Fitzroy Tavern, Fitzrovia

It’s mid January 2022 and we’re just emerging from the third wave of the pandemic. I’d scouted around Soho/Bloomsbury for a fairly quiet pub as remarkably, for a Tuesday night, all the pubs were full ( in the sense that there was no seating). I’ve been in the Fitzroy before but had been reading the book The Colony Room where the Fitzroy is mentioned several times. There was seating to be had and I bought a decent pint of stout and marvelled at the photos of the pub from the 40s and 50s. I was sat in the newly refurbished part ( you can tell which is the more modern part by looking at the ceiling). The Fitzroy is part of the Sam Smith’s chain and I’d already passed one of their pubs that was unusually shut, a notice saying they were only open Thursday to Sunday and subsequently peered through the window of another (The Bricklayers Arms) which seemed fairly empty too.
My take on the ‘emptiness’ is that Sam Smith’s is displaying signs banning the use of mobile phones/tablets and laptops in their pubs. I had little to go on ( the menu and a copy of the Evening Standard). Instead of staying, I was desperate to get out of there and found another pub ( with an interesting history) that doesn’t have such draconian rules. Blame the pub chain owner and not the staff if the whole operation shuts down due to lack of business and lack of ability to recruit staff who would probably prefer to work in pubs that don’t have such a dire rule to enforce.

19 Jan 2022 09:46