The Old Fish Market, Bristol

nice Fullers pub in central drinking area, seems smaller inside unless I missed something

The Old Fish Market is an imposing high ceilinged Fullers pub with long bar counter that faces the entrance. This bar supports two banks of five duplicate handpumps, Pride, ESB and Oliver's Island being on and When Hogs Fly and Cwth coming soon. Standard and premium keg was also available. Live sport is advertised and there are televisions dotted about, but these were off during my midweek visit. For those more refined there is jazz every Sunday from 19:00. The service was polite, but I wasn’t overly impressed with this place, and being from West London I’m a big Fullers fan.

Another cracking Bristolian Pub. Long and thin Fullers House - with some tables outside and a wonderful interior. Large, long bar. Nooks and crannies around the back of the bar. Chesterfields and other comfy seating. Range of Fullers on - including a very good ESB. Expensive.

This is a large Fullers pub set in a grand old city centre building which, as the name suggests, was once part of Bristol’s fish market. The pub has a wide, but comparatively shallow interior with plenty of exposed floorboards, parquet flooring and a fabulous, ornate servery through the centre. The bar has a decorative but chunky wooden counter with a stone top and a high dark wood bar back studded with some pleasant mirrors. The entrance porch to the main bar area has an elaborately decorated wooden roof and there are large plain windows along the front wall which let in plenty of light – a real benefit for those who choose to sit at the high tables and stools that run beneath them. Banquette seating is available along the right hand wall with a few tables and chairs further back near a wall covered with chalkboard paint which has allowed the staff to write the full menu on it in large lettering. To the left of the bar, there is a separate room that looked to me like a more formal dining room area, with half panelled walls dotted with a few black and white photos around a space full of regular tables and chairs. Elsewhere, some board games were stacked up at the end of the bar and some TV screens were evident, but all were switched off in favour of some pop music, which played quietly in the background during my visit. This is a Fullers pub and three of their ales were available on the handpulls – London Pride, Oliver’s Island and ESB. However, the Moor Brewery were staging a tap takeover on my visit, which meant no less than six of their brews were also available on cask and I decided to sample their Comrade Games – a tasty 6% IPA that was perhaps an ambitious first beer of the day! The staff here were all very warm and friendly, especially the very helpful barman who talked me through the various Moor beers. I also stopped off here for some lunch and found the food to be tasty if perhaps a little pricey for the amount you get. I really liked this one and thought it was a step up from many of Fullers similar London based outlets. My impressions may have been favourably influenced by the tap takeover, which meant the ale selection was considerably more interesting than it might otherwise have been, but the pleasant, comfortable surroundings, high cellarmanship standards and incredibly friendly staff meant this was a winning start to my crawl around the city.

This is another pub that has remained unchanged in recent years, being much the same as when the previous reviewer visited a couple of years ago. It's still a Fuller's pub with the usual range of ales on. The couple of pints of ESB that my companion and I enjoyed here at the end of the evening following the Pubs Galore tour of the city's best pubs, and a superb curry, rounded the day off very nicely and ensured a good night's sleep. The ESB was £3.85 a pint and seems good going to me (at least by London standards). The pub itself is quite large, stretching around the old fish market into various nooks and crannies. The covered old courtyard is still there on the left, and provided something of a peaceful refuge from the noisy main bar area. As usual with these sort of places, the majority of furnishings are tall tables/tall stools, but with a good number of standard tables/chairs, as well as one or two sofas. I would not put this pub near the top of my Bristol "to do" pubs, but it is a good enough pub, and provided a welcome nightcap after a hectic, but tremendously rewarding, day out with Pubs Galore regulars.