Trippets, Sheffield

Scruffy sort of pub not what I expected.Lovely pint of Thornbridge-Rev and the Makers made up for the décor.Good range of foreign beers.Strange copper font above the bar at eye-level is just plain daft.

Dada is a city centre bar-cum-live music venue operated by Thornbridge Brewery. The layout is a bit odd, as the location of the bar is not immediately apparent when you enter through the Trippet Lane entrance. To reach it, you need to pass through a somewhat sterile seating area with bare floorboards and drab grey walls. There are a couple of comfy sofas and chairs but most of the seating is in the form of metal chairs. There’s a fair bit of room for people in this part of the pub, with plenty of tables including some that have images printed on their surface depicting local bands such as Pulp and the Human League. The décor is fairly quirky and included a mirror with a bowler hat and moustache painted on the glass and lamp shades made from upturned waste paper bins. Moving to the right hand side of this room, the bar appears, obscured partly by a large pillar. There is a blackboard opposite which explains about the Dada movement and a few odd images have been drawn on the surrounding walls. Beyond the bar, the room opens out into a decent sized space that was being set up for a battle of the bands type contest during my stay. Although the pub was very quiet on a late Saturday afternoon, there were still enough punters sat at the bar to obscure my view of the pumps and force me to order from the side of the bar where an enormous keg font acts as an unintentional snob screen, preventing eye contact with the bar staff. I eventually established that the four ales on offer were Thornbridge Sequoia, Brother Rabbit (£2.80) and McConnells, with Saltaire Cascade Pale as a guest and two real ciders making up the hand pump line up. The keg range included three other Thornbridge brews – Chiron, St Petersburg and Tzara – as well as various German and Belgian options. Long lists on blackboards detailed an extensive bottle range. I’d been looking forward to checking out another Thornbridge outlet after thoroughly enjoying the Hallamshire House the last time I was in Sheffield, but this place failed to live up to my expectations. Whilst it is undoubtedly worth a look for the beer range or to catch some local bands, I didn’t think it had a great deal else to offer and I found it one of the least friendly pubs in the city.

All but one of the beers on hand pumps were from Thornbridge, which is not my favourite brewery, so I tried the guest, which was the seasonal Holly Daze from Fyne Brewery in Scotland. Normally I'm a fan of malty Scottish ales, but this one was well past its best - not off, but definitely tired, and at £3.20 a pint I'm not surprised it had spent a long time in the barrel before being poured. There's a substantial "beer menu" available, listing bottled and keg beers only, but as I'd only really popped in to get out of the rain I wasn't tempted to do any further research. There's a sofa and an arm chair, both in red leather, near the front window, but the chairs elsewhere are all of the metal institutional dining style, and the tables are chunky wooden dining tables with white-painted tops, over-painted with reproductions of what look to be posters advertising Thornbridge ales. Maybe because it was quiet (a dead January mid-week with the storm raging outside) I had plenty of time to study the furniture and decor, and to feel that I would never feel comfortable in a pub like this. OK, it will be right up someone's street, but if I want a real pub I can just cross the road to The Grapes. The glasses were stamped with the brewery's mission statement, "Innovation Passion Knowledge". Substitute "Pretension" and you've got this place in one word.