BITE user comments - absintheur
Comments by absintheur
Bloody hell.
Stopped off for a swift half one afternoon while waiting for a train. A few tipsy geezers hanging around an unmanned bar. As I approached the bar with some trepidation one of the aforementioned fell off his stool in a shower of lager, and another jumped behind the bar and offered to do me a drink in the absence of a barperson.
"Half pint for me and a G&T for the misses please."
Not being a barman in any sense, he had no end of difficulty pouring half a pint without it consisting of froth, and I was asked if Bacardi Gin was okay. Diplomatically, I asked whether I could have Bombay Sapphire instead. I was told I'd have to wait til the barguy got back to pay. And on the spectacle of capering drunk young fellers went, as we hurried our drinks and they removed indiscriminate items of clothing and so on and so forth.
In any case, when the barguy finally appeared, in his ineffectual attempts to reclaim his bar, he was occupied enough to undercharge us, and while we left feeling oddly amused by the whole experience, the sense that the joke must wear thin and the drunkeness less harmless nearer to closing time sours our memories.
Avoid. Like scabies.
22 Jun 2010 21:50
Excellent selection of drinks in a smug, cliquey, self-congratulatory atmosphere. Precisely the sort of place CAMRA types piss their cords over, and ordinary folk get rightly frustrated by.
23 Nov 2009 03:17
Good, honest, unpretentious, out of the way pub, from the days when pubs were a place for darts and a well-priced pint, before the proliferation of ball-pools for the kids and cheap carveries. Seems much as pubs might have been in the 70s/early 80s ... but in a good way!
Nice selection of drinks. An unassuming little gem, worth a visit, if you can find it (it's a little off the beaten track).
18 Oct 2009 13:34
Portway Hotel, Staunton-on-Wye
Absolute chintz overload. Plastic flowers, ceramic pigs, commemorative plates and watercolour reproductions of farm-boys and their dogs. I could go on, and on and on and on. I can't deny that there's a certain, obscure sense of wondrously tasteless ridiculousness about the place, though I'm not sure the novelty wouldn't wear off after the first visit, and then where would you be? In one of the most garish, atmosphere-free drinking establishments in all the shires that's where.
Food looked all right mind you, and some jolly handsome cakes were on display.
Strange place though. Very stange funny, absurd place.
16 Oct 2009 18:59
Bankes Arms Hotel and Country Inn, Studland
So there we are, sitting in the garden thinking what a magnificent location for a pub, what a fine view of the bay, and then the girl brings us our chips, without any sign or mention of salt, vinegar, ketchup or what have you, and when we ask whether we might have ketchup she mumbles that we'll have to ask at the bar because she doesn't know where it is. Hmm! Plenty of staff standing around chatting in the bar; perhaps someone could have taken a short break from their conference to provide service to us customers. Not as if it was cheap either.
24 Jul 2012 21:16