Golden Fleece, Mansion House, EC4

Official pages of Golden Fleece - www.metropolitanpubcompany.com

This is a large pub for the area and there were eight real ales available during my visit just before Christmas. Being a Greene King pub these were offerings from Morlands, Greene King and Hardys and Hansons. There is also a range of standard draught products and I though that the Guinness was on good form and served politely by the barmaid. Food is available in the form of traditional pub fayre and the mains come in at around the £8 mark which is reasonable for the area. The main area of the pub is made up of an island bar with small room at the rear that was closed for a private function during my visit. The good sized basement bar was also closed during my visit, but I did have a quick look on my way down to the toilet and it seemed comfortable enough. There are a couple of plasma screens in the upstairs bar area that were showing muted Sky News and there was some background music playing at a low volume. I thought that this place was nice enough with a good atmosphere and I would have no problem returning.

This is a good City drinking pub. It is a GK pub, but does have most of the range and usually a guest. The ground floor bar area is dominated by the central circular serving area and there's not a great deal of room for sitting or standing around this. But there is a larger downstairs seating area with quite a few tables. Although on my early evening visit this was empty as most people were taking advantage of the fact that there is a large outside pavement area to utilise and were outside in the decent weather for an outside pint. Seven real ale hand pumps are dotted around the central bar, which on my visit included IPA, Abbot, Ruddles, Old Speckled Hen and Everards Tiger as the guest.