Baroque, St Albans Central, St. Albans

This re-opened as Baroque for a few months, an uninspiring cafe type bar. That closed Dec 2012 and there were rumours that Wetherspoons might take the lease back. However notices today show that it is to become a Bills Restaurant, probably opening around April . St Albans doesn't really need any more cafe/restaurants but if it's the same company who have the site in Lewes that i visited last year they should do well here.

I was in here a couple of weeks ago and remarked about the number of 'available soon' notes on the pumps. I see this a lot in other JDW's but this is a good real ale pub with a good turnover. The reason given was that they were closing down at the end of the month, something I confirmed yesterday. Apparently JDW decided not to renew the lease and rumours are that it has been taken over by Heritage. The notices on the windows cheekily say that it is a relocation and that they can now be found near the Alban Arena under the name of the Waterend Barn. In truth the Waterend Barn has always been there trading under the Lloyds No1 brand, branding whch has now disappeared. The Cross Keys was always the much better pub for real ale with the Waterend Barn being more food orientated and disappointing when it came to ale. It will be interesting to see if that improves now there is just the one outlet.

not the best pub in town. keep walking past it.

The Cross Keys is a typically large town centre Wetherspoons complete with drink and food promotions on already cheap for the area prices. I counted twelve hand pumps that were drawing ten ales and two ciders and I had no problem getting served promptly. This was partly due to the pub being very quiet, especially for 22:00 on a Saturday evening when other pubs in the area had people queuing outside to get in. I plumped for the Pride which was on good form, but I did have to ask for it to be topped up as it was embarrassingly short of a pint. No background music was playing, but the plasma screen was showing muted rolling news. It’s suppose that it is always handy to have a local Spoons, but there are far better options in this area for those who are prepared to spend a little more money on a pint.

This formulaic and quite bland Wetherspoons seems even more of a disappointment given the history and character of the City. The interior has all the ‘Spoons hallmarks and furnishings without adding anything to make it stand out but it does at least have a better than average selection of guest Ales (6 although it did include a couple of leftovers from the Festival) across the 12 pumps although a further 3 were annoyingly badged as “available soon” on my visit. The rear section contained a quite a disproportionate amount of space for diners and most of the drinking area seemed to be full of undesirable train robber lookalikes with roll ups behind the ears and limited vocabulary that for a reasonably upmarket town, comes as a bit of a shock, even for Wetherspoons. The staff seemed disinterested and turned a blind eye to their behaviour and that in itself lets the pub down considerably. Maybe it was a bad day but I won’t be too keen to come back especially given the competition.

Decent location at the top of Holywell Hill where London Rd meets the High Street. You can normally rely on the quality of the real ales in this Wetherspoons and they usually have a good selection. The cheaper JDW prices means it can hold it's own in the real ale mecca of St Albans.