The Oyster Rooms (Lloyds No 1), Fulham, SW6

This is a pretty grim Lloyds No 1 bar located on the first floor of the Fulham Broadway Mall. The pub takes its name from a popular 1920's restaurant that apparently one stood on the site of the present day shopping centre and the 'Spoons info boards that detail this bit of local history are worth a quick browse. The pub is an uninspiring affair, familiar to anyone who's been to other shopping centre branches of the chain, such as in Shepherd's Bush. There is a single long room that runs a significant way down the front of the mall development with a vague L-shaped counter along the back wall and lots of windows at the front to look down on passersby from. The bar has a neon-lit counter with a polished stone top and the bar back is all dark wood except for a bizarre silver centrepiece with a crappy, cheap looking pub mirror above. There are some tub chairs to your right as you enter but the room runs a long way back down the left side where seemingly endless amounts of tables and chairs can be found. The front part of the room has exposed floorboards, but for the most part, the room is carpeted and as is often the case with these Lloyds bars, the decor is severely lacking, creating a very plain, uninspiring interior with little visual stimulation beyond the few TV screens showing muted news channels. To the rear, some banquette booths appear as the room tapers almost to a point, but there's no real reason to explore back here, as it's much the same in terms of decoration. The place was packed on an early mid-week evening and I can only imagine the horror of a Friday or Saturday night in this place. I wasn't really expecting much in the way of the ale range and duly obliged with three 'Spoons regulars, just one guest ale, one 'Coming Soon' clip and three unclipped pumps. The guest was Trumans Runner and it was a substandard pint just to top things off nicely. The bar staff were a pleasing mixture of dullards, nutters and the occasional normal, friendly person and it felt like a bit of a lottery as to which you might get when you went to the bar. I didn't really like this place and struggled to find too many positives. I suppose it gives you a cheap drinking option in a pretty pricey part of London, has some interesting people watching prospects and is better than some of the nearby bars, but it ranks low on the 'Spoons spectrum and isn't somewhere I'll be hurrying back to.

Not the greatest of Tim's places. Eight hand pumps, the first four serving nothing of any note and the other four serving Sambrook's ales. Unusual insofar there were no GK beers. I won't be returning.

This is a Lloyds No 1, but on my morning visit seemed like any other JDW. It is actually situated above the entrance to Fulham Broadway Station. As you leave the Station there is an escalator in front of you going to the first floor of the horrible shopping centre and when you reach the top the bar is on your right. It's an uninspiring room overlooking Fulham Broadway with two banks of four pumps. The four as you enter have the boring options, GK Ruddles, London Pride, Doombar and Adnam's Broadside. The other four had two beers from the now distant festival plus Sambrook's Junction and the American / Adnam's Jack D'Or. The two festival beers were at the rather attractive price of £1.49 and the Bateman's Hazelnut Brownie (a 6.3% beer) was in perfectly good nick. The 6.0% Jack D'Or was priced at £2.20 which is cheaper than I would expect it to be in any other London Spoons. For me the cheap prices far outweighed the fact that it's a rather dull shopping centre Spoons.