Adam
A common question for a blog about bars in Bristol is: which is best? And whatever answer you give someone out there is going to call you a tasteless idiot.
Now we’ll be reserving our own idiotic judgement until we’ve finished this blog, but as it stands I’ve got to say King Street as a whole has always delivered a good time.
Such a good time in fact that we’ve near enough visited every bar on it and that now also includes the pink pub at the end of the street: King William Ale House.
In our last post The Bootlegger delivered a taste of prohibition and the deep south, in contrast the King William literally delivered a taste of Yorkshire in it’s comprehensive selection of Samuel Smith beers on tap.
The northern brewery chain owns the entire pub and consequently it’s branding, outlook and beverages are pretty much everywhere you look in there, I think I’m right in saying that they have no other type of beer on tap.
Off putting for some, but the good news about this is that I used to live in Yorkshire and happen to quite like it up there. I like the countryside and the way everything is noticeably cheaper that Southern England. So Mike and I enjoyed a pint of Sovereign bitter to get us started and I’m glad to report this place is cheap enough to blend in to the average high street in, say, Barnsley.
Obviously other drinks are available but I was quite glad to try something other than a bog standard lager. Although we usually try something unique or local if we can – a lot of places we’ve been simply don’t offer anything other than the mainstream brands so I’m much happier to find the reverse.
Although we’d already eaten, the food too might just be the cheapest meal you’ll find on King Street. The menu won’t blow your socks off but they go to the effort of adding things like choices for kids and a range of the usual pub classics are all present and correct.
The listed pub is bigger than you’d think from the outside and like it’s next door neighbour The Famous Royal Navy Volunteer you can walk all the way through and go out the second entrance and sit on benches facing another cobbled street leading to Queen Square. Like so many on King Street it was built in the 17th Century as several houses which were later merged.
So we went for an explore and upstairs we were pleased to find all the main pub sports: darts, table football and of course pool. I got to enjoy the satisfaction of winning both games with a few good runs of form, although I’ve got to admit despite playing a lot when I was younger I rely mostly on luck nowadays.
Back downstairs there’s plenty of seating with a choice of sofas, booths or standard tables so for our second pint we grabbed a chair and got on with our usual ramblings. We’ve come close enough to the ‘finish line’ of visiting our 100 bars now that we’re starting to crack out the maths and see if we’ll get them all in by 2015, looking close but so far so good for the schedule.
So once again my conclusion about a King Street pub is you can’t really go far wrong by having a pint there. With it’s thick pub carpets and selection of bitters it’s not too trendy or outgoing, but it’s a cheap honest pint from Yorkshire that you can have alongside a game of darts, which will often win me over.
The King William Ale House (20 King Street, Bristol, BS1 4EF) is open daily. https://www.facebook.com/kingwilliam.alehouse?fref=ts
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