming, and certainly just what we needed on this bitterly cold night. Mrs MOFAD accompanied hers with a Stiegl-Weisse Naturtrüb by Stieglbrauerei zu Salzburg, a very nice herbal wheat beer from Salzburg in Austria.

I decided to risk an ABInbev subsidiary, Blue Point’s Toasted Lager, which was not toasted in any way, but was a perfectly pleasant amber lager, certainly a change from the general cold fizz that you might find in a London pub.

A lovely dinner at The Devonshire Arms, well worth a visit if you’re in the area, and very handy if you’re staying in the nearby Holiday Inn. Lots of posh houses/flats to have a nose at on the way there and back too.

Needle & Pin – Buxton x Omnipollo Ice Cream beer night, February 2018

Yes, it’s another night at The Needle & Pin. Tonight, it’s the turn of four bottles from two breweries (Buxton and Omnipollo) who teamed up in 2014 to produce “ice cream” beers, with flavours that reminded them of classic ice creams. They proved so popular, they are still producing them. Away we go with some tasting.

We start with Buxton x Omnipollo – Original Ice Cream Pale – 5.6%, described thus:-

“hop laden pale ale brewed with oats, wheat, lactose and 1000 fresh vanilla beans”.

I recall it (as I’ve had it before) as a smooth vanilla biscuit which wasn’t quite as hop laden as described, and I’ll tell you something. When it is paired with Cadbury chocolate buttons like it was tonight, it works so much better. A chocolate and vanilla biscuit delight.

Next up we move to Buxton x Omnipollo – Lemon Meringue Ice Cream Pie – 6% – a beer that sits right between sour and sweet, the closest that the brewers say that they have ever come to balance. Kettle-soured and brewed with added lactose, it is then conditioned on buckets of lemon juice. Tonight it was paired with an individual lemon meringue pie, and was lovely as ever. It contains all the lemons, sour tartness, a festival of lemon. A really nice beer and not “proper rotten” as occasional MOFAD companion Kerrie would have it.

So, that’s the warm up over and done with. Here come the big beasts. And what beasts they are. Our penultimate beer tonight is Buxton x Omnipollo – Original Texas Pecan Ice Cream – 10% – a beast indeed. This is a pecan caramel porter brewed with caramel sauce, a heavy hand of vanilla and lactose sugar.

Tonight it was served with an individual pecan pie, and it was a sweet treat with big burnt sugar and a lot of power.

This is the end, beautiful friend. And what a way to end, with Buxton x Omnipollo – Original Rocky Road Ice Cream – 10% – an imperial marshmallow porter brewed with cocoa nibs and lactose sugar. It was served with one of my favourite sweet treats, what else but rocky road?

I struggled to place the nose on this one, the sweet maltiness hides the alcohol, it’s very smooth and the marshmallow is subtle, with roastiness and chocolate swirling around.

A lovely night of beer and puddings, this is my kind of pudding club. Texas Pecan was my favourite.

The Pack Horse Inn, Keswick, January 2018 – quiz night

We are back after a 6 month absence. Technically, we are reigning pub quiz champions, since when we were last here (22nd June 2016) we won, thanks in no small part to the specialist round on computing.

After conquering our second Wainwright this year (Great Crag) we needed food and drink. And luckily the pub quiz was on again, so we had to defend our crown. More on that story later. Let’s deal with the refuelling part first.

First up, the classic piece of false advertising from Robinsons, “Double Hop”. If there is normally just one hop in each pint, then perhaps it’s correct. This is a malty bitter, it’s not an IPA.

After a good walk, a good dinner was needed. You can’t go wrong with pie’n’chips and that turned out to be correct once more. A proper pie too, not just a bowl of stew with a pastry lid cooked nearby.

More refreshment required, in the form of Hawkshead Lager, nice and simple but far better than any Euro fizz that might be found elsewhere. Clean and crisp.

It was time to crack on with the pub quiz, and we were soon into the swing of things, picking up some easy points on the music round, and doing well in the other rounds. Apparently the couple opposite us had won the previous week, but given some of their appalling answers and their utterly terrible spelling, we couldn’t see how that would have been possible. This rather boosted our confidence and we were very happy to find ourselves in a winning position for the second time.

We celebrated with Blonde Tom from Robinsons, a tribute act to a Belgian blonde with a hint of honey. We shall have to come back again in the summer to defend our crown once more. Always a pleasure to come to this lovely pub, and even nicer when they give you money for winning 🙂

Stanforth Butchers, Skipton, September 2017

More food? Yes. It is dangerous to conduct a walking tour without sufficient calories. Award winning calories are an added bonus, so when there’s a traditional pork pie available that’s been made to the same recipe for over 80 years, at a shop where they regularly queue out of the door for them, it’s got to be worth checking out.

This pork and apple pie was probably the best pork pie that I’ve ever eaten, well worth a very brief stop on the walking tour of Skipton. Perfect fuel for any walk. I wonder if there’s anywhere else round here where we can get a drink?

