The Advocate, Edinburgh

A large single room pub behind the Tron Kirk on the High Street. Well appointed with a bit of dark wood, tartan upholstered banquettes and carpet. Decorated with mirrors of various shapes and sizes plus some neat old drawings. The counter is to the right and home to two sets of four solo keg taps, a double keg tap and three hand pumps. One had a clip saying this is not a beer and offered a text on Belhaven’s heritage, one coming soon and a lacklustre Deuchars IPA. Constant music and big screens on sport and silent news detracted the place a bit more for me but it’s ok for a Royal Mile pub. WARNING USES HANDLE GLASSES AS DEFAULT!

Located just off the Royal Mile, this is a good sized pub that inevitably caters somewhat to the tourist market given it’s location, but I found it to be a decent enough pub with friendly and efficient bar staff. Décor wise it’s quite traditional, with a mixture of dark wood strip and tartan carpet on the floor, a mustard colour ceiling with several flags affixed to it and various paint shades on the walls including maroon and duck egg blue. A number of gilded mirrors were on the walls and there were also several large TV screens scattered around which perhaps spoilt the ambience somewhat. These were showing a terrestrial news channel, but at least the volume was off so this was not too intrusive. Seating was a mixture of padded bch seating around the perimeter and regular tables and chairs. The laminated menu looked to be a rather mass produced affair, but included a good choice of “pub grub” dishes such as CTM, fish & chips, lasagne, sausage & mash and so on, as well as a number of burgers. Most main courses were priced somewhere around the £9 - £10 mark. I went for the chicken, bacon and leek pie and this was on the whole pretty decent, certainly very tasty, although it could perhaps have been a bit bigger and the accompanying mash was perhaps a little stodgy. Beers on tap were Rockin’ Rudolph, Greene King IPA, Kelburn Ginger Bells and their own Advocate Ale. The solitary cider was a rather disappointing Aspall’s. Overall, a bit too much of a chain pub perhaps, but a decent enough pit stop nonetheless.