Mayfair pubs

The Slug and Lettuce chain always had a theory that women wanted to be able to see in a pub before they entered it, and consequently blazed a massively successful trail of clear-windowed pubs, in which the female clientele made up close to half of the drinkers. The Barley Mow, sitting on one of Mayfair's less swanky streets (opposite is the fabulously named "Euro Coffee Bar"), seems to have been a forerunner of the Slug idea, containing a preposterous array of glass shaped into intricately arced windows. Maybe originally they were there to allow the drinking public to watch the procession of Selfridges' elephants from their stone houses further down the road towards the famous department store, but even in the modern context it hasn't been a roaring success, seeing as the clientele is still three-quarters-odd male. On the positive side, however, this is a laid-back, relaxed sort of pub, and a far better place to spend an evening than fighting through an ocean of overfed, overexposed and over-sexed flesh on planet Slug. Sensitively refitted to retain a traditional feel, serving several real ales and a wide selection of food, it's a pretty nice haunt, just far enough away from Oxford Street to retain a vestige of sanity. Not reviewed yet.

Want to review it? Nice, indeed almost classy, but not quite as good as it thinks it is. Light and airy, with the ability for people to spill out onto the street like radiation from Sellafield making it a decent summer pub. Another pub in Mayfair with a splendid exterior, this time a late 18th or early 19th century take on Tudor design, with black beams, white boarding and mottled glass. Arriving after 9pm on a Friday, I expect it to be rammed, but that's not the case and I manage to get a small table by the window (and more importantly, by the radiator too) after about 5 minutes. The inside isn't a disappointment, retaining many original features including charming carved ceiling beams, dark wooden panelling and a generous bar-front. It used to be a William Younger's pub and the cross-border connection remains, with a fine array of Scottish ales on sale (not a combination of words I use often). It has an expansive upstairs area, where food is served and which doubles as a smoke-free lounge on Fridays. Despite the shouty nature of some of the work crowd - but hey, it's Friday, I'm sober and they're not - this is an excellent pub with plenty of life about it. Sky sports, food served 11.30am - 9pm, not open Sundays. A classic. Dark wood, low lighting, mottled glass windows and very red walls all conspire to deliver a marvellous atmosphere. A dignified presence in one corner of the bustling Shepherd's Market in Mayfair, this is a magnet to workers, tourists and hardened pub goers alike. Also, and it is a rarity for the area, it is open on both Saturdays and Sundays. A slightly sinister connection with a troupe of Morris dancers (don't even dare to open conversation with them as you will all too quickly find yourself with a hanky and a stick hopping about like a deranged Freemason as tourists take photographs) only adds to the quirky charm of the place. With a fantastic array of restaurants surrounding it I've never bothered to ascertain whether it does food or not. Well worth a pint of anyone's time I was somewhat shocked to read your review of the Grosvenor Arms. I visited it yesterday and was delighted to find a pub in Mayfair that was just that, no designer sofas that you can't get out of without the assistance of a JCB, a menu that was not attempting feebly to replicate the Roux brothers or a corporate badge sterilising me into thinking that I could be anywhere between Ikea and a well polished school canteen on Christmas day. Instead I found a warm welcome, an excellent pint of Black Sheep, a generous portion of ham, egg and chips and I escaped for under a tenner, something that in this part of London is a job to achieve from a Salvation Army soup kitchen. Go back and review it again. I think it is a credit to the management that they have not been seduced down the route of the pretentious path that so many of its neighbours have and continues to be what it is, A PUB I seem to have been stuck a lot in Mayfair recently, which must be to do with all the Jimmy Choo shoes I've been buying. Well, I've got to do something so I can fit in with the fashion parade that is the Black Lion in Plaistow. As I amble down Bond Street, admiring the single sock for sale within a gold lacquered box in a Japanese fashion boutique, the facade of this pub has often beckoned to me seductively. Unfortunately, like so many of the celebrity supermodels that shop in the area, it's only the facade that's appealing. Once inside I am immediately beset by the noisy jabbering of IT contractors and music so awful that my ears threaten to leave my head. A pathetic selection of beers offers nothing drinkable but Guinness, and the meals are exclusively dead animal in microwaved sauce. Irritatingly wacky writing on the ceiling beams tells me there is a Terrace Bar, and in front of me a TV squats in a box like a caged beast. Neither prospect much raises my hopes. Old photographs with no relevance at all to either the pub, Mayfair or even often