The Viaduct Tavern, Holborn Viaduct, EC1

A return visit to this beautiful *** pub, with fantastic alabaster and marble, pre-Raphaelite friezes and etched mirrors picked out in gold. And still uncleared tables, terrible acoustics, pissed customers and malty ESB the best of a bad bunch. Pretty pub, pretty awful experience.

A prominent pub with an unusual and attractive curved frontage, it certainly looks impressive and upmarket with it’s marble façade, polished wooden doors and red awnings over the windows. Inside though, whilst it’s similarly ornate, I thought it was looking a little shabby. No doubt it was really something in it’s heyday, but it now rather looks as though it could do with a bit of TLC. It all appears to be one single open plan room internally, unless there are further rooms elsewhere that I did not see. The flooring is plain wooden boards, with red painted wallpaper on the lower part of the walls and pale cream plasterwork up above, with black painted dado rails separating the two. The ceiling is fitted with heavily embossed wallpaper which has been painted a very deep red, but the main feature is some very large and elaborate mirrors covering almost the entire right hand wall that have pictures of some classical maidens on them. Perhaps something from Greek mythology, I’m not sure, but they were certainly impressive. The mirror frames are elaborate gold and there is further gold etching in the arched mirrors behind the bar. Carved faces inset in to the panelling below the ceiling are another interesting and unusual feature, and there was some very elaborate carved wooden shelving behind the bar. Despite the grand surroundings, it lacked much in the way of atmosphere with only three of four other punters in on my recent Tuesday evening visit, even though other places nearby were packed. Beers on tap were Siren Yuhu, London Pride and Dark Star Pale Ale. The solitary cider meanwhile was Cornish Orchards. Overall, I’m glad I popped in and ticked this one off, but it’s not somewhere I’d make a point of ruching back to.

Official site of The Viaduct Tavern - www.viaducttavern.co.uk

Official site of The Viaduct Tavern - www.viaducttavern.co.uk

A corner pub with a curved front, this penultimate pub on my London's Beautiful Pubs crawl was initially a little more difficult to appreciate as it was so busy - they must knock off early around here on Fridays. The wall to the right of the bar has three large paintings set into marble surrounds, and there are some sparkly mirrors below the staircase; perhaps there's more to see but it was too busy to go exploring. My glimpses of the bar encouraged me to wait for a lull in proceedings, and I was eventually rewarded with quite a good photo of its simple, clean lines. Some of the detail on the exterior is quite interesting too. My notes say "beer nothing special", but to be fair my Fullers London Pride was in competition with memories of my first drink of the day, the same beer in the Victoria near Paddington, so was always going to be fighting a losing battle.