The Milan Bar (Lloyds No 1), Croydon

2 floor Lloyds spoons with the basement area larger than the ground floor.

The Milan Bar is a large Lloyds No 1 with a street level bar that supports six hand pumps and a downstairs bar with another three. Both obviously have a selection of standard draught and cheap food and drink deals are available. For a Wednesday afternoon this place was very busy, which was down to the cheap beer rather than the ambience. There was no music and some plasma screens were showing muted rolling news.

This pub has a bar on the top level and another bar downstairs. I never seem to be lucky in getting a decent real ale in here with the selection being pretty poor seeing as the London Ale Festival was on.

Attended a multiple colleagues' birthday bash here on Friday evening. Arrived at the ground floor bar at 6pm to find three real ales available - Hyde's Ship Shape, Cotleigh Nutcracker, and Ruddles Best - and to be informed they only serve in plastic glasses from 6pm. Couldn't see my colleagues, and having taken an instant dislike to the place I paid 98p for half a Ship Shape in the hope either they'd already gone elsewhere or could rapidly be persuaded to do so. Alas I found them well settled in downstairs. On the plus side, the Ship Shape was really rather good and I had several of these, and a Nutcracker which was also quite drinkable. This involved repeated trips upstairs as they don't have real ale at the basement bar. Several of us were here slightly involuntarily and ended up playing the quiz machine in desperation.