Best Pubs in the World

[tshadowchaser]

This primarily concerns which country has the better PUBS, England or Ireland ?
You who have been to both countries may a say and if you are from the continent you may have a differing opinion that is also welcome

 

[Sukerkin]

Well, we used to have marvellous pubs over here in England but the the mega-brewers and their accountants put paid to that.

There is a small backlash in progress to try and breathe life back into small pubs in the streets of towns and some country pubs have lived through the 'culture drought' but they hang on by their fingernails.

I hope that we'll get them back as social meeting houses where people go to talk rather than get 'bladdered' whilst being unable to hear each other over the music but it's a thin wish rather than a genuine sight of things to come.

I can't speak to Ireland. I have been there but I was one year old, so a bit young for the bar :lol:.

 

[theletch1]

Haven't been to either country but would love to visit both. I'm a HUGE Guinness fan.

It seems to be a trend, at least in my area, for the small Irish or English "pub" to pop up now. We've had several open in my town in the last couple of years. They are very refreshing for me as I can't stand to go to the clubs that are so prevalent. A quiet seat where I can actually have a good conversation and share a laugh with a friend and a pint... or two, is just what the doctor ordered for me.

 

[exile]

I've been to England and Scotland, and consumed commendable quantities of Real Ale (unpressurized, drawn by air pressure only from cask, or gravity from small barrels, and only malt, hops, yeast and barley malt, no additive rice/corn garbage or foaming agents or other crap) in dozens of them, and am going back there to continue to quench my thirst on Tuesday, for five weeks. Alas, I haven't been to Ireland, but the social conditions that produced pubs in the two places are very different.

I've been in phenomenally pleasant pubs in the UK. They're nothing like American bars, even those among the latter that sincerely try to be pubs. With the Campaign for Real Ale now going on for something like forty years, the number of pubs serving Real Ale and catering to the serious lover of top-fermented, seriously bitter ales grows steadily (in spite of the best efforts of stupid national governments, such as the whopping tax increase imposed by the very inaptly named Chancellor Alasdair Darling, to kill off traditional English beer). CAMRA continues apace, while vile offenders such as Watney's, famous as the producers and first mass marketers of 'piss-and-wind' style beers, have gone out of business. More and more pubs are free houses (though now the new enemies are pub-ownership consortia, but I'm confident that CAMRA will settle their hash just as it did with the Big Six's effort to kill of genuine beer and replace it with 'national brands' and syntho pubs where the drinks of choice were Harvey Wallbangers...) I'm really looking forward to ducking into a few of my favorites to check the ongoing good work of the Campaign and critically inspect the condition of the best bitters!

 

[Makalakumu]

I've been to a lot of pubs in a lot of different countries. Too bad we are just talking about England and Ireland. They are not the top of my list.

 

[Hyper_Shadow]

I haven't been to Ireland so I couldn't say, but I grew up in pubs (old style pubs not these new lame weatherspoons that pop up more often than mcdonalds) and they're definitely on the decline. They tore down an old pub that used to be by my house when I was twelve, they never even built on the site, it's tragic. Most pubs now have to become restaurants to keep up with competition and that old pub atmosphere is all but nonexistant. Now I'm not a drinker, I hate alcohol, but I love being in a nice old fashioned family pub and have a game of pool or darts with my mates.
But to stay on topic, I'd say England has definitely got its little gems so I'm rooting for my side.

Koryu pubs versus the Mcweatherspoons, what do you reckon guys, the next big conflict?:jediduel:

 

[exile]

I haven't been to Ireland so I couldn't say, but I grew up in pubs (old style pubs not these new lame weatherspoons that pop up more often than mcdonalds) and they're definitely on the decline. They tore down an old pub that used to be by my house when I was twelve, they never even built on the site, it's tragic. Most pubs now have to become restaurants to keep up with competition and that old pub atmosphere is all but nonexistant. Now I'm not a drinker, I hate alcohol, but I love being in a nice old fashioned family pub and have a game of pool or darts with my mates.
But to stay on topic, I'd say England has definitely got its little gems so I'm rooting for my side.

Koryu pubs versus the Mcweatherspoons, what do you reckon guys, the next big conflict?:jediduel:

Hyper—if you're ever in Northhumberland, get thee to New Ridley and spend a pleasant afternoon at Dr. Syntax, one of those gems you were mentioning... the perfect, iconic English pub before the Weapon of Mass Destruction called pub renovation became a mania with the Big Six brewers in the 1960s.

The Bull, in Cavendish in Suffolk, is another one I really love... excellent food, almost solely local trade, feels like it hasn't changed in a century or more. Cavendish is a small, beautiful, rural village which local people actually live in (as vs. high-rollers from the City who've bought up the houses as pied-a-terres in the countryside which they use as tax write-offs), and they clearly love their pub.

Also in Suffolk there's a couple of nice ones—The Angel is the name of one of them, I recall—in Lavenham, where the town has changed pretty much not at all since the fourteenth century when the bottom dropped out of the wool industry, everyone went bankrupt, and there was no mony to move out, let alone build up as time went on. Place is like a village that was put in a time capsule—it's all thatch and half-timber (some nice photos here).

And I remember some very, very nice pubs in Broadway and a few other Cotswold towns (preserved for pretty much exactly the same reason as Lavenham).

They're there, all right, if you look for them... and I can think of little that's as much good clean fun as scouring England looking for The Perfect Pub...

 

[Sukerkin]

Aye, there are still good ones to be found but more are lost every year to either desecration (sorry, rennovation), restaurantisation or lack of business due to the "Volume Vendors".

The Swan in my town is still a good one, with multitudes of beers available that change all the time. The problem is, as about the only decent pub around these days, it is packed to the rafters very early on, so if you want a seat get that by seven and plant your flag .

 

[exile]

Clearly, we need a MartialTalk Pub Guide set up as a special project!

I'm hoping to return in August with a whole gang of entries for it... :wink1: