Hare & Hounds, Brighton

Revamped as a craft beer and alehouse, with a slightly odd mix of fairly rustic furniture and industrial decor. Features a substantial island bar with plenty of space on all sides, plus a few alcove booths at the back. Also has a number of covered benches out in the rear patio beer garden. A bank of five handpumps can be found on one face of the counter, offering Doom Bar, Tiny Rebel Rocksteady, Gun Brewery IPA and Firebird Two Horses (£2.05, half) plus Aspall's Cyderkyn cider. A decent selection can also be found on the keg taps, and there are Meantime 'brewery fresh' tanks by the door.

Official site of The Hare And Hounds - www.hareandhoundsbrighton.com

Newly renamed, refurbished and reopened, The Hare & Hounds is a big room on a busy corner at the far end of the dowdy London Road strip. The bar is a central island; the floor is tiled here, but bare boards rule elsewhere. Furniture is a mix of high seats and stools alongside the main road with lower seats and sofas elsewhere. Pub company Indigo seem to like a different theme for each of their pubs and here we've got two. The more obvious is the pair of tanks holding a thousand litres or so of Meantime lager - this is the first pub in Brighton offering brewery-fresh lager. I tried it and it's good - not as gassy as your regular lager; mind you, at £4.95 a pint it needed to be good! The other theme is a kitchen operated by La Choza offering Mexican street food. Back to the bar and, in addition to the lager, there's 2 more Meantime taps, as well as a couple for Brewdog and several others that I didn't note. Pilsener lovers should note that there are also cheaper and fizzier lagers available. Ales are local (Firebird & 360 were noted) from 6 pumps. This is a classy update and makes a good option if you're visiting the Duke of Yorks independent cinema across the road.

Official site of The Hare And Hounds - www.hareandhoundsbrighton.com