Sawyers Arms, Paddington, W2

Another typical central London Greene King Pub, pretty packed on a Saturday evening I could only see the usual GK IPA, Abbott and London Glory with no guest beer that I could see, not my kind of pub.

Not an unreasonable pub for the area, which can get a bit overwhelmed with tourists. The ground floor is nicely broken up into several different areas, while there is further space upstairs mainly used for dining. A few pavement tables lurk outside. The ales are of course mostly GK, with IPA, Abbot and London Glory, plus TT Landlord as the regular guest and in fair condition.

The Sawyers Arms is a wooden floored corner pub with split level seating that was all either taken or reserved for dining during a recent Friday afternoon visit. I ended up standing next to a beer shelf on a column adjacent to the bar that runs up the left wall. In amongst the standard and premium keg are six handpumps, two of which were unused. This left TT Landlord available alongside GK London Glory, Abbot and IPA. I didn’t venture upstairs to the advertised restaurant area, but I did note that the burger with chips is priced at £14.50. There was some background music playing, but this added nothing to the already non-existent atmosphere. This is a run-of-the-mill Central London Greene King pub, there are plenty about so no reason to rush back here.

Once a fishmongers, it seems that this is a relatively modern conversion, situated diagonally opposite the Greene King pincer movement that is the Dickens Tavern. Unlike other local and indeed GK pubs, this has been substantially gastrofied. Split levels, mixed ‘zoned’ furniture and filament bulbs, a pale floor, smoky blue and pale grey colour scheme and trendy framed photos of the locality to walls; games machines were an option, unsurprisingly; also unsurprising, were the sauce bottles and menus on tables, all to a theme tune of popstrel banality, playing at too high a volume. Customers were of course blokes, but also a seemingly large number of Spanish customers, one mounting a brief attempt at Flamenco dancing. The GK ale choice was proffered, so a Neck Oil it was, at the surprisingly low £3.15 a half, 25p cheaper than the Dickens, opposite. This is a fairly poor pub, but it’s probably the best bet if in the immediate area.

Official site of Sawyers Arms - www.greeneking-pubs.co.uk

Official site of Sawyers Arms - www.greeneking-pubs.co.uk

A corner pub in a side street directly opposite Paddington station, this makes a handy pit stop if you have a wait for your train. There is a small amount of seating on the pavement outside, although it’s not really the best outlook. Internally, it’s clearly been refurbished and has little in the way of any character with something of a slightly generic, chain feel to it. That said, it was perhaps more elegant than some renovations and was certainly not unpleasant. There was wood strip on the floor along with some pale khaki colour wood panelling on the walls and some further white wood panelling on parts of the ceiling. Elsewhere was a mixture of dark green and white plasterwork. A large TV screen was showing a sports channel but the volume was off so this was not too intrusive. There was also an upstairs dining room although I did not investigate this. Beers on tap were Greene King IPA, Abbott Ale, London Glory, Samuel Adams Craft Ale, Timothy Taylor Landlord and Evans Evans Britannia. Ciders meanwhile were Mortimer’s Orchard and Kopparberg Raspberry. Overall this was not a bad pub if you’re in the area and want a pint, but it’s certainly not worth making a special effort to get to.