Old Fountain, Old Street, EC1

Bigger than it looks from the outside, its very normal inside, and lookks a little tired. All wood chairs and tables and soft bench seating. What does appeal here is the friendly, efficient service and the excellent real ales, 6 intersting and well kept.

There’s always a changing selection of ales available - they had several decent ales on when I was in there at lunchtime earlier this week – Dark Star Old Chestnut; Meantime Pale Ale; Mauldon Simply the Best; something from Otley (at 4.2%) and Pontypridd (at 5.5%), as well as London Pride. The pub doesn’t look like much from the outside if you approach it from the Peerless St entrance; in fact it doesn’t really look open, but once inside it opens up into a fairly large and welcoming pub. The clientele comprised mainly of office workers, as far as I could tell. There’s an old-fashioned food counter at the back of the lower bar where you can see the food on offer. They specialise in reasonably priced pub grub. I had an excellent ham sandwich at £2.75, and the most expensive thing on offer was Cumberland Sausages, mash and onion gravy at £5.95. There was a TV, but it was not switched on; a fish tank; and carpeted throughout, with only normal tables and chairs. Luckily this pub remains unchanged every time I visit it – which is a very, very good thing. It quite rightly features as one of the capital’s finest real ale pubs. So, a comfortable and welcoming pub with good beer and good food. That’ll do it for me. Highly recommended.