A new pub, Down Under

G'day.

It's been a while. Now I'm over here, I thought it was time to check out a few pubs Down Under for WPG.

The Redoak Boutique Beer Cafe (201 Clarence Street) is a Sydney bar I've heard a lot about, but despite many visits to this 'ere parish, I've never yet made it in the door. So it was with some trepidation I stepped over the threshold past the vast vats of Irish Red Ale (they really do brew their own here: you can see the brewing parafanalia to the left of the front door), and ordered some of the Red. It's lovely stuff: rich dark red and slightly creamy. Alas in the Australian tradition it is chilled within an inch of it's life, and is best left for a good 20 minutes to warm up.

While I waited for Alastair to walk around the corner from his office, I moved onto the Blackberry Wheat Beer and read though the latest edition of the Australian Beer & Brewer Monthly, where beer writer Pete Brown went in search of the spitit of Aussie pubs abroad. Alas, he ended up reviewing the Walkabout on Shepherd's Bush Green, and despaired of the "bar clad in outback corrugated iron... watching the trollied teenager Aussie Abroad... spending £3.20 on a bottle of Crown". Well, I may sympathise with his view on "that Aussie Classic... Red Bull & vodka or Stella" (Ummm... when did Down Under claim them as their own?) but I say get as many down your neck as you can if you can find a Crown at £3.20, which is $5.40 at the currently ruinous $1.69 to the pound.

I digress; I was here to catch up on Alastair, hear all about married life, Service Skills Australia and get over some of the worst jetlag I've ever had (which is saying something) after my flight for A New Life Down Under.

We indulged with a couple of Tasting boards, which have Redoak beer matched with some traditional Aussie Fare. At an eyewatering $20AUD for four tiny pots of beer and four slabs of whatever the Redoak thinks goes with them. Or possibly the other way round.

Alastair had the Meat Tasting Board, with... Crocodile Shitake & Kolsch beer, Lamb Kofta & Irish Red Ale, Chicken skewer & Belgian Pale Ale, and Kangaroo pie washed down with Porter. I had a nibble on the Cheese Tasting Board, which was composed of a decent Barossa valley wanera & Heferweizen, Woodside cherve & Honey Ale, Warmambool cheddar & Kolsch, plus finally a Tarago River Gippsland Blue drizzled with honey, with again Porter mopping up the rear.
The Kolsch is as insipid as if it was brewed in Cologne, but the rest is lovely, including the Porter, so we had a couple more pints of this. And yes, I did say pints: the Redoak is one of the few places where you can get hold of a proper sized glass, and if you order two pints at the same time, there's enough time for one to get one warm enough to taste while the supping the other.
Pints had us in the mood for more pints... so time for another pub I've heard about but not made it to: after all, it's been a while since I've been around here, and in Sydney it's a question of so many pubs, and so little time.

The James Squire Brewhouse in Darling Harbour (King Street Wharf) has those sought after pints, and even better a full selection of beer produced by the Malt Shovel Brewery: Original Amber Ale, (a 5% abv English-style Brown Ale, made with a 140-year-old top fermenting ale yeast); Golden Ale (a 4.5% abv English-style Summer Ale); Pilsener (a 5% pale lager); India Pale Ale (I.P.A.) (a 5.6% ale); and a 5% abv Porter. There were also two specials on: Highwayman, and the rather optimistically named Craic, which hasn't been anywhere near Dublin, and is just what you'd expect if you asked an Aussie brewer to come up with an imitation Guinness: rather cold & ever so slightly fizzy. Which isn't quite what you get at St James Gate.

The prices were fairly outrageous, though not surprising being in the Darling Harbour area. It's in a nice spot on the water at King's Wharf though, so full marks to that. I'm thankful we didn't try and eat there: $27 for Kangaroo & Vegetable Stir fry (or about nineteen quid!) - I kid you not!

The Restaurant also has a micro-brewery on-site which brews beers such as the Governor King (Pale Ale), the Highwayman (Red Ale), and that weird Craic stuff. Thankfully it knocks the price down to just $5 from 5pm to 6pm, and an extra 10% off if you work in the airline industry. Sure enough, there were a couple of Qantas pilots in there, drowning their sorrows, which shows they haven't lost their sense of humour.

