Kings Arms, York

this rather spartan one roomed Sam Smiths pub is very incongruous with its surroundings- today loud hen parties, drunken groups of twenty somethings and foreign tourists. Maybe they couldn’t believe their luck when they got a £2.15 pint of lager, but only once they got over their horror at the absence of Fosters/Budweiser on the bar. Queues at the door and a strictly policed beer garden this Easter Saturday. the Extra Stout went down well. May be a very different place in winter but for now it’s a welcome antidote to the Slug and Bollocks nonsense going on around it.

Thankfully the Kings Arms was not flooded when I visited on a recent Saturday afternoon. This is a Sam Smith’s pub that unfortunately does not have cask OBB. I ended up having half an Alpine lager that set me back ninety odd pence. An impressive price, but I wasn’t that impressed with receiving a plastic cup to drink it from. The interior consists of a bar that splits the pub in two giving front and rear seating areas. Many picnic tables line the cobbles adjacent to the river Ouse. Unsurprisingly for this brewer, there was no background music and I didn’t see any televisions.