The Counting House (JD Wetherspoon), Dundee

The city’s Spoons is converted from an old bank; whilst there’s a bit of retained grandeur in the cornices it’s otherwise a fairly standard JDW fit-out of the post Victoriana era. ‘Wider than it is deep’ is a good description. Four guest cask alongside the usual stagers, my Belhaven 80/- was decent (NBSS 3) and the atmosphere surprisingly relaxed for a Friday night. GBG’24 listed.

Externally an excellent historic building with not so much Wetherspoons branding. In fact I visited the McMannus museum a day earlier and walked around the square without noticing it. Sadly though, internally it’s had the full ‘spoons blanding treatment and outside of a couple of decent pillars there’s not a lot to commend it. And also for my visit sadly no beer festival in operation and no CAMRA AGM in town and the beer choice was not great. Firstly only five of each bank of six were in operation and four of these were doubled up between the two sets. I counted three Scottish ales from the six different beers which you could argue is three more than a lot of the keg only establishments in town but not what I’d set my expectations on. The locals didn’t seem to mind though and the place was rammed on my Saturday lunchtime visit and it was standing at the high tables only. It was all a bit disappointing really and I hope I caught it on a bad day beer wise.

This is a fairly large branch of Wetherspoons in an ornate former branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland in the middle of Dundee city centre. The large interior is a fair bit wider than it is deep and has been carpeted throughout with the servery to be found along the back wall. Large mirrored pillars break the space opposite the bar a little, which has an intricate wooden frontage. High tables and stools fill the space between the entrance and the bar, whilst standard tables and chairs occupy much of the remaining space to either side. At the far end of the room there are two raised seating areas with some limited banquettes, making it arguably the nicest, most secluded spot in the pub to bag a seat in. A couple of TV screens at one end of the room were showing the usual news channels and there were some bits of art and a few old local photos dotted around the place. Aside from this, the decor is fairly restrained, allowing customers to appreciate the grandeur of this building, including some attractive decorative friezes that run their way around the ceiling lintels. I counted seven guest ales on the bar as well and four ‘Spoons regulars and one ‘Coming Soon’ clip, which seems like a decent ratio to me. I was in early for breakfast, so gave the ales a swerve on this occasion, but the food was pretty good and certainly better than some others I endured during my time in Scotland. This is a pretty interesting ‘Spoons that doesn’t live up to the chain’s bank conversions in Glasgow or Aberdeen but does rank as far more impressive than your average Scottish ‘Spoons. I quite enjoyed this one and intended to return to sample the ale later in the day, but my crawl got a little out of hand and that sadly never happened.