The West End Hotel: 35 Palmerston Place, Edinburgh

Friday took me back to the West End Hotel to see the unique Andy Chung singing some Scottish folk music. I always enjoy a trip to the West End hotel, particularly because you get one of the finest pints of Best poured in Edinburgh. There are also some other fine beers in bottles behind the bar, a Trade Winds was only £2 – surely a bargain in this economic climate!

If you are going to see the Chung (he plays there around once a month), go early and get a seat at a table near the band. The bar area is quite small and narrow so if you are standing people are constantly trying to get past which can get a bit irritating.

Live music isn’t the only reason to visit the West End hotel though. As I mentioned the Best is unrivalled and it can be a nice location for a quiet pint on a Sunday afternoon where you can catch up on the football results on their plasma telly. The bar staff are friendly and helpful, which is an unexpected bonus in Edinburgh! One of the bar staff even helped me carry some drinks over to my table. Oh and the bar area is called ‘Time’ bar. There are quite a few clocks towards the back area of the bar so no worries if you forget your watch!

A nice bar

The Mitre: 131-133 High Street, Edinburgh

A typical Edinburgh pub, which is to say; it's a fairly average old man sort of pub, frequented by tourists, where you are charged over £3 a pint for the privilege of drinking a very average pint of beer, poured by an inexperienced and rude barman/barmaid, on the Royal Mile.    

Originally published on my first pub review blog which was edited by my IT literate New Zealand mate http://edinburghpubs.blogspot.com/

1780: 167 Rose Street, Edinburgh

What a nice bar. I’ve often walked past this bar but never gone in. Well it’s worth a visit if you like proper beer and proper music. There is a good selection of bottled ale and they do Murphy’s on tap – which you don’t see much of these days, even in Irish bars. You can enjoy your beer as you relax on the sofa by the door to the sounds of musical geniuses such as Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton. Also if conversation dries up there are plenty of pictures on the wall to look at.

The food seems pretty good, all I ordered was a bowl of chips but I haven’t enjoyed a plate of chips so much in a long time. A punter nearby was tucking into muscles which also looked good. Even the bar staff are friendly and helpful, unual in many city centre bars. 

Like I said plenty of pictures!

McKeown's Bar & Lounge: 16 Clanbrassil Street, Dundalk

This is the type of bar that I imagine when I think of Irish bars. A traditional friendly bar where you can have a great pint, read the paper and catch up on the sport. They also do a fine cheese toasty.

Frankenstein: 26 George IV Bridge, Edinburgh

If you were to look up tacky in the dictionary it would probably mention this bar. They lower a model of Dr Frankenstein’s monster at midnight, however this is not the strangest thing you’ll see here. This bar attracts stag and hen parties like bones attract dogs. I remember watching the Football World Cup and seeing a guy on a stag night who was dressed in a purple morph suit being led by a girl to her friend. Despite standing next to her friend the first girl drunkenly shouted at her that the guy needed 21 kisses in 21 minutes – classy! Yes this is the sort of bar where Jagerbombs are the drink of choice and dry humping is the dance style of choice.   

A truly terrifying place!

Assembly: 41 Lothian Street, Edinburgh

Just across the road from Edinburgh University, this is a great bar to go to if you want to chill out on a Friday or Saturday night. While many bars at the weekend can be packed busy and infuriating (particularly if you’re on a drinking session for a second or third night in a row and are hung-over) this place is never too busy or quiet and always relaxes you and makes you feel up for a night on the town.

The bar is modern and comfortable and has a good atmosphere with friendly bar staff and music that’s lively but doesn’t annihilate conversation. They pour a decent pint of Best, I’ve had a fresh orange there that cured my hangover and they also do cheap drinks deals. It’s also a good place for inexpensive and tasty food, the fajitas are worth a try.

The Morning Star: 17-19 Pottinger's Entry, Belfast

What a fine bar to have my first pint of Guinness in on my recent trip to Belfast! This bar is pretty much no nonsense, proper traditional décor, helpful bar staff and most importantly great tasting pints. I’ve also been told this is an excellent place to have a meal. Sadly food service had finished by the time I got to this bar on a Friday night, however glancing through the menu there was a decent selection of food and prices that would rival Wetherspoons. Above the bar was a small TV which was tuned to a music video channel showing pop/dance music videos. This didn’t seem to fit in with the style of the bar, but it was Friday night and I guess you’ve got to cater for the kids too!

