Any barman that can provide some trivia on a night out is a friend of mine. Even better if it’s football-based. Well, my most recent experience of this was down at Clark’s Bar in the New Town. Positioned at the bottom of Dundas Street, it’s that little bit away from, well, everywhere, and can easily slip off my radar. But on the same day as the draw for the World Cup, I popped in for a couple of pints with a good acquaintance of mine.
Pubs near railway stations can be transient places. A revolving door of those killing time before the train home, a lonely businessmen tucking into a deserved pint or a stag or hen do slowly assembling for the weekend ahead. The Guildford Arms, near Edinburgh’s Waverley station, welcomes all of these groups and even boasts the revolving door. Thankfully, it also treats locals and visitors alike to a taste of a real, well-run Edinburgh pub that is one of my most visited bars in this great city.
Tucked slightly up a side street, opposite the luxury Balmoral Hotel at the east end of Princes Street, the Guildford is the epitome of a proper Scottish ale house. You can enter the main bar off the lane to the side of the pub or through the delightful, if slightly tight, rotating door at the front. Many a day I’ve stood at the island table nearest the door and marvelled at humanity’s inability to operate this revolutionary technology.
An American woman at the bar summed this place up beautifully as she sat at the bar with her husband recently: “I’ve been here several times but the last time was 15 years ago. It looks and smells exactly the same as it did then.” Let there be no doubt, this was a positive comment.
Situated down at the Shore area of Edinburgh, the Malt and Hops looks like it could be stuck in a time warp, were it not for the constantly updated beer list on the mirror behind the bar showing what’s on and what’s racked. It’s a sign of the priorities here – beer and people.
I wrote in my last post about an old man’s pub being transformed into a fabulous modern yet characterful boozer when I mused on the Fountain at Fountainbridge. Well, a week later and I was in yet another conversion from old to new. This time it was The Flying Dog, formerly the Trafalgar Bar, on Henderson Street in Leith.
Now, I was never in the Trafalgar so can’t pass comment on it pre-refurb though I can imagine it was similar to a number of pubs in the Leith Walk/Easter Road area. Local, uninspiring, coming away at the edges and never quite the same after the smoking ban. So what of it in its new guise as The Flying Dog?
Edinburgh’s pubs are changing, and they’re changing fast. There are closures, refurbishments and new ventures wherever you look. To use a phrase more familiar in the Thatcher, yuppie years, old men’s bars are being turned into trendy wine bars. Only that’s not quite true. Some old men’s bars are being turned into fantastic modern pubs that retain character while at the same time exude style. A case in point is The Fountain on Dundee Street, Fountainbridge.
Now, I had only once set foot in the old Fountain and that was with Mrs Bar Fly (well, she was a Miss back then) and people from her residents’ association who held a quiz there one Tuesday night. It was a typical Edinburgh local pub – lots of Tennent’s drinkers and a game of darts in the corner. When I stepped in for the second time on a recent Friday lunchtime four years on, I was more than pleasantly surprised.