London line the walls in a feeble attempt to create some semblance of olde worlde pub cred. They fail. I sit nursing my pint and watching in horror as a squeaky boy scout type and his 1980s lover (dyed blonde hair, suit, black tights and then a WHITE SOCKS AND TRAINERS combo) cavort to the gut-churning music. Dragging my gaze away, I realise that the bar staff manage to combine bad hair, a goatee beard, compulsive bollock-scratching and a hunched back between the two of them. This pub has all the atmosphere and excitement of a Sunday morning spent watching religious television. I had heard consistently good reports of this place, and consequently spent ages meandering round the back streets of Mayfair looking for it, aided only by Streetmap on my mobile, which rendered major streets no bigger than a hair filament and had no zoom function. Useful. Finally arriving, I found all the usual traditional blah, including posh nobs boasting about their salaries and another post-Wells merger Young's pub serving the bare minimum of Young's ales (i.e. 1), but all the other industrial crap on sale it'd be criminal to feed to mad cows, let alone humans, cheerfully beaming from giant gold taps all across the bar's surface. I asked the barman for double chocolate stout and got the response "I've been working in the country. What is that?" which said it all, really. The pub itself is an attractive but tiny, slightly battered wooden space bursting with fancy-dan types, while considerably more space is taken up by the restaurant out the back, a candlelight and nosebleed-prices affair safely removed from the hoi-poloi. Not open Sundays. Lurking just off the Oxford Street-Bond Street junction, I had every reason to fear this would be the worst pub on the planet. It has a TV on the outside, for God's sake, and a gaggle of designer-beard tourists admiring themselves on its cafe-style metal chairs. But it's, er, well, okay; the staff are pretty cheerful and it does at least bother will ale and other such exciting things. Well-kept, out of the way Fuller's pub with their normal range of ales and a decent spread of food. Not unpleasant. More spacious, quiet and architecturally unenthralling than Ye Grapes (just up the road), this is nevertheless an establishment worth paying attention to. A broad, dark pub in a fairly traditional style, it usually has tables empty even on a Friday night, and serves food until late. Which is damning it with the faint praise it so richly deserves. It also has a big screen to sate the needs of the football watching public This is it, then; the end of the Fake Irish Pub. The owners of the O'Neill's chain have decided, in the face of an impending recession, that the future does not lie in chain outlets of plastic bonhomie, but rather upmarket, with big taps selling foreign lager, fancy food (like, ur, fish finger sandwiches for £4), flock wallpaper and lampshades. Oh yes, the Market Tavern has gone all New Baroque: dark fittings, dim lights, wobbly twigs in pots and big lampshades your grannie would be proud of. The biggest innovation is in the presentation of a six-foot high rendering of Michealangelo's David on the door to the gents, his dinky little penis, when viewed from above, solving the conundrum of why male members in classical sculpture are so small; any bigger and it would look like a slab of salami flopping over two plums, which may please those committed to verisimilitude in art, but as something viewed on the front of a toilet door would look pretty damn ugly. David aside, most of the drinkers present seem not to have realised that it's no longer an O'Neill's, and consequently appear to think that screaming to make themselves heard over the usual O'Neill's 130Db crap is mandatory pub behaviour, even though the music is now at a far more mellow volume, and is probably a yawnsome Back To Mine collection trying desperately to make us feel relaxed and funky. Much as The Market Tavern is a vast improvement on its previous incarnation, this is nevertheless a predictable refit in a style we're all going to quickly get sick of. At one time a German hairdressing salon, a wise proprietress in the mid 19th century realized that the only future for faux-Tudor buildings lay in converting them into pubs. Succeeding - rather miraculously - in emerging from the twentieth century intact, without having been turned into a wine bar, groovy lounge, stripped-pine Slug and Lettuce or an estate agent, the future's bright for this interesting, quirky and traditionally-decorated pub. Odd little features abound, such as the bunches of grapes decorating the coving, and the little alcove for two situated just to one side of the bar. There is plenty of seating, and most nights a good chance of finding a seat, although Friday nights can get very crowded. Serves excellent food, some real ales and has very friendly staff. Set just a little aside from Bond Street and Regent's Street, it is well worth the effort to find. As we stand at the bar it quickly becomes apparent that this pub has changed since we were last here. In fact the only similarities are that it serves beer and other alcoholic substances. The whole place, save for a metre wide strip by the bar, is filled with