The Flute & Tankard, Cardiff

Feel of a wine bar/taverna with tiled floor and round arm chairs. Small bar in middle of room. Small front terrace. Ok, not over comfortable but the 4 real ales are good.

I was sitting in the Central Bar JDW and spotted this place just across the road. I recognised the name from the 2019 GBG so thought I would give it a try. As mentioned below it's a smallish rectangular room with a tiled floor and the bar counter on the front left. There was a stack of six boxed ciders on the bar which may not be ideal in Summer. The three hand pumps had beers from local breweries although they were all around the 4% abv mark. I went for the Grey Trees Caradog's Bitter (£3.25) which was in good nick. I thought this place was worth a look.

Having read that this small bar, handy for the Queen Street shops and train station, had recently been reopened by the same people behind the Rummer Tavern, I decided to include it as a bit of a wildcard on my recent city centre crawl. Arriving shortly after opening time at 17:00, I was not only the only customer, but seemingly the only person in the building until an apologetic landlord bounded downstairs and served me. You enter up some steps, past a small raised terrace with café style tables, into a simple room with tiled flooring and half panelled walls. A few small tables and chairs stand in the front half of the room which sees a small dark wood servery on the left hand side, with a compact canopy and part exposed brick bar back. To the rear the room turns into something approximating a lounge, with standard, tub and high backed chairs in a slightly wider space with a couple of large arched mirrors and minimal décor that included a few vintage Coca Cola adverts. Dark beams crisscross the ceiling and some sections of the wall, but it's all for visual effect and doesn't really do a lot to liven up what is essentially a pretty uninteresting space. Given the time of my visit and the lack of other customers, it was highly irritating to be subject to a dismal pop music soundtrack for the length of my stay. By the time I left the numbers had swelled so that the bar staff outnumbered the customers. There were three hand pumps in operation, offering Otley O3 The Boss, Wye Valley Butty Bach and something from the Kite brewery. The O3 was actually in pretty good shape and whilst the number of pumps might be a bit disappointing when compared to their sister pub, it is a fairly small venue that might struggle to support many more lines. The pub is also in direct competition with a Wetherspoons pub on the other side of the road, which can't make life easy. I'm not sure exactly how long this place has been open in its current guise, but it certainly had the feel of a place that hadn't managed to bed itself in yet. I'd be interested to see how the pub fares on a busy night, as I may well feel very differently if it was a bit livelier, but I doubt I'll ever find out as it didn't really do enough to convince me to pay a return visit.