The Mug House Inn, Bewdley

Great beer, reasonably priced food, Drew the landlord is friendly, approachable and mingles with the punters often, excellent location.

The beer garden is fantastic - a real retreat from the world.

Thoroughly recommended!

19 Apr 2009 10:11

The Swallows Nest, Halesowen

Unfriendly staff. No eye contact and serving punters at random so you are either waiting an hour for a drink or served quickly before other people who have been waiting longer (much to everyone's annoyance, but there's no point in trying to be gracious and suggesting that someone else was before you as this just makes the moronic bar staff even more useless).

Food was okay, but I would have preferred my vegetables to have been served unfrozen and for the medium rare steak to have turned up looking less like the corpse after a cremation.

Not recommended.

19 Apr 2009 10:08

The Hampstall Inn, Astley Burf

This has to be the most down-at-heel pub I've been to for ages. I'm not saying that every pub should be bright and shiny (god forbid!), but this place is tatty through lack of care, not a patina of age.

The beer? My god! It tastes like the pipes were last cleaned when the Severn flooded (and only then because it was probably best to be on the safe side).

The welcome? Some self-important clown in chef's bib made it clear that me and my partner were getting in the way of what he really wanted to do (probably sleep or drink the foul beer or some combination of the two), but his arrogance and general nastiness wasn't like what you would see off Gordon Ramsay - it was just plain rude.

Talking of Gordon Ramsay... Was the food the saviour of this place?

Well, if you consider rancid butter for the bread any signifier, then "No".

The greatest fun to be taken from this terrible pub is working out the nxt day whether it was the beer or the food which had you vomiting all through the night.

Avoid like the plague.

19 Apr 2009 10:02