ReviewThis is a pleasant café-style bar with a great location in the heart of the city centre, just a couple of doors down from the castle. It’s a shop conversion set in quite a large unit with bare floorboards throughout, large shop-style windows to the front, a green and white colour scheme and two entrances. Plenty of metal frame chairs serve tables of varying sizes around all parts of the room, including one table made from a large cable spool. One particularly unusual feature is the small ‘room’ to the front, which is behind three-quarter height glass panes in what looks like it might have formally been a shop window display area. The space now has a bunch of sofas in it, plus some low stools made from old beer kegs, with the front windows folded open to the street outside. A couple of sofas on the right-hand wall offer a comfier alternative to the basic seating elsewhere and stand beneath a light feature that spells out the bar’s name. The servery is over to the left and has an unusual brick and wood counter front and a modern bar back topped with a beer board and various other boards listing wine, pizza and cocktail options. A couple of large pillars break up the open space a little and have been dressed with wooden slat panels, with one also strewn with fairy lights. To the rear, there’s an upright piano with a book of singalong songs for talented punters to maybe attempt, a clapped-out old jukebox that was definitely out of action, and a large promotional board detailing the fundraising efforts of the pub’s owner. Some grand light fixtures hang from the ceiling and there’s a collection of keg font inserts on the wall near to the stairs at the rear of the room. These stairs lead down to a basement bar with some more seating, a pool table, a working jukebox, retro arcade machines, X-Box console and table football – a bit of a man cave that had attracted a few students on our Friday night visit. An indie soundtrack played in the background and the place had a very strong student vibe, despite the fact that aside from the group paying pool in the basement, there were only two other customers in on a Friday night.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have any cask ale here, but they are the city centre’s outlet for the local Boss Brewing company and so there were six or seven of their beers available on keg along with guests from the likes of Tiny Rebel, as well as a real cider. A very friendly young barmaid talked us through the full range of Boss Brewing options before I settled on a pint of the Boss Black (£4.60), which I didn’t really think much of.
I thought this place had a lot of potential and was really surprised to see it so quiet when the pubs and bars on nearby Wind Street were doing a roaring trade. The lack of cask ale is a shame, but it struck me as the sort of place I would’ve enjoyed when I was a student here and a better option than a lot of the Wind Street venues. Despite its shortcomings, I’m glad I visited, especially as our visit to the Boss Brewing taproom was scuppered by a private function the following evening.
