The Rovers Return, Salford

I was intrigued after reading the advertisement for Rovers Return gift tokens stuck on the front entrance. This interest soon waned when I walked in and realised that this pub is nothing like its more famous namesake up the road. That said, it is actually a well-tended and comfortable pub, even if the jukebox volume is cranked up a tad loud. Walking in through the front Chapel Street entrance there is a seating area, with raised seating to the left. Ahead is an L-shaped bar and seating runs down the long left hand wall to a pool table at the rear. Televisions are located throughout for watching live football. The bar supports standard and premium keg and real ale is no longer available. There is a pizza menu, a 12” pepperoni is priced at £8. I didn’t eat, but I expect that the bin out back has a few empty frozen pizza boxes in it. The service was friendly, but the Rovers Return link is very tenuous.

Somewhat apprehensive about paying this pub a visit after seeing some of the reviews both on here and other sites. However for the sake of completeness I just had to include it on a crawl of the area on Saturday night. I can only back up Mr Bundy's statement in the previous review and can state it is not as bad as I was expecting! It helps that it is larger than it looks from the outside as the pub goes back quite a bit, so even if there had been a hostile reception there would have been a corner to hide away in. However make no mistake, it feels very much like a locals' pub, bordering on a working man's club kind of place. At the bar are four hand pulls, one offering Holts Bitter, two were off and one was unclipped but had a chalk board in front of it proclaiming to offer a "Rovers Return Bitter 3.6%" at a suspiciously cheap £2.20 a pint. The Holts Bitter was I think £3 a pint, so this is not an expensive establishment by any stretch of the imagination. It's definitely not what you would call a hidden gem, but it's a bit off the beaten track and a "proper" boozer without a doubt. It was a bit rough around the edges with bits of ceiling missing, wallpaper peeling off the ceiling near the bar, paintwork not patched up where light fittings had been changed and a general feeling of neglect. I'm sure it could be updated a little without losing any of that "charm" factor of old style pubs. Do I regret going? Not at all. Will I be back? Not in any hurry.

Nowhere near as bad as previous reviews suggest, though I was here of an afternoon. A very friendly barmaid was polite and courteous. No real ale but if you can get past the rather gimmicky name its ok.

I was served a pint in here which was half full from who knows where, topped up with slops, and then filled. Appalling atmosphere.

The Rovers Return is one of the smarter Salford pubs i have been in. When i visited this pub i only noticed the one room this was deceked out fairly smart and was a comfortable enough pub to have a few drinks in,there were two real ales on the bar i had a drink of John Smiths bitter which was on handpump and this was a fairly nice drink the other beer was Tetley bitter. It is nice to see that this pub is still up and running. Pub visited 3/8/1995