Cosy nooks and historic wood beams are the backdrop for our tipsters’ decide of correct boozers serving good pub grub
Fri 24 Nov 2023 08.00 CET
Pork stomach on the Packhorse, Peak District
Last November, a gaggle of us took a visit to the Peak District for my dad’s sixtieth. We booked the Packhorse Inn in Little Longstone for the celebratory dinner, simply off the well-known Monsal Trail. The pub sources all its produce regionally and adjustments its menu month-to-month. When we arrived, we had been welcomed with roaring fires and delights on the menu equivalent to pork stomach with black pudding and mustard mash, sport pie, and a high tier sticky toffee pudding. It was price it, though we ended up having to navigate a muddy walk home afterwards by way of cow fields in full darkness.
Eloise
Guinness and seafood, County Antrim
O’Connors Bar in Ballycastle is a standard low-ceilinged Irish bar, with a welcoming open fireplace and excellent foods and drinks. The menu is wide-ranging, utilizing native produce, with particularly nice fish and seafood in season and the freshest of each day specials. The Guinness, too, is simply excellent. Local tipplers, household teams, guests and worldwide vacationers fill the bar and snugs. Food, drink, service and ambiance mix to make this a favorite pub of mine to eat in.
Aileen
A sport of pool and a cheeky cocktail, Perth and Kinross
The Muirs Inn, Kinross, between Edinburgh and Perth, near Loch Leven, was the setting for a night of two halves. First off a heat, welcoming conservatory extension eating room with plenty of gentle hosted us for beautiful programs together with chunky, flaky cod on a Mediterranean tomato and capers stew, and beer-battered North Sea haddock, with shortbread to complete. The second half featured a sport of pool and a cheeky cocktail subsequent door within the conventional a part of the pub. Wonderful landlord, sharp service and eager costs.
Sophie
Polish sausage and free pudding, Wolverhampton
It’s almost unimaginable to decide on a favorite pub, however the Stile Inn on Harrow Street stands out in a crowd. Local Banks’s beer on faucet and a singular menu of genuine Polish meals: selfmade pierogi, polish sausage, goulash, barbecued pork steak … you don’t get this in all places. If there’s greater than 4 of you, you get a free pudding, and parts are enormous – takeaway containers are normal. It may be on a Wolverhampton backstreet however they’ll make you welcome: they usually run charity nights and serve a particular lunch on Christmas Day so no one has to spend it alone.
Sarah Collings
Eclectic menu, Staffordshire
The Black Lion Inn within the Staffordshire Peak District serves a totally scrumptious and eclectic menu in within the lovely, “doubly thankful” village of Butterton. Hannah and Matt’s locally-sourced menu is a delight and the Sunday lunch (£16) is vastly memorable (I’ll be considering of the celeriac puree for an extended whereas!), as is the extremely scrumptious beetroot and tofu burger (£13.50). Think enjoyable, roomy tables, flagged flooring, whitewashed partitions and cosy log burners which make the old inn exhausting to depart, however happily there are rooms above to relaxation some time too.
Steph Woodhouse
A flood of flavour, Bosham, West Sussex
After a bracing walk alongside the shoreline of Chichester harbour, refill with hearty meals on the Anchor Bleu in Bosham, overlooking the ebb and move of the tide. Defrost within the cosy downstairs room with its open fireplace or the ethereal upstairs house for nice views of the harbour’s birdlife. Enjoy comforting pub meals, Sunday lunches and native recent fish. After your meal, discover the gorgeous village of Bosham with its Holy Trinity church, pictured within the Bayeux Tapestry, however park properly, otherwise you’ll discover your automotive swamped by the tide, which floods the harbour entrance street twice each day.
Cathy Robinson
Perfect for darkish nights, Llanarmon, Wrexham
The Hand at Llanarmon within the Ceiriog Valley has all of the attributes of an important pub to eat at particularly because the darkish nights roll in. It has great old beams, a roaring fireplace and mismatched strong wooden furnishings, and it seems like you’re a million miles away from wherever because the wind howls exterior. Specials change usually and embody scrumptious roasted and marinated rump of Welsh lamb served with purple wine dates, grilled bass with samphire and leek and blue cheese risotto.
Mark
Feast by the ferry, Isle of Wight
The Wheatsheaf has a design model that’s proudly quirky, that includes lights created from vintage diving helmets and a wood parrot over the bar (thoughts your head!), amid a lot else. The usually altering menu options Isle of Wight produce cooked by cooks who actually know what they’re doing. Among the mains are pan-fried, slow-cooked Isle of Wight beef shin and an important candy potato, chickpea and spinach curry. Evening mains are almost all beneath £20, or go at lunchtime and get an enormous selfmade fish finger roll for a tenner. The pub is handily proper by the ferry terminal connecting the island to Lymington, Hampshire.
Cat
Moor please, south Devon
Hiking Dartmoor in frosted mists of New Year’s Day, my companions and I with muddied boots and chilly noses tumbled into the Warren House Inn. While our Warrener’s pies (comfortable, supple and scrumptious rabbit – £16.50) cooked, we defrosted by the fireplace – presupposed to have been burning since 1845. Moorland farms provide a lot of their produce; their Dartmoor beef is wealthy and silky, ales are from the pump. Later, as soon as extra upon the vacant moor now wreathed in twilight’s fog, we fought the temptation to move again by way of the Warren’s door to the cherishing heat and welcome inside.
Harriet
Winning tip: Snoozing dogs, Lake District
The 300-year-old Blacksmiths Arms, close to Broughton Mills within the southern Lakes, seems like one of many final of a dying breed, a pub that lives as much as a collective nostalgic picture of what a pub ought to be: stone flooring, tough wooden tables, low-beamed ceilings, an open fireplace blazing, locals chatting on the bar. Nothing further, no twee decor, simply an amazing sense of familiarity and cosiness. Delicious home-cooked meals with a recent – however unpretentious – edge, at reasonably priced costs. Spent a day there – autumn gentle streaming in, canine snoozing at our toes – extremely grateful that such a place nonetheless exists. Evening mains are good worth: aubergine tagine with salad and new potatoes for £12.95, for instance.
Clare
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