The Guinea, Mayfair, W1

Quinno _ left this review about The Guinea

*** CAMRA Heritage pub. First thing - don't bother to try and visit around 5-7pm during the working week as it'll be outside drinking, as I discovered. Inside is split in two; there’s a restaurant to the left which was zealously guarded by a bouncer and the bar is to right. It's quite neat and old fashioned here, to re-quote the previous reviewer “quite traditional in appearance with black wooden boards on the floor, black painted paper on the ceiling, dark green embossed wallpaper on the lower part of the walls and sandy colour paintwork above. Etched glass windows were at the front of the pub were draped with long red curtains. The walls were liberally covered in pictures, many of them portraits or caricatures”. Be-penguined staff, which I think rather suits the moneyed clientele that were in attendance and fair play they were very efficient. Run by Youngs for getting on for 150 years, so I read. Four cask available, 2x Youngs, St Austell Proper Job and a decent Harvey's Sussex Best (NBSS 3) for which I was mildly surprised to only (!) be charged £6.30. Sadly I had to spend most of my time outside getting rained on though I did eventually manage to sharp-elbow my way to small gap that had opened-up at the far end of the bar. One I’ve had on the ‘to-do’ list for a long time and despite the problems caused by its popularity and my late arrival, I thought it was worth the effort. 7.5

On 25^th June 2024 - rating: 8
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