Incidentally, the James Squire pub is part of the brewery, which is named after the convict brewer James Squire from Kingston-Upon-Thames (he stole stole 5 hens and 4 cocks, and got a ticket to ride on the First Fleet), who is credited with the first successful cultivation of hops in Australia at the turn of the 19th century, and is also considered to have founded Australia's first commercial brewery in 1798.

Another place which does pints, and which as yet I've yet to take Alastair, but which for 6 weeks has been my every so slightly musty local, is the Muswellbrook RSL club (113 Bridge Street, Muswellbrook).

Now, I've got nothing against RSL Clubs (for the unitiated, they are the Returned Services League of Australia, which runs clubs as a charity, look after ex army/navy/airforce people, and have cheap beer) but why do they all have to have swirly carpets - in blue?! And furniture that wouldn't be out of place in a Student's Union in 1987. However the Muswellbrook version has three saving graces. The aforementioned pints. Beers prices that also seem to have some connection to 1987. And Keno. Keno is rather like the lottery, only it's played in pubs, and there's a draw every 10 minutes. Within half an hour, we were 4 dollars up, and it was time to bank it for another pint of cider. Here's another surprise. Strongbow, but in lots of different varieties: original, pear, dark, blackcurrent, and lite. A LITE cider?!

And finally, a pub which doesn't get many tourists at all. The Linga Longa (Do you see what they've done there?) at Gundy, on the banks of the beautiful Pages River. If only because it was time to take the new Lorkinmobile for a spin (seen right, if you squint at the pic), and check out it's 4 wheel drive on some real outback roads, plus it appeared like a decent if random spot on the map to head to. This one looks on the outside like a real Aussie rural pub - complete with tweety birds and everything. Look, even an Aussie Flag! However on the inside it's pure Gastro Pub territory. Natty bar stools. Cocktail fingerfood menus. Oak beams (salvaged from the local bridge when it was washed away in one of the regular floods). And the dogs, live from the UK, on three very large Plasma TV Screens, complete with a betting window at the far end of the bar. Ah... you travel twelve thousand miles... and you still can't leave the UK behind.

Decent beer though. If you leave it in the garden to warm up.

The Year In Pubs

It's now traditional that I start a new post with an apology for it being so long since the last one (four months, in this case). I maintain my position that it's better to actually be supporting our Great British Pubs by being in one, than on the laptop at home with a bottle of cheap supermarket-bought (well Majestic, for £1.25 a bottle) beer.

So where have I been all this time? Here's a handful of favourites.
1) The Shashton Arms, Ganton Street. Twitter followers will already know this is my new London residence. The only bad point is that it is somewhat difficult to find, even for airborne traffic reporters who should know better (I mean you, Veglio!) in a maze of Soho backstreets off Carnaby Street. But that's it. It's just two minutes from Meejah Central (ie. Golden Square), yet is a countrified haven of Badger beers. It IS undeniably popular, but they have so many staff on that I've never had to wait to be served, and the landlady is friendly, and well, that's everything you can ask for.

2) The Tiger, East Dean. This is another countrified pub, but this one has the excuse of actually being in the beautiful Seven Sisters country park near Ol' Pa Jackson's place in East Sussex. Its own Beachy Head beers (including the fine Legless Rambler at 5%) and tables looking out on to the prettiest village green make this the perfect place to take three generations of Jacksons to meet my friend Carina.

3) Stone Horse Paper Cow. See previous post, for nothing had changed when I visited this week. Still a good basement bar just a stone (horse)'s throw from Liverpool Street station. Still cool with quirky mismatched fittings, probably bulk-purchased from quirkymismatchedpubfittings.com, and American-style booths, pool and table football. Still good because you can get a seat, but still lacking any atmosphere because it seems to always be empty. Still good because they have Black Sheep on tap, but still more new bar staff, who on this visit were confused by my asking for "bitter". I want this place to be great, I really do, but just can't see how it's going to work...

