Black Bull, Edinburgh

A long thin place at the bottom of Grassmarket, counter on the right halfway along with chair and table seating throughout. A mix of older and modern in style with a great many screens and the usual music. Probably fewer tourists as it’s not olde worlde or suffering from tartanism, it does look like there was a decent old pub underneath. Beer wise there’s three pulls with Stewart beers plus three T-Bars with a mix of local and UK favourites. It was advertising a whisky flight with various distilling areas represented, no price shown but the beer here was a wee bit cheaper than the Nicholsons and Greene King pubs up the road. I found the staff rather functional. WARNING USES HANDLE GLASSES AS DEFAULT!

Official site of Black Bull - blackbulledinburgh.co.uk

Official site of Black Bull - blackbulledinburgh.co.uk

One of a number of pubs along the popular Grassmarket strip, this looks quite traditional from the outside but was something of disappointment internally. It’s considerably bigger than might be expected, extending back some considerable way, and was very busy on our recent Wednesday evening visit, to the extent that initially we couldn’t find anywhere to sit until a table subsequently became available. Décor wise it’s clearly been renovated at some point, and consisted of some very plain and nondescript flooring, although there was also some wood strip in the rear half, pale green paintwork on much of the walls and dark wooden architrave elsewhere. All manner of bits and bobs were hanging from the ceiling including baskets, leather suitcases, model aeroplanes, miner’s lamps, wooden crates, boxing gloves, tennis rackets, model cars, an old cart wheel and countless other things. Normally I’d find all that quite interesting, but here it felt rather contrived as though somebody who had read a manual on how to design a pub had just put it all together. At the rear they’d had a stab at making it more elegant perhaps with much dark wood panelling on the wall, but the effect was rather spoilt by the number of screens showing sports that were dotted around as well as a several fruit machines and a sign advertising beer that was apparently “Cold as f**k”. It seemed that this referred to a device that could be delivered to your table and looked rather reminiscent of a liquidiser with a “beer can” at the base and glass jug at the top from which you could refill your glass. Since it was nearing Halloween, everything had been liberally draped with fake cobwebs, including all the pumps on the bar. They did at least have a couple of local beers on with Stewart’s Jack Back and Barney’s Red Rye, whilst a third pump had it’s clip reversed. Ciders meanwhile were a disappointing Inch’s Medium Apple and Strongbow Dark Fruit. It’s a shame they couldn’t have kept up the local theme there, with some Thistly Cross perhaps, which have been a far better option.

The Black Bull has a good selection of beers on draught such as Tennents £3.90, Stewarts Lager £4.50, Shipyard APA £4.80, Estrella Damm £4.70, Caledonian Best £3.80, Heineken £4.60, Kronenbourg 1664 £4.30, Guinness £4.70, Magners cider £3.90 & Strongbow Dark Fruits Cider £4.20. There are bottled beers such as Innis & Gunn Original £4.70, Innis & Gunn Blood Sky £4.80, Brewdog Punk IPA £4.80, Joker IPA (500ml) £4.85, Caesar’s Augustus (500ml) £4.85, Budweiser £3.70, Peroni £4.20, Sol £3.90, Desperados £4.30, Heineken 0% Alcohol Free £3.00, Hollows Alcoholic Ginger Beer £4.85, WKD Blue £4.00, Bulmers & Old Moat with different flavours. A choice of 16 whiskies. There are 6 hand pumps for real ale addicts. A very good choice of burgers, sandwiches & meals are available.

Three real ales on - barman offered samples of all three before we left the handpulls and settled on a ShipYard IPA. Fine pub, but with plenty of choice in the area, nothing really makes it stand out.