Paradise Bar, West Bromwich

The Old Crown is now a very basic L-shaped Jamaican pub called Paradise Bar. The central L-shaped serving counter supports draught Kopparberg and Carling Fruit ciders, there are no cask ales or draught lagers. I ended up with a bottle of Heineken. ITV News was muted on the television, well I think it was muted because it was hard to tell with the Reggae music blasting out from the sound system found behind a pool table at the rear. The walls in the toilets were vibrating with the noise. Not really my sort of place, but I must say that the service was extremely friendly, as were the couple of locals I briefly conversed with.

Having just the letters left left on the exterior signage tells you all you need to know about this place, and I wouldn't normally leave a review where I didn't have some kind of drink, but at least I tried here... The bar and side room (with a disused pool table at the back) have very little furniture and no discernible decor but an all-pervading sense of neglect verging on abandonment. Worse still, none of the limited number of keg taps were working (with some story about a broken chiller), leaving just a few dull cans in a fridge. I declined, which the guy behind the counter didn't take badly, so I wrote this one off to experience.