4) The White Hart, Margaretting Tye. This is oddly akin to the Stone Horse, in that it manages to be somehow less that the sum of its parts. Or at least the recent refurbishment here does. The odd thing is that they've not actually changed anything - the food is good, there's lots of well-kept real ales which they've rightly won CAMRA awards for, and there's a pets corner including some rapey ducks. And they've decided to give the place a lick of paint. But they've obviously been to an Ember/Vintage Inn, and thought "well if the gastropub standard makeover is good enough for them, we'll get our own heritage paint swatch, some velvet curtains and hang a couple of pheasants in the corner too..." I can't fault the actual elements of the makeover - it's still a nice place to spend an evening, and indeed it's probably still the best pub around - just somehow a little less individual...

5) And an honorable mention for the King's Head in Orford, Suffolk for just being a lovely village pub, with a mix of friendly locals, Adnams ales, up to five dogs of all sizes in the bar at any one time, and some excellent food. A model of how to do it right.

If you can remember any other pubs I've been to and should have written about at the time, then do let me know, via an electronic mail communication, as the Chelmsford post is on strike. And now that you've read this, go to this beery blog which puts mine to shame and just gets better and better: Stonch's Beer Blog.

Drinking at Heathrow

It's not often you get the chance to go on a pub crawl around a village that has been around for nearly 1,000 years and has a name dating back to Anglo-Saxon times. And is about to be wiped off the map. However in a spirit of exploration, and ignoring any worries about an early morning, I've set off to discover the historic village of Sipson - if only because, until I leave the country, I am now living in a hotel at Heathrow Terminal 3.

First up is the iconic bar that for years has served as the drinking hole for those aircrew unfortunate enough to be staying at the Holiday Inn beside the junction for the Heathrow M4 spur. No, not the Old Ariel bar at the Holiday Inn (nee the Forte Posthouse Heathrow, formerly called the Ariel Hotel), but the Plough Inn, at the bottom of the carpark of the concrete carbunkle.

The Plough Inn (Sipson Road, Sipson) is lovely, with a great garden, a quiet main bar, London Pride on draft, and even lots of flowers and twiddly bits. It was a pub of the year 2007 ( in the niche category for pubs around Heathrow). It has a quaint map on the wall, showing the area - and the pub - back in 1888. It also has that rarest of things in the area - a free car park. Alas, enjoy it while you can, as this pub is destined to be where the lounge is for Terminal 6 (when at least you 'll be able to drink for free).

The King William IV (392 Sipson Road) is a pub I've wanted to visit for many years, not least because it's a 16th century building that is reputed to be haunted - and also it regularly features on CAMRA's lists. Goodness knows why: it is a terrible place. The outside got a makeover in the sixties and now shows no sign of it's vintage, while the inside has a mixture of authentic beams, and banners supporting "our boys in Iraq".

Now, there's nothing wrong with that, what is the problem is the bunch of skinheads that seem to infest this place, the scrappy frutties machine in the corner, and the couple of bits of tat that mix with the "No Third Runway" posters. Of course it's all rather pointless, because this place is exactly in the middle of where that third runway is going to be, and in a few years time, the bulldozers will roll in, and this pub will be no more. Me, I can't wait...

Just down the small country lane (or, as it will be soon, the third runway at Heathrow) is the small village of Harmondsworth.

The Five Bells (High St, Harmondsworth) is not planned for demolition, but will be just a few hundred feet from the end of the runway, so it was time to enjoy this pub's garden while it's still a tranquil oasis (although as flights were taking off on 27R, on the evening Westwards trajectory, tranquil is a relative term).

There are only so many heavily laden 747s you can talk over before it starts to get silly. This pub has no architectural merits, but is in a lovely situation overlooking the village green (with a red telephone box and everything!) with a small front bar (with real log fire) and a larger area around the back.

A short walk past the 1000 year old church is The Crown (High Street, Harmondsworth).

It is a much smaller place, and too is not destined for demolition, although it border directly onto the new perimeter fence for the new Taxiway to the new third runway. It's very much a last stop for a Heathrow pub crawl, because the atmosphere isn't great, with Eastenders playing on the TVs screwed to the wall, but food is great here, from steak (£7.99) to lasagne.


Oddly, talking to the landlord about how the third runway will be great for transport, jobs, and the economy got a muted response, and poisonous looks from the locals. The garden is enclosed and surrounded by trees, so here you see, rather than hear, you are close to the busiest two runway airport in the World.