The Prince of Wales, Birmingham

Located in the heart of Birmingham's late 80's, early 90's regeneration area, between the ICC, National Indoor Arena and Sea Life Centre, the Prince of Wales is a real survivor and a rare Victorian pub amidst a sea of chain bars and restaurants. The pub has a single L-shaped room with exposed floorboards and a smart servery to the right with a padded counter front and green bar back topped with some impressive paintings of an unidentified battle scene. Banquettes run beneath the leaded and etched glass front windows and as the room runs to the rear, these give way to a row of high tables and stools down the left hand wall. The room has some pretty good wood panelling with quite pleasing geometric patterned wallpaper above and as you might expect, there are plenty of pictures of the eponymous prince on display. As you approach the rear of the room, the flooring turns to tiling, but it was tricky to get an accurate picture of what this part of the pub is normally like, as it had given way to a covers band who were bashing out some crowd pleasing hits from the 70's to a very appreciative and sizeable middle aged crowd. It looks like quite a nice spot with more smart wood panelling, lots of pictures hung from the walls and some admittedly garish wallpaper around a compact fireplace on the end wall. I'd been in a number of very quiet pubs on this Sunday afternoon crawl, so it was a real surprise to stumble across somewhere that was really rocking and I enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere from the crowded bar area. The pub seems to be able to maintain a wide selection of beers, albeit mostly from nationally available brewers, and there was almost a full compliment on the eight handpulls, with Wye Valley HPA, Black Sheep Bitter, St Austell Tribute, Tetleys Mild, Sharps Doom Bar, Purity Mad Goose and Taylor Landlord available and just the one pump out of action. My pint of the HPA was £3.40 and in pretty good shape and there was a fair bit of turnover thanks to the burgeoning crowd. This is a solid little pub in an area that is a bit out of the way from the city's top pubs circuit, manfully doing its bit for the traditional pub amongst all the All Bar One/Reflex/Slug & Lettuce/Cafe Rouge bars that plague the area. I thought the pub had a lot going for it and whilst the ale range was a little pedestrian, the quality was very good and this alone would be enough to tempt me back.

8 real ale taps 7 on food served and live music advertised.