 

The Narrowboat #1, Skipton, September 2017

After a gentle bimble around Skipton this afternoon we wandered back to the hotel and then back out again for dinner. We’ve booked a table somewhere for tomorrow night (a lesson learned from 2015) but tonight we just decided to wander until we found somewhere. We didn’t take long to find our dinner destination, settling on The Narrowboat, which we’d visited as part of 2015’s walking tour of Skipton.

The first reason for visiting was because I had spotted Hawkshead’s Passion Fruit Gose on the bar. Mrs MOFAD has been looking out for this beer since it was first announced, and we missed it at this year’s Thornbridge Peakender (along with many other great beers which came and went in the blink of an eye). It looked like it was finally time to try it.

So near, and yet so far. I’d ordered it at the bar, but the last few drops dribbled out of the keg. The pub let Mrs MOFAD have it for nothing (to compensate for the sadness), and she had to choose something else. Pogo by Wild Beer Co is fruit salad with a little hop character.

My first was Sorachi by Bristol Beer Factory, a decent cask ale but for me the Sorachi Ace hop was too muted. It’s a Marmite hop but I love its flavour which is why I was looking for more here.

A gentle golden ale next, in the form of Mallisons American SIPA. A decent pint but nothing to really excite.

Just in case you weren’t sure that we were in the North. Chips and gravy. Northern gravy. Although sadly Hazel’s pie had to go back, as during the likely reheating they had burned it rather badly, and it was inedible. It was eventually replaced with pizza, but they didn’t refund the difference.

No such problems with my pizza which they got right first time. A porky fest with bacon, sausage, pulled pork and black pudding.

Black pudding is northern filth, so it was distributed to other plates… Apart from the filth, this was a tasty, porky and crisp pizza, just what I wanted on a Friday night. If that wasn’t good enough, then Mrs MOFAD was even more delighted, as they had found some more Passion Fruit Gose. Her review was simple:-

“OMG. Best. Beer. Ever.”

Fairly clear cut.

My final pint tonight was Citra Star from Northumberland’s Anarchy Brew Co, one that I’ve had before in a can, and it’s even better on cask.

A shame that they burnt the pie, and didn’t really sort the situation out properly, but we did all eventually have a nice dinner and some great beer.

The Tudor Arms #1, September 2017

You’ll never guess what this is. It’s another in that series of “camping and pubs” posts. We were camping nearby. When I say nearby, I mean literally next door, as that’s where the camp site is. This is our first of four planned visits this weekend, breakfast and dinner tomorrow and breakfast on Sunday before packing up and heading home. We’ve been here before, on a bike ride a few years ago. We were camping nearby that day too, although a little bit further away.

On to food and drink. This was a pint of Elmers by Flying Monk Brewery, based just outside Malmesbury in Hullavington, and it was a standard golden ale.

Sometimes only a pie will do. This was one of those times, a proper pub pie, and a proper acutal pie, as opposed to a casserole with some pastry balanced on top. It was very tasty (as most things filled with pulled pork tend to be), some decent veg with it too as opposed to some tired things that have been sitting in warming trays all day.

Stay tuned for the rest of our visits to this pub over the weekend.

Anglers Rest, Miller’s Dale, Derbyshire, August 2017

A familiar pub, but all previous visits have been in pre-MOFAD days, so it is the first time that it features here. It’s kind of handily placed for cyclists on the Monsal Trail. I say kind of, because it’s really easy to get to from the trail, as it’s just a few minutes down hill. You can get a great view of the viaduct as you pass underneath it on the way down to the pub.

If you want to get back on the trail, you have to go back up that hill. Spoiler alert : I was the only one who cycled all the way back up, the others pushed. I cycle every day, which does give me a rather unfair advantage. It’s definitely a 1st gear hill though.

Our trip over from Bakewell was calculated to get here around lunchtime, and we did just that. The overcast conditions today were not conducive to sitting outside, so we grabbed a table in the bar area by the fire (not lit!)

The beer choice was a very easy one. A pint of Pale Rider from Kelham Island Brewery, a very tasty blonde ale. The gentle companion to Easy Rider, a pair of beers that we had quite a few of back in the Swan days…

A classic pub should mean a pub classic, and a ploughmans is just that. This one was packed with classic ingredients. No need to choose from cheeses or ham, you get both. And half a pork pie as a bonus (you get quite a lot of these in a New Forest ploughmans, which is a good thing). Pickled onions, pickle, a warm, fresh roll, some more interesting leaves than just iceberg (still there though) and even a bit of beetroot. The slice of orange is less classic than some apple, but still welcome.

A lovely riverside pub (when it’s not raining outside) which does lovely food and keeps a good pint of beer. Well worth the effort of coming off (and getting back up to) the Monsal Trail. It is also a nice walk over from Tideswell (and back). Well worth a visit, and even better on a lovely sunny day. You might expect one of those in August, but not today…