The Crock of Gold, Wembley

A long-standing Irish bar in a shop conversion, which is actually nicer than the description suggests. Dark decor and plush fabrics give a comfortable feel to the single room, which has a bar counter down one side. A dartboard lurks at the back while several TV screens beam different sports. The main change of note is that is has acquired a handpump, sadly not in use on this visit but signs of GK IPA were evident.

Inconspicuous Irish bar in a converted shop, with a compact rectangular interior and basic semi-modern furniture. The decor includes some black & white photographs, but the sports TVs dominate the room. Additional seating on a couple of wood benches out in the side alley. No real ale of course, and the John Smiths price was £4.20 on a Wembley NFL game day (so I suspect it is usually much cheaper). Had a lively pre-match atmosphere, though.

This is an Irish shop converted pub that was empty apart from one other customer during my fleeting visit one recent Thursday night. The reason I didn’t stay long was because the Guinness was the worst I had tasted for a long time and the love ballads playing on one of the flat screens whilst horse racing replays played on the others almost had me reaching for six foot of rope and a bar stool. Obviously there was no real ale leaving a standard draught selection and the smoking area out the back where I poured my drink down a drain was basically a driveway to some garages. The barmaid was polite enough and I’m sure that it gets livelier in here at the weekends when there is live music or when sport is on Sky Sports, but based on this visit I will not be rushing back.

Let's face it, you don't come to Wembley specifically to drink. Even a pub crawl will find nothing more than the most formulaic and functional pubs. The Crock of Gold is hardly the most original or fascinating of establishments and definitely falls into the formulaic category. It is essentially a contrived Irish sports bar with a dart board at the rear, the usual run of plasma / big screens for football / racing and a couple of fruit / quiz machines. The décor is pub by numbers with nothing to attract the attention and it all feels a bit too open lacking any intimacy, even though the pub is quite small. The one thing that it does have in its favour (in common with its near neighbour the Torch) is direction, i.e. away from the Wembley Stadium / arena complex and that means that prior to a gig / football / Holiday on Ice you can avoid the majority of the crowds. This is the sort of place that will be refurbished and renamed at least a dozen times before it eventually becomes a newsagents. OK to kill an hour but nothing life changing.