The Clifton, Clifton Village, Bristol

The pub is a two room affair with the bar dividing the two. You enter via a corridor with leaded windows into the bars. The front room is the more traditional with more of the bar, seating at wooden backed upholstered benches and a large brewery mirror from long gone H&G Simonds of Reading. The floor perimeter is wooden with a central carpet. By contrast the larger rear room has little natural light, lots of exposed brickwork and is furnished with sofas with scatter cushions, high tables and large retro 70s lampshades. There is an open kitchen/servery in here with menus on large chalkboards. This room then extends around to the right to a more intimate narrow red painted area which has a fireplace with a plasma over at the far end. As this is trendy Clifton Village, the place is a bit on the foody side but the menu wasn't too testing and reasonably priced considering the area. There were menus on all tables as well as the chalkboards and they were offering a Fixed Price Jubilee menu of two or three courses. Beerwise we had a choice of Doom Bar, St Austell Tribute, Butcombe Gold and Adnam's Diamond Ale but note all handpumps are off the front room. There were three boxes of different Weston's ciders on a shelf behind the bar. I thought the beer and pub were fine, well the front room anyway, but the lone barmaid was clearly very inexperienced and took an age to pour a pint then struggled further with another group's order of a glass of wine and two cokes. She really should have had some help/supervision as if the place had become busy it would all have fallen apart. Notwithstanding that however, not a bad spot and less trendy/gastro than many other local bars.

I only popped in because of the late licence and wasn't expecting much. So was pleased to find a couple of ales and ciders (I forget which, probably Butcombe and Westons) on the go, which were also quite well served up and not overly (for Clifton) expensive, along with a fair selection of bottled stuff (which was a bit more wallet-bothering). The interior was lit like a fairy grotto along with various pot plants dotted around. Given I'd been at the Portcullis for a while previously my memory is a little sketchy on the rest of the details but I did leave thinking that it was fairly good for what it was…will stick my head round the door again at some point.