York Tap, York

A great start/finish to a day trip to York or it's worth splitting your train journey. Opens at 10:00 am mon-sat & 11:00 am sun. Numerous cask ales and "craft keg" listed on two blackboards.

The York Tap is a station pub with access via the street and a platform in the station where there was some cafe seating during my recent Friday morning visit. The interior consists of a large island bar that supports twenty hand pumps and twelve taps that were dispending craft keg. I noticed that bar snacks were available, but I didn’t see any hot meal options. This pub opens an hour earlier than the norm so the doors are ajar at 10am Monday to Saturday and 11am on Sundays. There are no televisions here, but there was some low background music that was drowned out by the chatter of some beardy shed dwellers that were about to embark on a pub crawl of York. I found the staff to be very friendly and my pint was well served. This pub is an excellent meeting place and I consider it a destination pub. I will certainly return here next time I find myself in York.

We utilised the York Tap at the beginning and at the end of our crawl of some of the best Ale pubs of York and it certainly did not disappoint. All 20 of the hand pumps were in operation providing an excellent choice of beer breweries and styles. On arriving I went for the Spire Brewing Dark Side, a 4.3% ruby Ale at a wallet pleasing £1.50 a half for a Londoner. With plenty of space either side of the central serving area to accommodate the waves of transient travellers this place attracts, the interior is well described by others and I thought it had more of a vibe of a proper pub rather than a station bar. If every main line station had one of these, train travel would be much more pleasant.