tables and chairs. Most of which are occupied by men in suits and botoxed women quaffing wine. The scene before us and the Top Table sticker in the window tell us that this is no longer a pub in the true sense of the word. It is not a pub because 10 grown men are forced to sit around a romantically candlelit table. It is also not a pub because it has waitresses. It is not a pub because we are told by one of the said waitresses that we have to vacate our table by 8pm because it has been booked. This one has gone so far over to the Dark Side I wouldn't be surprised if I saw the Emperor Palpatine cooking in the kitchen and Darth Vader doing the washing up. As crap jobs go, the C18th offered worse: night soil man, for instance, or tosher (the word 'tosh' comes from balls of fused coins that would occasionally be found in the London sewers). That said, being employed to dress up in a silly uniform and run in front of carriages through London's boggy, dung-strewn and unpredictably paved streets can't have been altogether thrilling. In recompense, the Marquess of Queensbury built his running footmen a pub. Housed in a low-key but attractive Georgian building, this is a surprising survivor in the rarified atmosphere of the south-western Mayfair. The interior boasts a garish tiled fireplace, a possibly original painting of some Running Footmen, an orange ceiling that definitely isn't, brown leather seats and a red carpet, all making for a slightly mind altering foray into the colour spectrum. Quiet 1960s music, good beers and a wide array of food make for an excellent port of call, and the clientele is less solipsistically Australian than it used to be. It has a TV too. A useful boozer to get acquainted with. This pub has apparently been around since 1750 and the building undeniably has a certain Georgian charm. We arrived on the scene one Friday evening. A large group of drinkers were clustered outside and on entering we soon saw why. The bar area was heaving and there was barely enough space to lift a pint glass. Although through the gloom we spied tables at the back, it turned out these were only for people dining here. Oh. This is after all a gastro pub. This pub is also famous for being owned by none other than Guy Ritchie. It could not be further from the grimy gangland boozers portrayed in some of his films. The clientele here are mostly pathetic wannabes who are desperate to catch a glimpse of one of the celebrities who are supposed to frequent the place. Scantily clad women scan the crowd for a famous face, preferably a footballer, so that they will never have to do another day's work in their meaningless lives. In order to drink, we headed outside to join the throng. After a while we were pushed by a group of asset-strippers in suits. To add insult to injury, we were then berated by the burly Eastern European bouncer for stepping one millimetre out of the area allowed by the licence. This process then repeated itself several times before we were ushered inside to spare the well-heeled locals the horrible spectacle of people drinking outside a pub after dark. Once inside we were hemmed-in by some rugby lads on one side and some women on the other who had had several makeovers too many. On the plus side the beer is OK but the prices are expensive even for Mayfair. Our advice is don't bother. This pub is tucked away to the west of Berkeley Square, on a quiet well heeled street. Popular with office workers and some outside seating, the food is good including some large rustic style chicken and leek pies. With a few tellies it was great watching the Ashes victories, and the bar serves a few ales plus a lot of different lagers, and wines. Soft drinks aren't cheap but then this area is called Mayfair. The upstairs floor is rarely open but has a number of olde worlde pictures, and several large tables in a large room. Alternatives are the nearby Red Lion, Coach and Horses, The Running Footman as sound pubs (not bars). Just up the road from the Mayfair Hilton, the slightly ramshackle exterior of this pub is rather incongrous in its Mayfair surroundings. Rather stagey in its show of traditionalism, it slides towards a bland atmosphere that seems just fine for the mostly obnoxiously rich tourists that stumble across it. This is, however, the only place in the UK that I've bumped into a Bollywood actress, at least outside of a film set, so it must be doing something right. Slightly too much of a local. There's something a bit sour about this one Pleasant enough boozer tucked away on a Mayfair side street. The main point of interest in this pub is the fact that it has joined the growing number of Young's pubs that, since the merger with Wells, barely sell any Young's beer at all. I said so to the landlady and got a big lecture about how the merger made absolutely no difference - quite plainly a sensitive subject, then. Still, not a bad watering hole. Classy Young's boozer in a confusing part of Mayfair, just off Saville Row and round a bend or two. I only found it because I was lost. Trad decor, a wonderful upstairs room plus a commitment to the Campaign for Real Food. No TV or other nonsense.

---

All content © Random Pub Finder 2001-2012, website development by Doogal