The Goat Tavern, Mayfair, W1

Small Taylor Walker pub with the usual dark interior and black & white tiles at the bar. 4 real ales and food served.

Decent little pub but surprisingly quiet compared to others but 5 mins after buying a drink they told me they shut early on Sundays. Four cask beers inc London Fields -love not war and my choice Hammertons -pentonville.Good beer.

There were four ales on handpump, all from the ranks of the usual suspects. This pub is now Taylor Walker branded, so a standard pub grub menu is available. The interior is nothing special – the bar counter is on the right dominating a single fairly small room, and with furnishings comprising solely a half dozen or so tall tables and tall stools. The pop music was being played too loudly for my liking – I suppose some customers must like it that way, but I sometimes wonder if it’s for the benefit of the staff. It was festooned with Union Flags of course because of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations. To be honest I didn’t think that this was a very comfortable pub, and with the superior (in my opinion) King’s Head over the road I doubt that it’s somewhere to where I will return.

This is a pretty straightforward and unremarkable little pub; a single room at ground floor with the bar along one side, wooden floors and seating universally on stools either at high tables or a couple of shelves at the back. A fair bit of dark wood and a series of mirrors with edge detailing run around the walls. Not much in the way of decor, I saw a few cartoons and there was some old map on the stairs down to the toilets. Two TVs in gilded picture frames, both switched off on Saturday afternoon. I didn't check out the upstairs bar. Being a Taylor Walker establishment, an exciting beer choice is unlikely, three of the four pumps were on, dispensing Pride, Doom Bar and Youngs London Gold (£3.05), a decent price for this part of the world. The young barmaid was friendly and efficient and quickly acknowledged and put right an error with my change before I needed to say anything. Comedy nights were advertised, I assume they take place upstairs as there wouldn't really be much room in the main bar. Not unpleasant or in any way a poor pub, but the beer choice and ambience are rather better over the road.

Sitauated just north of Piccadilly, this small pub is another of Punch’s newly branded Taylor Walker pubs that now seem to dominate the West End. The single room main bar is certainly nothing pretentious or glamerous, more functional and down to earth. The bare floors have some chessboard tiling in the entrance and around the bar area. A series of mirrors down one side make the place seem a bit larger than it is. The furnishings consist entirely of high tables which is presumably because they don’t need so much leg room for the occupants and there really isn’t a great deal of room for anything else. There is a Flat screen housed in a picture frame at the front of the bar and piped music that acted as little more than background ambience. If the main bar is busy (and it usually is) the upstairs bar offers some respite and an opportunity to grab a (normal height) table unless there is a function going on (the pub hosts regular comedy nights courtesy of the Laughing Horse Comedy Group). There are a few old pics dotted about and a bar that I have yet to see open. On the beer front, there are 4 ales that mirror virtually all Taylor Walker outlets, a rather unispiring choice of London Pride, Youngs London Gold, Doom Bar and Old Golden Hen. They are Cask Marque accredited and to be fair I have always had decent quality beers in here. Prices are average for the area albeit a little bizarre with my Golden Hen at £3.51 meaning you inevitably end up with a pocketful of coppers. The food is the normal pub grub fare with main courses around £8-£13 if you can find a table to eat it at. Most pubs usually have something historically interesting or newsworthy about them even if it’s just a bit of scandal that made a paragraph in the paper somewhere some years ago but the Goat seems to exist in its own unpretentious little world. It seems untouched by anything newsworthy and merely ploughs a lonesome furrow for the benefit of its band of regulars and the stray passer by that fancies a lucky dip. Its unassuming nature is probably the pubs most endearing asset.

The Goat Tavern is located on Stafford Street virtually opposite the much larger Kings Head on the other side of the road. As well as size the Goat is also inferior to the Kings Head in regards to beer choice in that, although there are four hand pumps on the bar, three were in operation dispensing the usual suspects of Pride, Youngs ordinary and Adnams Bitter. And another area where the Goat suffers is in regards to outside drinking area. As is common in the area of Mayfair, there are white lines drawn on the pavement, inside of which drinkers taking the air must stay, and this space is rigorously policed by doorman whose salary is easily justified by the fines the establishments would incur if drinkers breeched the boundaries. And as The Goat has a fairly small frontage it’s not the most becoming place for an alfresco pint when the suns out. But the one thing that does appear to be in its favour is that unlike the Kings Head where you have to be very lucky to get a seat in the busy early evening period, the upstairs seating area at The Goat is not well known and whereas the smallish downstairs bar is set up mainly for vertical drinking, a trip up the non obvious staircase to the left as you enter usually yields some free tables as it did for me this week. But to be honest, as I am usually just after a decent pint and have no issue to drink it vertically I can’t see myself crossing the road in future visits.

Unlike the great array of ales that the Kings Head had across the road the only ales available were Pride and Greene King IPA which would explain why there were half as many people using this pub. Another ale was off and there was an unused pump, but there were no premium lagers. The pub is very small, but there is a dining room and bar upstairs which I'm afraid that I did not see. There is a plasma screen which was showing Sky Sports News, but the pub does not have Sky Sports for the football. I found the staff to be very friendly and I would return as I thought the Pride was very nice.