You can do a lot with a room. Order two years’ worth of Elle Decoration back issues for inspiration, rebuild one wall out of meat and cover it in pictures of haystacks and vomiting dogs. Or put in a mezzanine – sod it, two mezzanines – which only toddlers and limbo dancers can use.
Or – and this is the radical bit – you just leave it as a basic box: tiled floor; patterned stools; bar at one end; filled rolls on the bar; newspapers on the windowsill. It shows how much of a massive dick I am that this time-honoured approach should be greeted with surprise and delight.
I thought about using a fancier image for this - but then thought, no. This is how it is.
It’s a beaut, basically. Beyond the filled rolls (which are made with Herbert’s baguettes, and filled with roast beef, chorizo or mature cheddar – no soggy baps here), you have burgers, curries, pasties, hand-reared pork pies. No messing. Not pricey. Just great pub scran to soak up the cider.
And so we get to the cider and, as a consequence of this, the clientele. The pub won CAMRA’s best cider and perry pub of the year in 2009. There is a phenomenal range of national and local ciders on offer, both on draught and from casks behind the bar. Single estate. Small yield. Artisanal booze porn. This draws in the CAMRA heads – those entranced with alcohol production as a herald of our country’s heritage. Those interested in having their heads educated by pure fermented Kingston Black apples, or what have you.
But what does your common man know about artisan cider making? One thing – the product is strong. And like a spotlit Batman sign in the sky, except with less stylised bat and rather more rotted apple and the words “7% minimum”, the local pop-heads flock like ducks on ice come opening time.
And then you have its position within Bristol – just round the corner from Aardman HQ and the Spike Island art gallery, just off the tourist harbourside trek. This brings in customers with haircuts asymmetric by design rather than accident; studenty scamps with charming retroussé noses jostling alongside retirees whose probosci are rather more rosy and pockmarked; or even just people who enjoy laughing and talking about life and work.
They all sit together, these people. It’s a potent combination, a mad meld of styles, insobriety and ciders. You can do a lot with a room.