Sports Bar & Grill, Marylebone, NW1

Part of the Stonegate empire, this place came into existence around 2009 as part of Marylebone station. Quite unsurprisingly, this was a first visit last night, made under duress owing to a friend who’s easy to please. The concourse entrance is decked out like a sports stadium, which may have had a megavision screen. Otherwise, the interior is as previously described, very industrial with a pale wood floor (which bounced), exposed (probably Victorian) girders painted bright orange, exposed air handling and partly bare brick walls; there are life-size portrayals of sporting activities to walls, lest someone mistake the place for The Wenlock; otherwise, décor comprised Six Nations flags and an enormous inflatable set of Guinness rugby goalposts to an entrance. Furniture is tubular steel with orange or blue vinyl upholstery, then some slightly raised booth-style seats, each with its own TV and on the subject of TVs, I counted 21, not including ones that may be in the basement pool area or function room, seemingly showing every single sporting fixture taking place on the planet at the time of my visit, each with commentary and competing with the awful piped McDonald’s-style soundtrack, the whole cacophony repeatedly triggering the 80 db noise alert on my smartwatch, conversation being nigh on impossible; there are several games machines too, all amounting to sensory overload. As far as the customers go, I did spot a woman, but otherwise it’s a 99.9% younger male venue. There was real ale of sorts, in the predictable form of Doom and Pride, a half not requested but arrived courtesy of the aforementioned ‘friend’; I sipped a little, before surreptitiously hiding the glass behind one of the laminated menus that litter the tables and on the subject of food, it was a task not to wretch given the appalling stench of fried chicken. Pure drinking hell.

Official site of Sports Bar & Grill - www.sportsbarandgrill.co.uk

Official site of Sports Bar & Grill - www.sportsbarandgrill.co.uk

Reasonable station bar. OK if you are waiting for a train.