5 Stars for the Morning Star

The Granary: 32-34 Shore, Edinburgh

If you are going for a drink in the Shore I would suggest you avoid this pub! Aesthetically it is quite a nice pub but problems arose as soon as my friends and I approached the bar. Though the pub wasn’t overly busy the bar area was and it took forever to get served. When I did eventually get my Guinness it was absolutely disgusting. This was only my second drink of the night but it made me feel genuinely nauseous. The fact that it was hotter than hell in the bar didn’t really help this feeling. We couldn’t get out of this bar fast enough!

Unfortunately the Granary disproved this theory!

Finnegan's Wake: 9B Victoria Street, Edinburgh

Named after an unreadable James Joyce novel, Finnegan’s Wake may offer much. Whether it be live music, or pints of Best for £1.75, if you flash the student card. However, one thing they don’t offer is a great place to watch the sport. Choosing this as a venue to watch the Scotland VS Spain game, we were rejected, the Irish bar staff choosing to watch the Ireland match on the big screen instead. Fair play it’s an Irish bar, but you’re in Edinburgh. The bar was empty because they were showing the wrong game!

Not showing the Scotland match in Edinburgh? As impossible to understand as the novel the pub was named after!

Sam Jacks: The Gate Complex, Newgate Street, Newcastle

I would love to be able to rant about this bar, but the truth is I quite enjoyed myself there. If you’re on a Stag party (which I was) this is the ideal place to come.

When we arrived there was football on their many TV screens which we enjoyed watching. They had a reasonable selection of beer and a fairly wide variety of bottled beer which I stuck to. 

The highlight of the bar has to be the hot female dancers which the bar employs to dance next to the bar. Another novel attraction is the dentist chair. No they don’t fix your teeth for you! Instead they give you a ridiculous looking steaming shot in a test tube, which you drink as you sit in the dentist chair, and the bar’s fit dancers dance around you. Apparently it costs £5 for the dentist chair experience, although to be fair, last time I went to the actual dentist it cost me far more than that.  There is also a bucking bronco for more Stag/Hen night related hilarity.

Sure the music may not be to everyone’s taste (or anyone over 21 for that matter), and watch out for the guy in the bog who will try to fleece money off you for giving you a bit soap to wash your hands with and a paper towel. Some may even say this bar is tacky in the extreme – and they would be right. However, the bar provides entertainment, it is original, the bar staff and door staff are friendly, the alcohol isn’t overly expensive and therefore on a similar occasion I would certainly go back.

 

Certainly better than a trip to the real dentist!

Belushi's: 13 Market Street, Edinburgh

This is a backpacker bar attached to a hostel. If you go through to the hostel bar (to your right of the main bar) you can get more for less if you pretend you’re staying at the hostel. I only found this out after I’d blabbed to the Aussie barmaid I was from Edinburgh at which point she informed me that she would have to charge me the full fair for the drinks I’d ordered. Clearly they operate an Edinburgh resident tax. How rude! As a small consolation they do have a beer garden which was quite pleasant to sit in as it happened to be a freakishly hot night on the occasion I drank in Belushi's, but let’s face it, most evenings in Scotland you’re not going to want to sit in a beer garden.

To sum up probably a good pub if you’re a backpacker, but if you are a local there are cheaper and better bars!

These randoms are clearly overjoyed because they got the cheap booze deal! 

Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated!

Dear readers,

Some of you may have wondered why I have posted no new reviews recently when there are still so many pubs in Edinburgh to be commented on. Some of you may have been furious that you took the time to look at this site and received no new reading material for your trouble!

Well over the last month I have been out and about visiting many pubs in Edinburgh and beyond, experiences which I will share with you over the next few postings.

Highlights to look out for are;

The Murrayfield Hotel, Belushi's, Finnegan’s Wake

Belfast and Dundalk Pubs

Later this month – Newcastle pubs

To kick off proceedings for October I thought I’d begin with the Globe.

The Globe: 13 Niddry Street, Edinburgh

If this bar is not the cheapest in Edinburgh it’s certainly close to it. You can get a bottle of Carlsberg for £1.35 – which is certainly competitive! Unlike many bars that do drink deals only for students – this bar also passes the savings on to hard working punters. No student card or tying to blag it with a snap fax here!

It’s a sports bar of the Aussie ilk (you can get bottles of VB, Tooheys New – if you feel the need). So what better than enjoying some Champions League action with some cheap beer deals? A word of warning though, if you want to watch one of the less popular games – get there ahead of time, as changing the Channel on their many tellys seems as complicated as re-directing a satellite in space!

Some may say the globe is a dingy, tacky bar that plays questionable music and has a distracting light show next to one of the TVs. I would say ignore all that and rejoice in the cheap beer!

VB could also stand for 'very bad'!