The Cambridge, WC2

Hard to believe I’d never been in here before, though I would agree with the reviews below with regard to description, especially Moby’s analogy to drinking in large bay window. The furniture is tall or conventional and of course, there’s much smoky blue paint. The real item of interest is the panelled ceiling which recalls the one in the White Horse, Hampstead, which is made from enamelled panels; perhaps these are too? A very charming barmaid served me up a decent half of Ghost Ship for a terrible £2.65, the other options being Pride, Doom, Nicholson’s Pale Ale and Rosie Pig cider. This place is ok for a swift post-theatre one for the road, but otherwise is in an area where there are few decent pubs, this being just another example of the formulaic theme to be found in tourist hotspots.

A busy Nicholson's pub prominently located on Cambridge Circus with one fairly large room downstairs and the usual dining room upstairs. Pretty typical of its type, however it is worth visiting just for the superb ceiling. The beer range is pretty good too, with on this visit Purity Mad Goose, Dorset Frosted Jack, and Sharp's Rising Tide alongside the usual London Pride, Doom Bar and house ale.

The third and final pub on my mini tour of Nicholson’s pubs in Soho, this is another fairly compact pub handy for Leicester Square. The pub has a simple, small main bar area with some heavy duty floorboards and a swish bar counter running along the back wall. The bar back has a lot of dark wood and some nice cut glass panes in the centre and at either end. Some copper-topped high tables with bar stools stand directly opposite the bar with regular tables and chairs to the front and right. The front left corner has a long, sweeping button backed banquette and chairs on the far side of a chunky dividing screen. The walls have been painted in quite nice dark shades with a few beer signs and advertisements on display as well as plenty of black and white photos of the local area. The ceiling is probably the pub’s highlight, with some amazing ceramic panels set into it which depict a bowl of fruit. As per most central London Nicholson’s pubs, signs pointed upstairs to a dining room and as per most visits to central London Nicholson’s pubs, I didn’t bother to go and check it out. Reggae music played quite quietly throughout my visit and the pub was notably much less bust than the two other Nicholson’s pubs I visited earlier in the evening, perhaps because the theatres were now open and the post-work crowd had thinned out. The ale range here was much the same as the other two Nicholson’s pubs I’d visited this evening, with the selection comprising of Fullers London Pride, Sharps Doom bar, Rudgate Guilty Pleasures, Hook Norton Hooky and Hobson’s Champion Mild with two more pumps out of action. A pleasant barmaid served me a pretty good drop of the Champion Mild which slipped down very well after a poor pint in the previous pub. This pub won me over a little with its beer quality and I thought the ceiling was worth a quick drink to admire in its own right, but I felt there was something a bit lacking here which I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Once again, this is a marginally above average Soho pub with nothing to make me consider it above, or rule it out in favour of, the many competitors in the area.