The Old Star, SW1

This Greene King Victorian corner pub is spread over 3 floors and 2 buildings. The main bar on ground floor has a great deal of wasted space with about 25% of the floor lost courtesy of a large open stairwell. The area around the bar is partially blocked by a large pillar and, thanks to the poor layout, there is not much room for seating given the overall size of the ground floor. As a result, grabbing anywhere to sit is a lottery unless you are lucky. The décor is rather plain and bland with the recent refurbishment doing very little to add anything of aesthetic value although the built in bottle display in the dividing wall is quite unusual. The beers naturally come from the Greene King range with the normal Abbott, IPA and Speckled Hen supplemented by the more obscure Royal London (which at £3.40 a pint doesn’t come cheap). A further pump was unbadged. The bar staff always seem to come across as functional but quite distant and impersonal and do not convey any great enthusiastic welcome if you are a stranger. Probably the most interesting part of the pub is the downstairs Vaults Bar, a comfy basement section with stone floors and two enticing arched recesses known as the coves (available for free hire) with their constantly changing soft illuminations and London panorama backdrops. There is also a separate bar on the first floor labeled the St James Bar with a more limited bar service and generally this only seemes to be used for private functions. The food menu is basic pub grub with main courses in the region of £7-10. On the whole this is one of those pubs that is fine for a passing visit but really doesn’t have any great appeal to make the user want to return in any great hurry.

This Greene King pub had five GK selection ales and Peroni available alongside some standard lagers. It certainly feels like it has had a new lick of paint and I think the staff have been told to keep it clean as I had to wait a while for them to stop wiping it down before I could get my drink. I can't see myself returning here in any great hurry.

Being a Greene King house it had what you would expect on, but it did have Morland Original as well as the usual offerings. Interestingly all the nozzles on the handpumps, with the exception of Old Speckled Hen for some reason, sported sparklers. As a point of principal I'm immediately prejudiced against anywhere that uses these devices. This is a typical scrubbed clean, characterless place, of the sort that we see so many of these days. Nothing like the pub I knew in the 60s. But some people obviously like these sort of places, so good luck to them. I don't suppose that I'll be paying a return visit.