The Mall, Clifton

This is a lovely pub in a great location with very good beer and food. I am surprised by the low overall rating, but suspect that there might be two reasons for that. First, you really want to be sitting near the entrance, in the original part of the pub; 80 per cent of the pub is an extension that is gloomy and soulless. When I pop in, I look for a seat near the window and if there isn't one, I go elsewhere.

Second, the clientele are posh students with loud plummy voices and their collars turned up. I can see how some would find that annoying, but at lunchtime they're not too overbearing, and if, like me, you have a weakness for posh young women, you can easily blot out the insufferable rugger types.

26 May 2009 12:53

The White House, Oxford

On a return to Oxford recently I was sad to see this former local of mine boarded up. It was a quality pub for a few years around 2000-05, with excellent food and beer, a great location, and the best beer garden in the centre of town.

The service could be pretty snooty, though, and I suppose that did for them in the end. But with better management, this could be a great pub.

26 May 2009 12:39

The Bell Inn, Caerleon

Caerleon is an attractive and historic village with lots of pubs, and you'd think it would be a great place for a pint and a bite to eat. Sadly, most of its pubs - even the good-looking ones in ancient buildings - are underachieving boozers, good for nothing more than Saturday night vertical drinking.

The Bell comes closest to being a proper pub, and is certainly a good place for a drink. It has one of the biggest ranges of cider I've ever seen, many of them from the excellent local Gwynt y Ddraig brewery. I haven't tried the ale, but any pub that takes this much care over its cider is likely to look after its beer as well.

The pub itself is a lovely old stone building with bags of character and a friendly atmosphere. There are two downsides, though - it's on the 'wrong' side of the river, so that you're separated from most of Caerleon's historic attrations, such as the amphitheatre, the Fforwm arts centre and the Roman legion museum. Secondly, it is trying hard to be a food pub, and not quite suceeding. More than half the seating area is given over to a restaurant-style arrangement, and the lunchtime menu offers a range of ambitious-sounding mains at the �10-15 price range.

The problem is, the food is very ordinary indeed. A recent Sunday lunch was bland beyond belief, and although the weekday menu seems a little better, prices are still 20-30% too high. Some of the dishes are just bad combinations - a smoked salmon salad came with mountains of sliced onion and walnuts. What's that all about? As far as I can see, there is no real cooking going on at the Bell, so to charge this much for food is pretty outrageous.

Having said that, The Bell is doing a lot better than its Caerleon rivals, many of which are dire, but it's a shame that no-one in the village has quite put together a decent pub where you can both enjoy a good pint and have a tasty and reasonably priced bite to eat. It can't be that difficult, can it? Nearby Usk and Abergavenny are full of pubs that pull it off.

26 May 2009 12:21