Pubs with Walter and Veronica

Posted on 2013/10/13 09:15:50 (October 2013).

[Thursday 10th October 2013]
Walter, a friend from work, was visiting London this week, but unlike previous visits this was purely a holiday. He'd also brought his wife Veronica along, I think it was her first time to come to London.

They were staying at the Goring, rather impressively, so I met them there, and they invited me to their room to "help" drink a bottle of Champagne the hotel had given them, as it was in fact Walter's birthday today. It was a nice opportunity to see inside one of the rooms at the Goring, having just been to the dining room and the gardens previously.

From there we headed out, and I have to admit felt a bit of a sense of pressure at the fact I was organising a night out, not just for Walter's birthday, but his 40th at that... but a pub tour seemed to be what he wanted to do, so I guess I was the right man for the job!

We started with dinner at the Seven Stars. The food there is quite unique, and puts me in mind of how I imagine the fare at an 18th Century coaching inn might be like - the sort of sustenance that Dr Johnson and chums would have known. My intuition was that this would really appeal to Walter, and I think I was right - plus added into the bargain Walter and Veronica are cat lovers, and the pub has a cat. So I think this was a very good start. Walter also seemed to like the poignancy (if that's the right word for it) that we were in a pub which was (over) 400 years old on his 40th birthday - so it was ten times his age.

We'd started the evening quite late, and dinner of course always takes a big chunk out of any pub tour, so after that we only had time for two more stops - I of course played it safe and went for two of my all time favourites - the Cittie of Yorke and Ye Olde Mitre. I think these went down pretty well too.

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